299:, who had gone out the year before. Together with another missionary, R. H. Weakley, he had some success in converting Turks to Christianity. However, in 1864, there was a violent reaction from the Turkish government and several Turkish converts were arrested. Pfander and Weakley were forced to leave Constantinople, while Koelle remained behind for a few more years. When the Church Missionary Society withdrew from the city in 1877, he stayed on there for a time as an independent missionary, until in 1879 he too was forced to depart, after being arrested, together with a Turkish friend, Ahmed Tewfik, who had helped him translate the Anglican prayer book into Turkish. Koelle was released after a few hours, but Tewfik was imprisoned and sentenced to death. After pressure from the British Government, Tewfik was sent into exile on the island of Chios, and eventually escaped to England, where he was baptized in 1881 into the Anglican church in a ceremony in St Paul's, Onslow Square London, witnessed among others by Koelle's father-in-law, Archdeacon Philpot. However, it seems that he was unhappy with his new life and after being sent to Egypt in 1883 he eventually voluntarily gave himself up again to his captors in Chios.
208:
their place of origin, and an indication of how many other people they knew in Sierra Leone who spoke the same language. This information, combined with a census of Sierra Leone conducted in 1848, has proved invaluable to historians researching the
African slave trade in the 19th century. Of the 210 informants, there were 179 ex-slaves (two of them women), while the rest were mostly traders or sailors. An analysis of the data shows that typically Koelle's informants were middle-aged or elderly men who had been living in Freetown for ten years or more. Three-quarters of the ex-slaves had left their homeland more than ten years earlier, and half of them more than 20 years before; and three-quarters of the informants were over 40 years old. Another interesting facet of the book is the manner in which the informants had been made slaves. Some had been captured in war, some kidnapped, some sold by a relative, others condemned for a debt or sentenced for a crime.
20:
115:, which was founded by the Church Missionary Society in 1827. "He was a Semitic scholar, and started a Hebrew class at Fourah Bay; and very soon African youths, the children of liberated slaves, could be seen reading the Old Testament in the original." While in Sierra Leone he also collected linguistic material from many African languages, some of it from freed slaves such as
242:
is compiled with very great industry, but it unfortunately contains numerous errors, which may be explained by the fact that Koelle was never in Bornu or any racially allied country. His chief informant was an interpreter resident in Sierra Leone, who had left his mother-country more than forty years
141:
were using a script of their own invention. Koelle made a 7-week trip to
Vailand to meet the inventor of the script, and wrote an account of his journey which was published later that same year. In mid 1850, Koelle spent a few weeks in the Gallinas district of Vailand, and from November 1850 to March
207:
The value of the list is not merely linguistic, since the work not only includes the words themselves, arranged with all the languages spread out on two facing pages for each group of three
English words, but Koelle also added a short biography of each informant, with geographical information about
199:
In the introduction Koelle tells us that he wanted a selection of words that would be simple enough for each informant to be interviewed on a single day, and for this reason he omitted pronouns, which would have taken much longer to elicit. He adds that a few years earlier during a long vacation he
310:
After returning from Africa, Koelle married
Charlotte Elizabeth Philpot (1826–1919), the daughter of an English archdeacon. They had seven children. One of them, Constantine Philpot Koelle, born in Constantinople in 1862, later became a Church of England clergyman. One of Constantine's sons, Sir
200:
had made a similar such list, of just 71 languages, and that in making the present list he had learnt from that experience. Included with a book is a map of Africa showing the approximate location, as far as it could be ascertained, of each language, prepared by the cartographer
267:
After 1853, Koelle, who had become ill by the end of his stay in Sierra Leone, never returned to West Africa. For a time he continued his linguistic researches, in particular on questions of standard orthography, in connection with the
168:) in some 160 languages and dialects. These were then grouped as far as possible in families. Most of the informants who contributed to this work came from West Africa, but there were also others from as far away as
349:
African native literature, or
Proverbs, tales, fables, & historical fragments in the Kanuri or Bornu language. To which are added a translation of the above and a Kanuri-English vocabulary
184:
and Arabia rather than southward towards
America and Brazil. The pronunciations of all the words were carefully noted using an alphabet similar, though not identical, to that devised by
723:
A footnote in
Lapsansky-Werner & Bacon (2005), p. 255, states that Koelle had already made a brief visit to Sierra Leone in 1843 under the auspices of the Church Missionary Society.
687:
Houis (1966), p. 137, states that it was researched between April 1850 and July 1852. Curtin & Vansina (1964), p. 186, state that the book was mostly researched in 1849.
550:
954:
164:. The idea of this was to use the fact that Sierra Leone was a melting pot of ex-slaves from all over Africa to compile a list of 280 basic words (a sort of early
944:
81:(born 1820), who also worked as linguists and missionaries for the Church Missionary Society, but in East Africa. Another CMS missionary born in Württemberg was
332:
Outline of a
Grammar of the Vei Language, Together with a Vei-English Vocabulary, and an Account of the Discovery and Nature of the Vei Mode of Syllabic Writing
323:
Narrative of an expedition into the Vy country of West Africa and the discovery of a system of syllabic writing recently invented by the natives of the Vy tribe
142:
1851 he worked again in the Cape Mount district. By July 1851 he had completed his Vai grammar, and it was published by the Church
Missionary Society in 1854.
949:
357:
Polyglotta
Africana, or a comparative vocabulary of nearly three hundred words and phrases, in more than one hundred distinct African languages
276:. In 1855 he was sent to Egypt, but remained only a short time; he moved on to Haifa in Palestine in the same year. In 1856 he was awarded the
223:, also published in 1854. Koelle was engaged on this at intervals from 1848 to 1853, working for several hours a day with an informant called
939:
934:
251:
that his interpreter did not seem to be reliable as regards the pronunciation of consonants, a fact which is frequently noticeable in the
905:
137:
In 1849, when Koelle had been in Freetown for just over a year, he was asked to investigate a report that speakers of the Vy, Vei, or
526:
311:
Harry Philpot Koelle (1901–1980), was to become a vice-admiral in the British Navy. His descendants pronounce the name as "Kelly".
581:
259:
However, the translator P. A. Benton adds in a footnote: "I cannot agree. Koelle seems to me to be extraordinarily accurate."
381:
The death of Christ upon the cross. A fact, not a fiction: being a word in defence of Christianity against Mohammedan attacks
430:
321:
543:
571:
561:
129:(1854), is considered the beginning of the serious study of a large range of African languages by European scholars.
23:
Photograph of Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle, from Robert Needham Cust ‘A sketch of the modern languages of Africa’ (1883)
281:
882:
269:
201:
793:
For another assessment of the work, see Henry B. Lovejoy in Anderson & Lovejoy (2020), ch. 6, pp. 139–40.
551:"Language Gathering and Philological Expertise: Sigismund Koelle, Wilhelm Bleek, and the Languages of Africa"
231:, which consists of proverbs, fables, descriptive accounts, and historical fragments in the Kanuri language.
893:
188:, which was not yet available at that time. The name of the book was imitated from a well-known work called
101:
97:
35:
615:. But some sources give 1823, e.g. König, C. in Stammerjohann (2009) (ed), p. 823; Houis (1966), p. 137.
296:
247:
warrants the assumption that Koelle himself never spoke Kanuri. He himself admits in the Preface to his
82:
847:
610:
929:
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273:
185:
158:
The second great linguistic work carried out by Koelle during his five years in Sierra Leone was the
160:
153:
125:
74:
52:
43:
34:(July 14, 1820 – February 18, 1902) was a German missionary working on behalf of the London-based
112:
243:
before Koelle made use of him in his linguistic studies. An examination of the above-mentioned
522:
100:
based in London; after further training in Islington he was ordained by the Bishop of London,
470:
Hair, P. E. H. (1963), "Koelle at Freetown: An Historical Introduction”, in Koelle, (1963 ),
227:
Gazirma (also known as William Harding). Eisami also provided the material for another work,
78:
870:
365:
Food for Reflection: Being an Historical Comparison Between Mohammedanism and Christianity
193:
326:. London: Seeleys, Fleet Street; Hatchards, Picadilly; J. Nisbet and Co. Berners Street.
70:
371:
73:
region of southern Germany. In his Württemberg origin he resembles his contemporaries
918:
219:
120:
89:
583:
Lexicon Grammaticorum: A bio-bibliographical companion to the history of Linguistics
537:
Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates and the Colonization Movement in America, 1848–1880
165:
138:
105:
39:
393:
Koelle, S. W. (1890). "Is Mohammed as Innocent of Imposture as Jesus Christ?" in
355:
339:
330:
180:, since it seems that slaves from this region were generally taken northwards to
277:
19:
224:
169:
116:
108:, the British protectorate established in West Africa for liberated slaves.
66:
555:
Les Linguistes allemands du XIXème siècle et leurs interlocuteurs étrangers
360:. London, Church Missionary House. (Click on the spanner icon to download.)
291:
In 1859 he was posted by the Church Missionary Society to Constantinople (
57:
marking the beginning of serious study by Europeans of African languages.
292:
181:
177:
47:
489:
412:
513:
Lohmann, Hartmut (1992). "Sigismund Koelle". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.).
478:
439:
216:
Another work researched and written by Koelle in Sierra Leone was the
503:
678:
P. E. H. Hair, introduction to the 1968 reprint of Koelle's Grammar.
448:
Dalby, D. (1964). "Provisional identification of languages in the
432:
Liberated Africans and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1807-1896
234:
Of Koelle's grammar, a later researcher, A. Von Duisburg, wrote:
173:
93:
18:
535:
Lapsansky-Werner, Emma J.; Bacon, Margaret Hope (eds) (2005).
515:
409:
The Goal of the Universe or the Travail of the World's Saviour
104:. From December 1847 to February 1853 he lived and worked in
499:. T. 6, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1966), pp. 136–139. (in French)
85:(born 1803), who was Koelle's colleague in Constantinople.
521:(in German). Vol. 4. Herzberg: Bautz. cols. 259–261.
440:"Sources of the Nineteenth Century Atlantic Slave Trade"
172:. One area that was lacking was the Swahili coast of
517:
Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL)
16:
German missionary and scholar of languages of Africa
514:
373:The Book of Common Prayer, Translated into Turkish
367:. London. (Published under the pseudonym Abd Isa.)
459:Guthrie, Malcolm (1964). "Bantu Languages in the
388:Mohammed and Mohammedanism, Critically Considered
96:, Switzerland, Koelle transferred in 1845 to the
402:The Apocatastasis, or Restitution of All Things
768:Anderson & Lovejoy (2020), ch. 6, p. 135.
429:Anderson, Richard; Lovejoy, Henry B. (2020).
419:, Vol. 8, No. 31 (April, 1907), pp. 471–472.)
8:
651:Houis (1966), p. 137; Solleveld (2020), §1.
42:, where he became a pioneer scholar of the
509:, Jan., 1917, Vol. 16, No. 62, pp. 97-110.
395:Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record
302:Sigismund Koelle died in London in 1902.
591:Christian Mission to Muslims: The Record
573:History of the Church Missionary Society
563:History of the Church Missionary Society
504:"The Bantu and the Semi-Bantu Languages"
479:"The Enslavement of Koelle's Informants"
438:Curtin, Philip D.; Vansina, Jan (1964).
603:
544:"Koelle, Sigismund Wilhelm (1823–1902)"
341:Grammar of the Bornu Or Kanuri Language
50:). He published a major study in 1854,
945:Anglican missionaries in Sierra Leone
778:Grundriss der Kanuri-Sprache in Bornu
383:. (Published under the name Abd Isa.)
272:which was being discussed in 1854 by
7:
906:National Portrait Gallery photograph
732:Curtin & Vansina (1964), p. 186.
696:Curtin & Vansina (1964), p. 189.
642:Curtin & Vansina (1964), p. 186.
507:Journal of the Royal African Society
490:"Review: (Untitled). Reviewed Work:
485:, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1965), pp. 193–203.
474:, ed. P. E. H. Hair. Graz, pp. 7–17.
445:, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1964), pp. 185–208.
780:(1913), translated by P. A. Benton
580:Stammerjohann, Harro (ed.) (2009).
955:Linguists of Niger–Congo languages
950:German expatriates in Sierra Leone
417:The Journal of Theological Studies
335:. London: Church Missionary House.
14:
586:. Tübingen; 2nd edition, p. 823.
539:. Pennsylvania State University.
435:. University of Rochester Press.
871:MyHeritage genealogical website
46:, and later in Constantinople (
589:Vander Werff, Lyle L. (1977).
483:The Journal of African History
443:The Journal of African History
212:Grammar of the Kanuri language
1:
883:Ancestry genealogical website
861:Stock (1899), vol. 3, p. 123.
829:Vander Werff, (1977), p. 163.
660:Stock (1899), vol. 2, p. 102.
633:Stock (1899), vol. 2, p. 102.
494:by Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle."
192:(1823) by the German scholar
65:Sigismund Koelle was born in
940:German Anglican missionaries
838:Stock (1899), vol 3, p. 123.
811:Solleveld (2020), section 2.
802:Stock (1899), vol 2. p. 148.
714:Solleveld (2020), section 1.
705:Solleveld (2020), section 2.
465:Sierra Leone Language Review
454:Sierra Leone Language Review
935:German missionary linguists
502:Johnston, Harry H. (1917).
133:Grammar of the Vai language
92:, a missionary seminary in
971:
549:Solleveld, Floris (2020).
282:French Academy of Sciences
151:
123:man. Koelle's major work,
759:Hair (1965), pp. 196–200.
315:Works by Sigismund Koelle
229:African Native Literature
202:August Heinrich Petermann
98:Church Missionary Society
36:Church Missionary Society
894:Genealogical information
782:Primer of Kanuri Grammar
593:. William Carey Library.
218:Grammar of the Bornu or
28:Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle
624:Johnston (1918), p. 98.
488:Houis, Maurice (1966).
280:of 1,200 francs by the
570:Stock, Eugene (1899).
560:Stock, Eugene (1899).
477:Hair, P. E. H. (1965)
400:Koelle, S. W. (1896).
386:Koelle, S. W. (1889).
379:Koelle, S. W. (1885).
370:Koelle, S. W. (1883).
363:Koelle, S. W. (1865).
354:Koelle, S. W. (1854).
347:Koelle, S. W. (1854).
338:Koelle, S. W. (1854).
329:Koelle, S. W. (1854).
320:Koelle, S. W. (1849).
88:After training in the
24:
820:Houis (1966), p. 138.
542:Pugach, Sara (2006).
407:Koelle, S. W. (1905)
390:. London: Rivingtons.
297:Karl Gottlieb Pfander
83:Karl Gottlieb Pfander
22:
750:Hair (1965), p. 195.
741:Hair (1965), p. 193.
284:for his work on the
186:Karl Richard Lepsius
849:Deutsche Biographie
612:Deutsche Biographie
492:Polyglotta Africana
472:Polyglotta Africana
461:Polyglotta Africana
450:Polyglotta Africana
286:Polyglotta Africana
161:Polyglotta Africana
154:Polyglotta Africana
147:Polyglotta Africana
126:Polyglotta Africana
75:Johann Ludwig Krapf
53:Polyglotta Africana
44:languages of Africa
113:Fourah Bay College
25:
456:(1964), 3, 83–90.
270:Standard Alphabet
111:Koelle taught at
102:Charles Blomfield
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376:. London: SPCK.
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220:Kanuri Language
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194:Julius Klaproth
190:Asia Polyglotta
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669:Koelle (1849).
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557:. pp. 169–200.
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278:Volney Prize
274:Karl Lepsius
266:
263:Later career
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166:Swadesh list
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139:Vai language
136:
124:
110:
106:Sierra Leone
87:
64:
51:
40:Sierra Leone
31:
27:
26:
930:1902 deaths
925:1823 births
71:Württemberg
919:Categories
598:References
295:) to join
238:"Koelle's
225:Ali Eisami
170:Mozambique
117:Ali Eisami
577:. London.
567:. London.
467:3, 59–64.
404:. London.
67:Cleebronn
413:Reviewed
293:Istanbul
182:Zanzibar
178:Tanzania
48:Istanbul
497:L'Homme
253:Grammar
249:Grammar
245:Grammar
240:Grammar
69:in the
525:
306:Family
121:Kanuri
575:Vol 3
565:Vol 2
174:Kenya
94:Basel
32:Kölle
523:ISBN
196:.
176:and
119:, a
61:Life
463:".
452:",
415:in
411:. (
30:or
921::
553:.
481:.
288:.
255:."
204:.
908:.
896:.
873:.
852:.
546:.
531:.
351:.
55:,
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