One photo is of Tippu Tip (African slave trader) and the other photo is not of Tipu Sultan present in 'The British Museum' - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 6, 2022
Two different images are compared through a post claiming one to be the real photo of Tipu Sultan. The post even claims that the other photo is the ‘photo that congress kept printing in Indian school textbooks.’ Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Picture attached in the post shows the real photo of Tipu Sultan.
Fact: The person in the photo is Tippu Tip and not Tipu Sultan. Tippu Tip (1837-1905) was a Swahili-Zanzibari Slave Trader from Africa. Tipu Sultan (1751-1799) was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore from 1782-1799. In fact, the world’s first photograph was taken in 1826 by a French scientist named Joseph Nicephore, Tipu Sultan was already dead by then. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When reverse image search is done on the photo, the same photo was found in the Stock Photo Website Getty images. According to the description of the photo, the person is Tippu Tip (1837-1905) who was a Swahili-Zanzibari Slave Trader from Africa.
Taking the cue that the person in the photo was an African slave trader, we searched in Google for any news archives. We found ‘The Illustrated London News’ archive from the British newspaper archive website, with the same image on the front cover of its 07 December 1889 issue. The caption of the image on the front cover is read as, ‘Tippoo Tip, the Arab chief of the Manyewa, Upper Congo.’
Tipu Sultan (1751-1799) was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore from 1782-1799. He led the second Anglo-Mysore war when his father Hyder Ali died in the battle due to illness. Tipu Sultan died in 1799 during the fourth Anglo-Mysore war. The picture being used is more of an artistic illustration.
In fact, the world’s first photograph was taken in 1826 by a French scientist named Joseph Nicephore, Tipu Sultan was already dead by then. Tipu Sultan died in the year 1799.
To sum it up, a photo of Tippu Tip, a Slave Trader from Africa, is falsely shared as that of Tipu Sultan.
Update (06 MAY 2022):
Another photo is being shared widely on social media with a claim that it shows the picture of Tipu Sultan that is present in the London Museum. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Picture of Tipu Sultan that is present in the London Museum.
Fact: There are several pictures of Tipu Sultan in ‘The British Museum’, but the posted photo is not one of them. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched for the pictures of Tipu Sultan on the website of ‘The British Museum’, many photos related to Tipu Sultan were found in the search results. However, we did not find the posted photo. So, no such photo of Tipu Sultan is there in ‘The British Museum’.
Some fact-checkers claimed that the person in the photo is Rumaliza (a slave trader of Tanzania) comparing the dress, dagger, and facial features. However, in our search, we found that many persons from the region wore the same dress and had a similar dagger. In fact, we found a person who looks more similar to the person in the posted photo. So, we cannot confirm the identification of the person.