East Africa’s other major slaver and trader. Rumaliza. While not as infamous as Tippu Tip, He was especially known for his brutality. His specialisation was ordering the castration of captured men and boys so they could be sold as eunuchs. If you have watched Game of Thrones, his parallel are the Masters of Astapor. They are the ones who castrated people like Greyworm and the other Unsullied Oral and written accounts from the Uele, Aruwimi, Tshuapa, Maniema and Kisangani regions ( places far apart) repeatedly linked him and his parties to cutting off men’s genitals, amputating limbs, piercing noses and ears, burning villages, and killings. The practice of castrating some male captives for the Indian Ocean eunuch market (harem guards and palace servants) was part of the wider East African slave trade; survival rates after the operation were often low. His real name was Muhammad bin Khalfan bin Khamis al-Barwani. He was born around 1850–55 in Lindi on the Tanzanian coast, he was an Omani-Swahili trader of the Barwani family. He learned the business under Tippu Tip and, with Tippu Tip’s backing, rose to dominate the trade at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika by the early 1880s. From there he controlled routes into the eastern Congo, launched raids up the Ruzizi valley toward Lake Kivu, and maintained armed posts along the northeastern shore of the lake. His nickname, Rumaliza, loosely means “the finisher” or “the terminator” in Swahili. Like Tippu Tip, he mixed commerce with force, using Magwangwara auxiliaries and other followers to secure ivory and captives. When Belgian forces under Francis Dhanis pushed east during the Congo-Arab War, Rumaliza was defeated in January 1894 and fled. He later pursued property claims in German East Africa related to Tippu Tip’s estate. Unlike Tippu Tip, who ended up as a governor under Leopold II and retired wealthy in Zanzibar, Rumaliza’s power collapsed more abruptly under direct colonial pressure.