Curious Tales and Oddities From History

[muqawwee123]

Re: Curious Tales and Oddities From History

@devilish_angel

Bizarre Treaty

http://listverse.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/800px-skull_of_mkwawa.jpg?w=550&h=412

’

Paramount Chief Mkwavinyika Munyigumba Mwamuyinga (1855–19 July 1898), more commonly known as Chief Mkwawa, was a Hehe tribal leader in German East Africa (now mostly the mainland part of Tanzania) who opposed German colonization. On 28 October, 1894, the Germans, under the new commissioner Colonel Freiherr Friedrich von Schele, attacked Mkwawa’s fortress at Kalenga. Although they took the fort, Mkwawa managed to escape. Subsequently, Mkwawa conducted a campaign of guerrilla warfare, harassing the Germans until 1898, when, on 19 July, he was surrounded and shot himself rather than be captured. The Germans removed his head as a trophy and sent his skull to a museum. In a bizarre twist, years later the British wanted the skull so they could give it as a gift to Tanganyika to thank them for their support in the First World War. In order to achieve this they added the following clause to the very famous Treaty of Versailles: “ARTICLE 246. Within six months from the coming into force of the present Treaty, … Germany will hand over to His Britannic Majesty’s Government the skull of the Sultan Mkwawa which was removed from the Protectorate of German East Africa and taken to Germany.” The skull was finally returned in 1954, and can now be seen in the Mkwawa Memorial Museum in Kalenga

:disgust: remind me tradition followed by Ummayads and then Abbasids to display heads of their enemies (after killing them)