In Paris, the king, enthralled by his long-awaited curiosite, put Zarafa on daily exhibition in le Jardin du Roi. In Lyons, a crowd of 30,000 people turned out to see her. Along the way, through villages and vineyards and from cottages and chateaux, the entire population was captivated by the ‘beautiful African’. After wintering in Marseilles, she was carefully and lovingly walked the 550 miles to Paris by one of the premier savants of the time, Etienne Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire. The gentle animal, however, soon became an adored celebrity in her own right and the embodiment of an era in French history rich in new scientific and cultural ideas.Ĭaptured and tamed in the Ethiopian highlands, Zarafa travelled 3,500 miles down the Blue Nile and the Nile and then across the Mediterranean.

She was a politically motivated tribute to Charles X from Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, who hoped to forestall European intervention in his war against the Greeks. Zarafa was the first living giraffe Europe had seen in almost 350 years and the first of her kind ever to arrive in France. On Tuesday 31 October 1826, a young Masai giraffe – Zarafa – landed incognito outside the bustling port of Marseilles.

“She was an intriguing royal gift and one that certainly caused a stir among the people of nineteenth-century France. Near Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, dustjacket also shows minor edge and shelf wear, no inscriptions (see photographs)

Headline Book Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0747222991, black and white photographs and illustrations in text, illustrated end papers (maps), illustrated frontispiece, hardcover, dustjacket The true story of a giraffe’s journey from the plains of Africa to the heart of post-Napoleonic France

Zarafa by Michael Allin