Solomon N Negima: Palestine dragoman and his clients

Fascinating lecture at the British Museum given by Rachael Mairs on her research into a traveller’s interpreter and guide or dragoman.

She was a very engaging speaker who described how, as part of a piece of wider research, she had bought the testimonial book of the dragoman Solomon N Negima from ebay. This included 82 letters of thanks and photographs of some of the trips he had run. Presumably he would show this book to prospective clients.

As well as researching his life Rachel had also researched his clients and found a wealth of fascinating stories such as that of Charles T Walker, the black US Baptist minister whose parishioners raised money to send him to the Holy Land  and a Mr Thompson who used Solomon each time he travelled but on each journey he had a different wife.

She had found mention of Solomon in many of the contemporary accounts of travellers in the Holy Land but without knowing the authors had been his clients you wouldn’t have been able to identify him.

She had also traced Solomon’s later life and the extraordinary story of a group of Mormon missionaries that moved to Palestine and operated a stage coach along the Jaffa to Jerusalem road. Solomon worked with them and ended up looking after their mission house when they had to return to the US in the First World War.

 

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