Everything about Zarafa totally explained
Zarafa (?1824-
12 January 1845) was a
giraffe in a
menagerie in the
Jardin des Plantes in
Paris for 18 years in the early 1800s. She was one of the first three giraffes to be seen in
Europe for over three centuries, since the
Medici giraffe was sent to
Lorenzo de' Medici in
Florence in 1486. In her lifetime, the giraffe seems not have been given a name, but was referred to as "the giraffe". Nowadays she's known by the name Zarafa (
Arabic for "charming" or "lovely one"), a name given to her by the writer Michael Alinn in his book
Zarafa.
Zarafa was a present to
Charles X of France from the
Ottoman Viceroy of
Egypt,
Mehmet Ali Pasha. In 1824, the army of the
Sultan of Turkey was engaged in fighting in the
Greek War of Independence, and Sultan
Mahmud II called upon the Pasha to send troops in support. The Greeks were supported by France.
Bernardino Drovetti, the French
consul-general in Egypt, persuaded the Pasha that an extraordinary present would encourage the
King of France to stop supporting the Greeks.
Zarafa was captured as a young animal in 1824 by Arab hunters near
Sennar in
Sudan and taken to
Khartoum on the back of a
camel, from where she was transported by boat down the
Nile to
Alexandria. She was accompanied by three cows that provided her with 25
litres of
milk to drink each day.
From Alexandria, she embarked on a ship to
Marseilles, with an Arab groom, Hassan, and Drovetti's Sudanese servant, Atir. As she was so tall, a hole was cut through the deck above the cargo hold through which she could poke her neck. After a voyage of 32 days, she arrived in Marseilles on
31 October 1826. Fearing the dangers of transporting her to Paris around the
Iberian peninsula and up the
Atlantic coast of France to the
Seine, it was decided that she should walk the 900
km to Paris.
She over-wintered in
Marseilles, where she was joined by the
naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire for the walk. He ordered a two-part yellow coat for her, to keep her warm, and shoes for her feet. She set out on
20 May 1827, already 15
cm taller than when she arrived in Marseilles. She was accompanied by her cows and Saint-Hilaire, then aged 55, who walked with her. The walk to Paris took 41 days. She was a spectacle in each town she passed through,
Aix-en-Provence,
Avignon,
Orange,
Montelimar,
Vienne. She arrived in
Lyon on
6 June, where she was applauded by a crowd of 30,000.
She was presented to the King at the chateau of
Saint-Cloud in Paris on
9 July 1827, and took up residence in the
Jardin des Plantes. Now standing nearly 4
m high, Zarafa's arrival in Paris caused a sensation. Over 100,000 people came to see her, approximately an eighth of the population of Paris at the time.
Honoré de Balzac wrote a story about her;
Gustave Flaubert (then a young child) travelled from
Rouen to Paris to see her. Hair was arranged in towering styles
à la girafe; spotted fabrics were all the rage; porcelain and other ceramics were painted with giraffe images. She was painted by
Jacques Raymond Brascassat.
Zarafa remained in Paris for a further 18 years until her death, attended to the end by Atir. Her corpse was
stuffed and displayed in the foyer of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris for many years, before being moved to the museum at
La Rochelle, where it remains.
Mehmet Ali Pasha also sent two other giraffes as gifts in 1827, one to
George IV of the United Kingdom in
London and the other to
Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor in
Vienna. Like Zafara, both inspired giraffe crazes in their respective cities. The Austrian giraffe joined the Emperor's menagerie at
Schönbrunn Palacem but survived for less than one year. Nevertheless, it lived on in the form of "Giraffeln" pastries, served until the beginning of the First World War. The English giraffe (or "cameleopard", echoing the terminology used by
Pliny) joined the embryonic
London Zoo in
Regent's Park. It was painted as
The Nubian Giraffe in 1827 by
Jacques-Laurent Agasse, in an image that includes
Edward Cross and, in the background, the giraffe's milk cows from Egypt. The English giraffe survived for less than two years, and was
stuffed by
John Gould.
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