He joined the Ottoman army in 1865, and in 1876 he served under General Gordon in Khartoum. Gordon used him for administrative duties and diplomatic missions and in 1878 appointed him governor of the Upper Nile area of Equatoria, where he surveyed the region and suppressed slavery. Isolated when the Mahdi controlled the Sudan, he was rescued in 1888 by H. M. Stanley. In 1890 he was employed by the German government in East Africa. While engaged in exploration for Germany, Arab slave-raiders murdered him.