By Arjun Sidharth

For the past few years, history enthusiasts and admirers as well as critics of Tipu Sultan, the last Sultan of the kingdom of Mysore, have circulated a picture on social media claiming that it is a photograph of Tipu Sultan.

The image has been shared on both Facebook and Twitter. Alt News has also received verification requests on its WhatsApp helpline number (76000 11160).

BJP spokesperson Ashwini Upadhyay and Ramesh Mendola, BJP MLA from Indore, had also promoted the claim in 2018.

The image was again posted on Twitter in October 2019 by a user Madhav, who is followed on the platform by PM Modi.

( Link https://twitter.com/Mahesh10816/status/1189574997443891200?s=19)

The same picture was revived in November 2020.

( Link https://twitter.com/Ajnin8/status/1329616763336593412?s=19)

Fact-check

Multiple news organisations and fact-checking outlets had checked this viral claim, some of whom concluded that the person in the picture is not Tipu Sultan but Tippu Tip (or Tippu Tib), a slave trader from Tanzania of the 19th century. The first-ever photograph was clicked in 1826 or 1827 and thus, this picture is not a photograph of Tipu Sultan who died in the year 1799 CE.

The same image is also featured on the website of Getty Images, a stock photography website. According to Getty Images, he is Tippu Tib, also known as Hamed bin Mohammed, who was the most successful Swahili-Arab slave trader in Zanzibar. The photograph has been clicked by Bojan Brecelj.

With multiple information outlets stating that this person in the picture is a trader from Zanzibar, Tanzania named Tippu Tip, the matter should end there, except for the fact that there are numerous pictures of Tippu Tib which do not match with above picture claimed to be of him. In fact, another picture posted on the website of Getty Images featuring Tippu shows a person markedly different from the person in the above image.

Read the full story here:- https://www.altnews.in/not-tipu-sultan-not-tippu-tip-either-who-is-the-person-in-the-viral-image/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=social-media&utm_campaign=repost