Ali Bey El Abbassi

Ali Bey El Abbassi (1766-1818) was one of the assumed names of Domingo Badia y Leblich, a Spanish traveller and thought to be a spy for Joseph Bonaparte. Early in the 19^th century, he published The Ancient Island of Atlantis^[012]  an account of his journeys in North Africa and the Middle East.

*He wrote of the Atlas Mountains being the ancient island of Atlantis when the Sahara was a huge interior sea in the centre of Africa, known as Mar de la Nigricia. A map of 1802 based on Ali Bey’s description of this inland sea is available on the Internet^(a). The same map shows Atlantis extending from Tunisia and Libya into the Mediterranean filling most of the Gulf of Sirtis.>Alberto Arecchi, in more recent times, has proposed a similar geographical spread for Atlantis^(c).<

Ali Bey appears to have been the first to suggest North Africa as the location of Atlantis an idea that then lay dormant for half a century until 1868 when D.A. Godron advocated Morocco as its home.

>A 2004 essay by M. Carme Montaner & Anna Maria Casassas describes the life and times of Ali Bey^(b).<

^(a) https://catalog.afriterra.org/zoomMap.cmd?number=1036 *

^(b) http://www.ub.edu/gehc/pdf/spying.pdf *

^(c) Arecchi, Alberto | (atlantipedia.ie) *