Leo Africanus

1485-1554

Traveler

Sources

Spanish Muslim. Born al-Hassan ibn Muhammad al-Wizzaa al-Fasi, Leo Africanus was a native of Granada, Spain, and was educated in Morocco. As a young man he traveled all over North Africa and West Africa on trade and diplomatic missions with his father, visiting the Songhai Empire in 1513-1515.

Italy. On the way home from a 1516-1517 trip to Egypt, he was captured by Christian pirates, who gave him to Pope Leo X as a slave. Impressed with his slave’s intellectual abilities, the Pope set him free and in 1520 convinced him to convert to Christianity, baptizing him Johannis Leo (John Leo). The Pope also persuaded Leo to write an Italian account of his travels, which he completed in 1526. Published in 1550 as Descrittione dell”Africa (Description of Africa), the book became the most famous and most widely quoted European work about Africa. It remained the most important source of European knowledge about West and North Africa for the next four centuries. The name by which Leo is known today, Leo Africanus (Leo the African), stems from his reputation for writing the “definitive” European book on Africa. Through his descriptions, Europeans formed an image of Timbuktu as an exotic, mysterious, ancient, and inaccessible locale, making it the subject of fantasy and legend for years to come.

Sources

Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa, 3 volumes, translated by John Pory, edited by Robert Brown (London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society, 1896).

Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus, translated by Peter Sluglett (New York: Norton, 1989).