THE GLOBAL AFRICAN COMMUNITY
H I S T O R Y N O T E S
LEO AFRICANUS:
MOORISH MAN OF LEARNING
DEDICATED TO MS. SYBIL WILLIAMS-CLARKE
Al-Hassan Ibn-Muhammad al-Wezzani was born in Granada in Spain in 1493 or 1494 of well educated and affluent Moorish parents. He probably preferred to be called al-Fasi, the man of Fez--the great seat of learning in Morocco to which he owed his education. As a young man, he became a soldier, merchant and ambassador. By the age of twenty-five he had crossed the Mediterranean Sea numerous times, and traveled in West Africa and Southwest Asia. In 1518, while crossing the Mediterranean, he was captured on an Arab galley by Christian pirates. As he was a very learned man, instead of being sold into slavery, he was presented to Pope Leo X. The Pope, very impressed by him, freed the young man, granted him a pension and secured his conversion to Christianity. At his baptism, the Pope gave him his own names, Giovanni Leone, from which he became commonly known as Leo Africanus.
When he was captured, Leo Africanus had with him a rough draft, in Arabic, of the work which made him famous, The History and Description of Africa and of the Notable Things Therein Contained. He completed this work in Italian in 1526, three years after his patron's death. In 1550, the manuscript fell into the hands of Ramusio, who published it in his collection of Voyages and Travels. Although Leo Africanus died in 1552, his work was translated into English by John Pory, a scholarly friend of Richard Hakluyt, and published in London in 1600.
Our beloved John Henrik Clarke placed The History and Description of Africa, published in three volumes in London by the Hakluyt Society in 1600, as first on his list of the twenty most important historical works by African writers. According to Dr. Clarke:
"The writer Al-Hassan Ibn Mohammed was later in his life, a slave of Giovanni de' Medici, Pope Leo X. His family moved from Granada to North Africa during the last years of Moorish power in Spain. Earlier in his life he had accompanied his uncle to West Africa, where he visited the then great cities of Timbuctoo, Jenne and Goa, the capital of the Songhay Empire. His uncle was an ambassador to the court of Askia the Great, whose reign was from 1493 to 1528.
It was at the Pope's request that he wrote his book, The History and Description of Africa. Like, Ibn Batuta, the author traveled widely in Western Africa; lived for sometime in Songhay when it was at the height of its power and development. He wrote largely as an eye witness, but included in his account much information about West Africa in earlier times. His work is one of the two or three most important sources of information on West African civilization in the Middle Ages and in early modern times."
According to West African scholar Dr. J.C. DeGraft-Johnson:
"At Timbuktu, Leo Africanus was impressed with the palace and the mosque which had been built two centuries earlier for Mansa Musa. He records finding in Timbuktu a `great store of doctors, judges, priests, and other learned men, that are bountifully maintained at the king's expense.' He also records seeing `divers manuscripts and books which were being sold for more money than any other merchandise'."
SOURCES:
African Glory, by J.C. DeGraft-Johnson
The Golden Trade of the Moors, by E.W. Bovill
Copyright © 1998 Runoko Rashidi. All rights reserved.
Revised: November 04, 2000.
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