Trickster Travels: The Search for Leo Africanus (2006)

"A masterpiece of the historian's craft." -Stephen Greenblatt

Leo Africanus was born Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmed al-Wazzan to a Muslim family in present-day Granada Spain about 1486-1488. Perhaps before the year of great expulsion of 1492, his family had moved across the Gibraltar and settled in present-day Fez Morocco. 

There al-Hasan al-Wazzan grew up and became a qadi (judge of Islamic laws). He had keen ears for Arabic poetry and traveled widely as informant, soldier, emissary and diplomat of the Sultan of Fez. 

In 1518, on his way returning from Cairo Egypt to Fez, he was captured by Christian pirates and took to Rome Italy as a present to Pope Leo X. There he became the godson of Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, baptized on January 6th 1520 and was given a new name of "Joannes Leo de Medici". 

He never used the family name of Pope Leo X, de Medici. For Christians in Rome, he was Joannes Leo from Africa; for himself, he retained the Arabic name after conversion, Yuhanna al-Asad--Yuhanna the Lion.

(From Leo Africanus: An Exploration of His Life and Writing)

In Rome Italy, Leo Africanus became a writer of Africa and Arabic world primarily for European readers; he wrote in Italian. His legacy, as Professor Davis said, "remained in the writings he left in Europe" (p. 258), especially his manuscript revised, edited and published later by other writers. 

More inspiring, for me however, is Professor Davis's intellectual quest for he meanings behind Leo Africanus's life and work caught between two worlds. 

Despite of his conversion and knowledge of Arabic world, Leo Africanus was silenced in many conversations among Christian humanists; he was marginalized and not taken into  the circle of solidarity. Perhaps in conscious response, our writer did not reveal everything about Africa either in his work. The development of printing press and the coastlines, for example, were left out. His silence, as Professor Davis explained, 

"was a way of keeping Africa and his expanses his, belonging to Muslims and African populations rather than to the Christians of Europe" (p. 152). 

Ruse is a survival strategy at boundaries. Tricksters are more than travelers.

As Rome became the battlefield between two Christian kings in 1527, Leo Africanus took the opportunity and returned to Africa, much to the anger and disappointment of his godfather Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, who was then away from Rome. 

Leo Africanus finally settled in Tunis and passed the last day of his life there in perhaps 1554. 

I couldn't stop admiring Professor Davis's elegance in crossing. She moves from historiography to historiography so deftly. And she weaves in and out a wonderful story of Leo Africanus even if just by the conditionals, "would have", "may have", "I speculate" et cetera.  Sources are important, but they alone do not determine a good history. 

I have equal admiration for Sanjay Subrahmanyam for his scholarship and quest for truth (cf. Three Ways to be Alien: Travels & Encounters in the Early Modern World, 2011). Another wonderful role model. Difference is, while I find wit in Subrahmanyam, I feel warmth in Davis.

Bravo!