Leo Africanus

Moroccan explorer and writer

• Born: c. 1485
• Birthplace: Granada, Kingdom of Granada (now in Spain)
• Died: c. 1554
• Place of death: Possibly Fez, Morocco, or Tunis (now in Tunisia)

Under the auspices of the Papacy, Leo Africanus wrote a detailed description of his travels through north and west Africa. His book Descrittione dell’ Africa remained for Europeans the principal source for information on the geography of the Sudan until the nineteenth century.

Early Life

Scion of an Andalusian family that relocated to Fez, al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Wazzān al-Zaiyātī, later called Leo Africanus (LEE-oh af-rih-KAY-nuhs), received a good education. While still in his teens he began to travel, seeking adventure and supporting himself in a variety of jobs, including clerk, trader, tax collector, diplomat, soldier, and poet. On his first trip out of Morocco, he visited Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Tartary, Armenia, and Constantinople.

Between 1507 and 1510, he accompanied his uncle on a diplomatic mission to Timbuktu. Deciding to see more of the West African interior, Leo returned in 1513 as a merchant. His final trip was to Constantinople on official business for the Moroccan sultan, during which time he took a side trip to Egypt. He traveled up the Nile River, crossed the Red Sea to Arabia, and probably made the pilgrimage to Mecca.

On his way home, his ship was captured by Christian pirates. They were so impressed by his knowledge of lands unknown to Europe that they brought him to Rome and presented him as a gift to Pope Leo X . The Moroccan was welcomed into the papal court, converted to Christianity, and given the pope’s own name, Giovanni Leone (John Leo). His nickname became Leone the African and eventually Leo Africanus.

Life’s Work

Leo had traveled to lands of which European geographers had only heard and to some lands that they had not even imagined. Pope Leo X provided him with a pension and encouraged him to work on his travel memoirs. The result was an opus divided into nine books called Descrittione dell’ Africa (1550; The History and Description of Africa and of the Notable Things Therein Contained , 1600). Leo, however, did not set out to write a travel account; that was imposed on him by the pope, so it is highly possible that he was not especially careful with specific facts. He probably jumbled together various matters concerning people, places, and events. The stories Leo picked up from merchants and others were probably more gossip than information, and he might have misheard, misunderstood, or otherwise misconstrued them.

Error-prone documentation of the geography of little-known or even unknown lands was not unheard of for Leo’s time, nor for earlier times. During the Middle Ages, Marco Polo’s fourteenth century accounts of his travels to Asia and his closeness to Mongol ruler Kublai Khan have been questioned and even considered gross exaggerations. The Arab historian and geographer al-Masՙūdī (c. 890-956) has also been accused of misleading his readers, using folktales or anecdotes, for example, as facts. Nevertheless, Leo’s work was critical to the early corpus of geographical knowledge, for it indicated, even with its errors and possible exaggerations, the intricacies of lands and peoples beyond the realm of the known world, details never-before documented in the languages of the West.

Also, Leo had to write in Arabic and then rely on Vatican-provided assistance to translate the text into Italian, providing ample opportunities for alteration, error, or both, which could only have increased the likelihood of mistakes. Before publication, his work was edited extensively by Venetian geographer Giovanni Battista Ramusio; others translated it into foreign languages in subsequent years. The original text is now lost.

The first book of Leo’s Descrittione dell’ Africa contains mostly general information and classifies peoples and lands by categories. Books 2 and 3 are devoted to Morocco and together make up 30 percent of the entire work. Book 3 focuses exclusively on the Kingdom of Fez, considered a separate entity from Morocco proper. Books 4 and 5 move quickly across the rest of North Africa to Tunis. Book 6 begins with the area around Tripoli, then plunges into the desert to include discussions of a number of oases and several of the important tribal groups of the Sahara. Book 7 covers the land below the Sahara, the savanna region known as the Sudan. Book 8 is devoted to Egypt, and book 9 concludes with a discussion on natural history.

Leo spent most of his life in Morocco, and much of his writing is devoted to it. Not surprisingly, this is the most accurate part of his work. The most influential section, however, is his discussion of Sudanic Africa, described as made up of fifteen adjoining countries west to east, beginning with Gualata (Walata) and ending with Nubia. Leo might have been intentionally misled by officials in Timbuktu. Most historians believe he visited that city but have varying degrees of doubt as to his travels in Sudanic Africa.

Timbuktu, described as a place where the inhabitants were very wealthy, receives great attention. Leo wrote that “The rich king of Tombuto hath many plates and scepters of gold, some whereof weigh 1300 poundes.” Timbuktu, according to Leo, was the capital of a great state, by which he meant the Songhai Empire . This is an error. The real capital was Gao, about 200 miles down river, another place Leo claimed to have visited. Gao is just beyond the spot where the Niger River changes its eastward course and begins flowing southward. Leo, however, indicated that it continues ever eastward until finally meeting the Nile, which is another major error.

It is in the area beyond Gao that Leo’s mistakes become more glaring. He discusses, for example, the Kingdom of Guangara, which he describes as very populous and rich. This was the mythical Wangara, which some medieval Arabs believed was the land of gold. Actually, the closest major gold-bearing region to Leo’s Guangara was 600 miles away. His next stop, the Kingdom of Bornu near Lake Chad, did exist. It had long been in the Islamic fold, but Leo reports that the people there worshipped no form of religion. East of Bornu, occupying the huge territory between Lake Chad and the Nile, was the Kingdom of Gaoga, a state, like Guangara, which does not seem to have actually existed. Leo concluded his trip by arriving in Nubia on the Nile, from which he made his way north to Egypt and then back home.

Leo’s most monumental mistake was indicating that the Niger River flows from east to west, when in fact it flows from west to east. Leo also claims to have followed the Niger clear across Sudanic Africa, which represents a lot of river watching. Unfortunately, the Niger does not flow across Sudanic Africa, not even halfway. In 1521, Pope Leo X died, and the next pope was not interested in such matters. So Leo left to teach Arabic at the University of Bologna, returning to Rome in 1526 to finish his manuscript.

Details of Leo’s later life are somewhat hazy. Reports indicate either that he stayed in Rome or that he relocated in Tunis. Most likely, he returned to Fez in 1528 and converted back to Islam.

Significance

Leo Africanus could have hardly imagined the impact of his work. To a Europe that was rediscovering geographical knowledge, his book suddenly and profoundly increased the available data on the African interior. William Shakespeare is said to have used Leo as his inspiration for writing Othello, the Moor of Venice (pr. 1604).

Leo’s description of the Western Sudan remained a kind of geographical dogma until the explorations of Mungo Park, René-Auguste Caillié, and Heinrich Barth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, Europeans never forgot Leo’s descriptions of 1,300-pound plates and scepters of gold. Despite his inadequacies, however, and if handled with care, Leo’s work still can be used profitably for a historical look at the geography of West Africa.

Bibliography

Andrea, Bernadette. “Assimilation or Dissimulation? Leo Africanus’s ’Geographical Historie of Africa’ and the Parable of Amphibia.” Ariel 32, no. 3 (July, 2001): 7-29. Much of the work on Leo has been done in the field of literary criticism rather than history. Although somewhat burdened by jargon, this article is useful in providing a survey of the treatment of Leo in the study of postcolonial theory.

Fisher, Humphrey J. “Leo Africanus and the Songhay Conquest of Hausaland.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 11, no. 1 (1978): 86-112. Perhaps the best critical examination of Leo’s work from a skeptical point of view. Provides a good warning sign for those who might be tempted to use Leo’s work without due care.

Leo Africanus. The History and Description of Africa and of the Notable Things Therein Contained. Translated by John Pory, edited by Robert Brown. 3 vols. New York: Burt Franklin, 1974. A full-length translation in English first published in 1600 and still in quaint Elizabethan linga. Pory has added much of his own information. The editor (from an 1896 edition) provides a lengthy introduction to Leo and his work.

Masonen, Pekka. The Negroland Revisited: Discovery and Invention of the Sudanese Middle Ages. Helsinki, Finland: Annales Academiae Scientiarun Fennicae Humaniora, 2000. Chapter 4 of this book provides the best summary in English of what is known and not known about the life of Leo.

Zhiri, Oumelbanine. “Leo Africanus, Translated and Betrayed.” In The Politics of Translation in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Luise von Flotow, and Daniel Russell. Ottawa, Canada: University of Ottawa Press, 2001. This study shows how Leo’s original work was changed and speculates on possible reasons for the changes.