Hasan al-Wazzan, Leo Africanus: the man who described Africa for Europe

In the mid-16th century, European readers received a book describing the inland cities, deserts and markets of Africa. Its author was born in Granada and raised in Fez. He crossed the Sahara to Timbuktu, and fate then took him to Rome. His Arabic name was Hasan bin Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi. Europe knows him as Leo Africanus.

From Granada to Fez

In 1896 the Hakluyt Society published John Pory’s 1600 English translation of the book in three volumes. It was edited by Robert Brown with a detailed introduction and notes. According to Brown, the author’s Arabic name was “al-Hasan bin Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi”, meaning “the man of Fez”. He was also called “al-Gharnati”. In several places in his book he writes that he was born in Granada and raised in Barbary (North Africa).

His year of birth is disputed. The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives about 1485. Brown worked it out from the author’s own statements and proposed 1494-1495. According to Britannica, he was educated in Fez and in his youth travelled across North Africa on commercial and diplomatic business.

To Timbuktu with his uncle

According to Brown, all his information about central Africa came from a long journey he made with his uncle. The King of Fez had sent the uncle as an ambassador to the King of Timbuktu. Al-Wazzan writes: “I myself was with him on the journey.” He calls his uncle “an excellent orator and a most cheerful poet”. By Brown’s reckoning, the journey took place between 1513 and 1515, when the author was 16 or 17.

The desert route was not easy. Al-Wazzan writes that beyond the well at Araoan, about 150 miles from Timbuktu, lies a barren desert of 100 miles with neither water nor settlement. There, he says, “many men and animals die every day from lack of water and severe heat”.

According to Brown, in his account of the journey the author mentions 15 kingdoms around the River Niger. They included Walata, Djenné, Mali, Timbuktu, Gao, Agadez, Kano and Bornu. Brown also writes that in this part it is unclear where the author gives an eyewitness account and where he reports hearsay.

Timbuktu: where books sold at the highest price

According to al-Wazzan, Timbuktu lies 12 miles from a branch of the Niger. Its houses are built of chalk and roofed with thatch. There is also a splendid palace built by an expert architect from Granada. The town has many shops of craftsmen and merchants, especially weavers of cotton and linen cloth. Merchants from North Africa bring European cloth there. Grain, cattle, milk and butter are plentiful, but salt is scarce because it comes overland from Tegaza, 500 miles away. He writes: “When I was there myself, I saw one camel-load of salt sold for 80 ducats.”

He also writes that Timbuktu has many scholars, judges and learned men who are maintained by the king. Manuscript books are brought there from North Africa “and sold for more than any other goods”. Gold coins pass without any stamp. For small purchases, cowrie shells are used, 400 of which equal one ducat. The people are “gentle and cheerful” and spend much of the night singing and dancing in the streets. He writes that the town is at risk of fire: “When I was there for the second time, nearly half the town burned down in five hours.” This shows that he visited Timbuktu twice. Twelve miles from Timbuktu, on the bank of the Niger, stood the village of Kabara, where merchants bound for Guinea and Mali boarded boats.

The market of Gao

According to al-Wazzan, the large town of Gao lay about 400 miles from Timbuktu. Its houses are modest, except those of the king and courtiers, but its merchants are extremely rich. Grain and meat are plentiful, melons, lemons and rice are abundant, and the well water is sweet. He gives detailed prices. A horse bought in Europe for 10 ducats sells there for 40 or 50 ducats. Coarse European cloth costs four ducats an ell (an old measure of cloth), and Venetian red cloth costs 30 ducats an ell. But “salt is dearer than everything else”.

Cairo and the Nile

According to Britannica, he was in Egypt in 1516-1517 and travelled up the Nile as far as Aswan. According to Brown, the author himself writes that boatmen took him from Cairo to Aswan. On the return, he crossed the desert from Qena to the Red Sea and went to the Arabian ports of Yanbu and Jeddah. According to Brown, he also went to Tabriz and Armenia. The account of his Asian travels that he intended to write does not exist.

He calls Cairo “one of the largest and most famous cities in the world” and says the name is a corruption of the Arabic “al-Qahira”. The city lies near the Muqattam hill, about two miles from the Nile. On the Nile bank, the old suburb of Bulaq was Cairo’s port, home to 4,000 households. He writes that in the harvest season more than 1,000 boats could be seen there at one time.

Captivity, Rome and the book

Natalie Zemon Davis writes in her book Trickster Travels that in the summer of 924 AH, or 1518, as he was returning from Cairo to Fez, Mediterranean pirates seized his ship. According to Brown, this happened near the Tunisian island of Djerba, although Brown estimated the year as about 1520. The pirates took him to Rome. According to Britannica, he was freed a year later. In Rome he came to be known as Giovanni Leone, from which the name “Leo Africanus” came. There he learned Latin and Italian and taught Arabic.

According to Britannica, he completed his major work, Description of Africa, in about 1526. According to Brown, the Italian manuscript bore the Rome date 10 March 1526. In 1550 Giovanni Battista Ramusio of Venice published it in his collection of travel narratives. Nothing certain is known of his later life. According to Britannica, he eventually returned to North Africa and probably died in Tunis around 1554.

Next instalment: Jacques Cartier: the St Lawrence River.