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30 June 2009
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Thus, we learn that the pomegranates of Mecnase (Meknes) are "most pleasant of taste" but its "lemons are waterish and unpleasant"; that Cairenes are "people of a merrie, jocund and cheerful disposition such as will promise much, but performe little"; that the king of Borno doesn't pay his bills on time, yet has so much cash on hand that he can furnish his dogs with collars of "pure golde."
Leo did betray strong feelings when it came to some things, such as the table manners of the Berbers ("Cuscusa ... is set before them all in one platter ... out of which every one raketh with his greasie fists") or the destructiveness of the Portuguese, whose attack on Anfa (Casablanca) brought him to "teares when [he] beheld the miserable ruin of so many faire buildings and temples [mosques]." He reserved his harshest criticism for those who bred disharmony among fellow Muslims, who "procured followers by bloud and the cloake of religion." Here, Leo was referring to bellicose Saadians--tribesmen from the Souss region--who pillaged Muslim towns instead of defending them from foreign invaders, or fanatics like the shah of Persia who forced others "to receive ... his sect ... by force of arms." From Egypt, Leo wrote that he "traveled thence over the desert unto the red sea, over which ... I crossed unto Jambu [Yanbu'], and Ziddem [Jeddah]." He made no mention, however, of continuing on to Makkah to perform the Hajj, though it seems unlikely that he would have let such an opportunity slip by. His silence may be merely editorial discretion: As he pointed out, Jambu and Ziddem "belong unto Asia," and further "discourse ... should seem to transgresse the limits of Africa." He did promise, however, future volumes on his travels to Arabia, Asia, Constantinople and Europe, but none of them ever materialized--or, if they did, they are long lost.
Returning in June of 1518 by sea from Constantinople, his ship was attacked by pirates off the coast of either Crete or Djerba, in Tunisia. (Scholarly opinions vary.) His captors were in the employ of the Knights of Saint John, who maintained power in the eastern Mediterranean by harassing sea traffic, robbing Muslim ships and selling captives into slavery. Recognizing that Leo was a man of learning, as evidenced by the various maps, charts and notes he carried with him--essentially the Cosmographia's first draft--the knights determined that the well-spoken Moor might be of more use to Pope Leo x than to the slave traders of Pisa and Genoa.
Leo's arrival in Rome was chronicled alongside other high-profile events on the Vatican calendar that year, such as the baptism of the French Dauphin and the establishment of new churches and religious orders. This suggests that Pope Leo considered Leo the traveler to be no ordinary prisoner--and he had good reason. As an envoy to Constantinople, he had intimate knowledge of the Ottoman Turks and their trouble-some, yet formidable, sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, against whom the pope had recently declared a crusade. In addition, the prisoner's travels throughout Africa could provide invaluable commercial information, especially useful when the pope's reckless spending habits were draining the Vatican coffers. Thus, Leo became an immediate celebrity.
At the same time, he was hardly the first Moor (a term Europeans of the day used freely to refer to African Muslims, Berbers and even Indians and Asians) to be seen in the Holy City, or, for that matter, on stage or in the pages of European literature during the Renaissance. Having a Moor or two around a royal court was, in fact, practically de rigueur, as Europeans grew increasingly enchanted with the exotic otherworldliness of new cultures and continents, like the one Columbus stumbled on while searching for Asia. It is widely believed that William Shakespeare patterned the character of Othello on Leo, whose book, translated by John Pory, was published in London just four years before the play's first performance in 1604. Like Leo, the Moor of Venice is an educated Muslim adventurer who travels "here and everywhere," before being captured by "the insolent foe / And sold to slavery" prior to his "redemption" and conversion to Christianity.
Leo's own conversion remains the subject of much speculation. He spent his first months in Rome imprisoned in the Castel Sant'Angelo, a barrel-shaped fortification in the shadow of St. Peter's Basilica. Though the castle featured an infamous dungeon, Leo was probably afforded one of Sant'Angelo's relatively comfortable apartments. He was also free to request Arabic books from the Vatican library, and did. Still, so long as he remained a Muslim he remained a prisoner, and that must have been hard on the restless traveler from Fez, who delighted in the luxuries and excitement of court life. So, when he found himself faced with a choice of conversion and freedom versus indefinite imprisonment, he opted for the former.
"This was very common at the time," said Boucharb. "Muslims and Jews converted to Christianity; Christians converted to Islam. The Turkish Empire, for example, was filled with mercenaries who had originally been Christians, while the Moroccan army had thousands who had converted to Islam."
Leo was baptized on January 6, 1520 by the pope himself, who christened his new convert "Johannes Leo de Medicis," or "Giovanni Leone" in Italian, a gesture of high favor, for Giovanni de' Medici was the pope's own name. For his part, Leo referred to himself by the Arabic version of his new name, Yuhanna al-Asad--John the Lion. In fact, he never used, and probably never even heard, the name Leo Africanus, a sobriquet assigned to him 30 years later by his Venetian publisher, Giovanni Battista Ramusio.
Scholars debate the sincerity of Leo's conversion, but the argument is literally academic, as Leo left no definitive statement on the matter. He did, however, leave a hint by relating the story of "a most wily bird" who avoided paying taxes to the king of birds by living underwater like a fish. When the fish king began demanding taxes, the bird promptly left the water and returned to the sky.
"I will do like the bird," Leo wrote. "[W]hen I hear the Africans evil spoken of, I wil affirme my selfe to be one of Granada; and when I perceive the nation of Granada to be discommended, then I will professe my selfe to be an African."
While this may seem opportunistic, it is possible to interpret such a strategy as taqiyya, the custom of outwardly renouncing one's religion under coercion while inwardly maintaining devotion to one's faith. Rooted in the Qur'an (16:106) and supported by a religious decree in Leo's own time, taqiyya was a means of survival for many a Morisco (a forcibly converted Muslim) during the Reconquista.
Whatever Leo believed in his heart, his survival strategy kept him alive and well long enough to finish the Cosmographia in March of 1526. He wrote much of the book while teaching Arabic at the university in Bologna, where he moved after Pope Leo's death in 1524 in order to avoid the new, less Morisco-friendly pope, Hadrian IV. While in Italy, he also produced several other lesser-known works: a transcription of an Arabic translation of the Epistles of St. Paul, a treatise on the Muslim faith and Malakite law (now lost), a summary of Islamic history (also lost), an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin medical vocabulary (of which only the Arabic portion survives), and a biographical dictionary of 25 notable Islamic and Jewish scholars.
By 1527, Leo was back in Rome, under the nominal protection of yet another pope, Clement VII, who had much more on his mind than the fate of a resident Moorish intellectual. These were uneasy times for the papacy: The Ottomans continued to encroach from the east; the Protestant Reformation was wreaking havoc in Germany; England's Henry VIII cut ties with Rome over Clement's refusal to grant him a divorce, and France and the Holy Roman Empire were at war.
Perhaps it was political expediency, or perhaps a sign of where his true loyalties lay, but when the war spilled over into Italy and Emperor Charles V sacked the Holy City in May of 1527, Leo probably took the opportunity to slip away to North Africa. While some believe he lived out his days in Rome and others say he was killed during Charles's invasion, there is more convincing evidence that he spent his final years in Tunis. The writings of a contemporary German orientalist, Johann Albrecht von Widmanstetter (1506-1557), record that in 1531 Widmanstetter intended to travel to Tunis to meet the great Arab scholar "Leo Eliberitanus," as he called Leo. ("Eliberitanus" derives from "Elvira," the pre-Islamic name for Granada.) Though some argue that Tunis seems an unlikely final destination for Leo, as he had little connection to the city, they agree that he did end his days as a Muslim in North Africa and died some time after 1550. (This is a best-guess date based on the lack of any reference to Leo's death in Ramusio's original 1550 preface.) Leo himself, in the final chapters of the Cosmographia, expressed his desire to return one day "by Gods assistance...into mine owne countrie."
If Leo did in fact return to his "owne countrie" by 1550, he missed basking in the vast popularity and success of his magnum opus.
"Very quickly, the book was all over Europe," said Boucharb. "There were many people who were interested in knowing whatever they could learn about Africa, and the source for that was Leo."
Culled from Saudiaramcoworld
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