Amin Maalouf’s novel Leo Africanus, a fictionalized memoir by an actual sixteenth-century Muslim adventurer, is an often-interesting account of life during the turbulent end of the Middle Ages, told from the point of view of a man who survived his life’s ample turmoil and bridged conflicting cultures without wholly belonging to any.
The name by which Leo is known today, Leo Africanus (Leo the African), stems from his reputation for writing the “definitive” European book on Africa. Through his descriptions, Europeans formed an image of Timbuktu as an exotic, mysterious, ancient, and inaccessible locale, making it the subject of fantasy and legend for years to come.
A Geographical Historie of Africa (1600) was the authoritative work on the geography of Africa at the time and was significant in shaping the idea of Africa for early modern Europeans. It is also thought to have influenced Shakespeare in his depiction of Othello’s virtues and vices. Who was the Moorish author?
Comparing and Contrasting “Leo Africanus and Al Bakri Essay 1970 Words 8 Pages Introduction Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi or more popularly referred to as Leo Africanus along with Al-Bakri are two important historians and geographers whose works and discoveries gave the world an early account of ancient Africa.
Hasan Ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, better known as Joannes Leo Africanus, was born in the Muslim Kingdom of Granada just a few years before it was conquered by the Christians in 1492. His family left Spain for Morocco when he was a small child; there they found a high social status and were close to the royal court of Fez.
Abstract. Although several critics have commented on the first appearance of the spirit of Leo Africanus to Yeats and a few have examined the unpublished manuscript of Yeats’s dialogue with him, 1 no one has pointed out either the extent of Yeats’s preoccupation or the significance of his changing conception of Leo. Yeats first referred to Leo, so far as we can determine, in some “Notes.
Maaloufs Book 1 clearly conveys the child hood of Hasan, in other words, Leo Africanus and how he perceived the events that took place which, as one could determine, shaped his life. Maalouf conveys this in such a unique manner, with literary devices which exalt the principle of cultural patriotism.
Whereas Shakespeare adopts Cinthio’s basic story, his source for the characterization of Othello was likely A Geographical Historie of Africa, written in 1550 by the North African diplomat known as Joannes Leo Africanus. This work, which John Pory translated into English in 1600, provided more than just a geographical survey of Africa.