LEO AFRICANUS [AL-HASSAM BID MAHAMMAD AL-WAZZAN AL ZAYGATI]

£25,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

The important first edition in English, translated by John Pory, of this seminal classic of African topography and ethnography. Leo Africanus was an early C16 traveller who recorded in great detail the life of many remote North African kingdoms. He was born in Granada but in the 1490s his family moved to Fez in Morocco where Leo ultimately entered the service of the Sultan who sent him on commercial and diplomatic missions across northern and western Africa. In 1518 he was returning by sea from Istanbul and was captured, perhaps by Knights of Malta, who took him to Rome. There, under the patronage of Pope Leo IX he composed the present description of Africa, first published in Italian in 1550. It was a bestseller, put Leo at the centre of Roman intellectual life and remained one of Europe s principal sources of knowledge of the Arab-African world for the next 400 years. It was translated into English in 1600 by John Pory. Pory s letter To the Reader tells the fascinating story of Leo s life a tale of complex interaction between Europe and Africa, Islam and Christianity ... This book was important in that it was written by a Moorish man and well regarded by scholars. However Pory is aware that some readers at this time might distrust the writings of a More and a Mahumetan (or Muslim), and he reassures them of Leo s sophistication: his Parentage, Witte, Education, Learning, Emploiments, Travels, and his conversion to Christianitie . (BL). It is very probable that Shakespeare wa

• Binding: Hardcover

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