"I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de
Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the
hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from
Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the
Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from
no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the
caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages." Thus wrote Leo
Africanus, in his fortieth year, in this imaginary autobiography of
the famous geographer, adventurer, and scholar Hasan al-Wazzan, who
was born in Granada in 1488. His family fled the Inquisition and
took him to the city of Fez, in North Africa. Hasan became an
itinerant merchant, and made many journeys to the East, journeys
rich in adventure and observation. He was captured by a Sicilian
pirate and taken back to Rome as a gift to Pope Leo X, who baptized
him Johannes Leo. While in Rome, he wrote the first trilingual
dictionary (Latin, Arabic and Hebrew), as well as his celebrated
Description of Africa, for which he is still remembered as Leo
Africanus.
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