Best Muslim Leader of Africa

Best Muslim Leader of Africa

Best Muslim Leader of Africa

Introduction

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'm 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(Africa), from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, My country is that the caravan, My life the foremost unexpected of voyages."

Country travel

Most of what's known about his life is gathered from autobiographical notes in his own work. Leo Africanus was born as al-Hasan, son of Muhammad in Granada round the year 1494. The year of birth are often estimated from his self-reported age at the time of varied historical events. His family went to Fez soon after his birth. In Fez he graduted at the University of Al-Qarawiyyin (also spelled Al-Karaouine). As a young man he accompanied an uncle on a deputation , reaching as far because the city of Timbuktu (c. 1510), then part of the Songhai Empire. In 1517 when coming back from a deputation to Constantinople on behalf of the Sultan of Fez Muhammad II he found himself within the port of Rosetta during the Ottoman conquest of Egypt. He continued together with his journey through Cairo and Aswan and across the Red Sea to Arabia, where he probably performed a pilgrimage to Mecca.

On his way back to Tunis in 1518 he was captured by Spanish corsairs either near the island of Djerba or more probably near Crete. He was taken to Rome and initially imprisoned in Rhodes, the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller. During this era , the quality fate of unransomed Muslim captives was slavery in Christian galleys, but when his captors realized his intelligence and importance, he was moved to Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome and was later presented to Pope Leo X . He was soon freed and given pension to influence him to remain . He was baptized in the Basilica of Saint Peter's in 1520. He took the Latin name Johannes Leo de Medicis (Giovanni Leone in Italian). In Arabic, he preferred to translate this name as Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati (literally means John the Lion of Granada). It is likely that Leo Africanus was welcomed to the papal court because the Pope feared that Turkish forces might invade Sicily and southern Italy, and a willing collaborator could provide useful information on North Africa.

Pope Leo X (center) was Leo's initial benefactor in Rome. His cousin, Giulio de' Medici (left) later became Pope Clement VII and continued the papal patronage of Leo.

Leo Africanus left Rome and spent subsequent three or four years traveling in Italy. The death of his patron Leo X in 1521, and suspicions from the new Pope Adrian VI against a Muslim in court, was likely the rationale for his leaving Rome. While staying in Bologna he wrote an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin medical vocabulary, of which only the Arabic part has survived, and a grammar of Arabic of which only an eight-page fragment has survived. He returned to Rome in 1526 under the protection of the new Pope Clement VII, a cousin of Leo X who replaced Adrian. According to Leo, he completed his manuscript on African geography within the same year. The work was published in Italian with the title Della descrittione dell’Africa et delle cose notabili che iui sono, per Giovan Lioni Africano in 1550 by the Venetian publisher Giovanni Battista Ramusio. The book proved to be extremely popular and was reprinted five times. It was also translated into other languages. French and Latin editions were published in 1556 while an English version was published in 1600 with the title A Geographical Historie of Africa. The Latin edition, which contained many errors and mistranslations, was used because the source for English translation.

There are several theories of his later life, and none of them are certain. According to one theory, he spent it in Rome until he died around 1550, the year Description of Africa was published. This theory was based on indirect allusion in a later preface to this book. According to another theory, he left shortly before the Sack of Rome by Charles V's troops in 1527. He then returned to North Africa and lived in Tunis until his death, a while after 1550. This was supported records by German orientalist Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter, who arrived in Italy and planned (but ultimately failed) to go to Tunis to satisfy Leo who had since reconverted to Islam. Yet another theory said that he left Tunis after it had been captured by Charles V in 1535 for Morocco, his second home country after Granada where his relatives were still living. This was supported the idea that Leo, having left Granada, wouldn't have wanted to measure under Christian Spanish rule again, and his wish (recorded in Description of Africa) that he wanted to ultimately return to his home country "by God's assistance".

Veracity of Africa trip

It is unlikely that Leo Africanus visited all the places that he describes and he must therefore have relied on information obtained from other travellers. In particular, it's doubtful whether he ever visited Hausaland and Bornu and it's even possible that he never crossed the Sahara but relied on information from other travellers that he met in Morocco. The historian Pekka Masonen has argued that the thought of his further travels was supported misreadings by modern scholars who interpreted his book as an itinerary.

At the time Leo visited the town of Timbuktu, it had been a thriving Islamic city famous for its learning. Home to many scholars and learned men, Timbuktu also possessed a Great Mosque, renowned for its expansive library. The town was to become a byword in Europe as the most inaccessible of cities. At the time of Leo's journey there, it had been the centre of a busy trade carried on by traders in African products, gold, printed cottons and slaves, and in Islamic books.

Religion, human beings’ reference to that which they think of holy, sacred, absolute, spiritual, divine, or deserve especial reverence. It is also commonly considered consisting of the way people affect ultimate concerns about their lives and their fate after death. In many traditions, this relation and these concerns are expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitude toward gods or spirits; in additional humanistic or naturalistic sorts of religion, they're expressed in terms of one’s relationship with or attitudes toward the broader human community or the wildlife . In many religions, texts are deemed to possess scriptural status, and other people are esteemed to be invested spiritual or moral authority. Believers and worshippers participate in and are often enjoined to perform devotional or contemplative practices like prayer, meditation, or particular rituals. Worship, moral conduct, right belief, and participation in religious institutions are among the constituent elements of the religious life.