Leo Africanus (1494-1554) was a Berber Andalusian diplomat and author who was best known for his 1526 Description of Africa, a survey of Africa widely read in Europe.
Biography[]
Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi was born in Granada, Andalusia in 1494, and his Muslim Moorish family moved to Fez, Morocco after his birth. He was well-educated and accompanied his uncle on a diplomatic mission down into the Songhai Empire in 1510, and, eight years later, he was enslaved on another diplomatic voyage along the Mediterranean Sea, having been captured by Spanish corsairs near Crete. He was presented to the scholarly Pope Leo X in Italy, where he was freed by the Pope, converted to Christianity, and renamed to Johannes Leo. The Pope commissioned him to write a survey of Africa, and he published Della descrittione dell'Africa in 1526, satisfying Italian curiosity about African geography. Leo descirbed the etymology of Africa and surveyed African geography, languages, cultures, religions, and diseases, and he wrote that thhere was no nation more prone to sexual indulgence than the African race, and that they led a beastly kind of life and lived like wild beasts. He claimed that he was describing Africans accurately, saying that he stood indebted to Africa for his birth. He died in 1554.