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The travels of Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fāsī, c. 1494–c. 1554) illuminate the political, commercial, and cultural connections of early 16th-century Africa and the Mediterranean. Born in Granada shortly before the fall of the Nasrid kingdom (1492) and raised in Fez under the Wattasid Sultanate (1472–1554), he was educated as a Muslim scholar and served on diplomatic missions across the Maghreb, Sahara, and Bilād al-Sūdān. His journeys (c. 1509–1518) took him through trading centres linked to the Songhay Empire under Askia Muhammad (reign 1493–1528) and through Egypt as Mamluk rule gave way to Ottoman conquest under Selim I (reign 1512–1520) in 1517. Captured by Christian corsairs in 1518 and taken to Rome, he was baptized in 1520 as Johannes Leo de Medici under Pope Leo X (reign 1513–1521), placing him at the intersection of African, Islamic, and European intellectual traditions.
His Cosmography of Africa, completed in Rome in 1526 and first published in edited form as the Description of Africa in 1550, became one of Europe’s most influential accounts of the continent. Drawing on personal observation, diplomatic experience, information from merchants and travellers, and inherited geographical traditions, Leo described political systems, urban life, religious communities, and commercial networks from Fez and Timbuktu to Cairo and the Niger. Yet the work is not a straightforward eyewitness record: uncertainties, exaggerations, and later editorial reshaping require careful source criticism. Its historical importance lies both in the African societies it records and in the perspective of its author, revealing how knowledge moved across the Sahara and Mediterranean while also showing how travel writing could preserve, reinterpret, and sometimes distort the worlds it described.
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Cite This Work
APA Style
Netchev, S. (2026, August 23). Map of the Travels of Leo Africanus, c. 1509–1518: Africa, Trade and Empires in the Early 16th Century. World History Encyclopedia. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/19706/map-of-the-travels-of-leo-africanus-c-1509-1518/
Chicago Style
Netchev, Simeon. "Map of the Travels of Leo Africanus, c. 1509–1518: Africa, Trade and Empires in the Early 16th Century." World History Encyclopedia, August 23, 2026. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/19706/map-of-the-travels-of-leo-africanus-c-1509-1518/.
MLA Style
Netchev, Simeon. "Map of the Travels of Leo Africanus, c. 1509–1518: Africa, Trade and Empires in the Early 16th Century." World History Encyclopedia, 23 Aug 2026, https://www.worldhistory.org/image/19706/map-of-the-travels-of-leo-africanus-c-1509-1518/.
