Born Hassan al-Wazzan in Granada and raised in Fes, Leo Africanus wrote 'Descrittione dell'Africa' (1550) — Europe's main source of knowledge about Africa for nearly three centuries.
**Hassan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi** — known to the world as **Leo Africanus** — is one of history's most extraordinary travellers. Born in **Granada around 1494** to a Muslim family that fled the Reconquista, he was raised and educated in **Fes**, then a leading intellectual capital of the Islamic world.
**A Wattasid Diplomat:**
Trained in law, theology and literature at the great mosques and madrasas of Fes, al-Wazzan entered the diplomatic service of the **Wattasid sultans**. By his early twenties, he had already crossed the Sahara, visited Timbuktu and travelled across North Africa, the Sahel, Egypt and the Levant on official missions.
**Capture and Conversion:**
Around **1518**, on a return voyage from Cairo, his ship was intercepted by Christian pirates. He was presented as a gift to **Pope Leo X**, who recognised his immense learning, freed him, baptised him **"Johannes Leo de Medicis"**, and welcomed him into the humanist circles of Renaissance Rome.
**Descrittione dell'Africa (1526 / 1550):**
In Italy, al-Wazzan composed in Italian his masterpiece, **Cosmographia et Geographia de Affrica**, completed around 1526 and published in Venice in **1550** by Giovanni Battista Ramusio. Translated across Europe, the **Descrittione dell'Africa** became the **principal European source on Africa for nearly 300 years**, shaping how the continent was imagined from Lisbon to London.
**A Bridge Between Worlds:**
Few figures embody the cross-cultural currents of the Renaissance like Leo Africanus: a Fes-trained Muslim scholar who taught Europe how to picture Africa, while keeping a foot in both Christian and Islamic civilisations.
**Return and Legacy:**
He is believed to have returned to North Africa later in life. Today, his name endures in Amin Maalouf's celebrated novel *Léon l'Africain* and in every modern history of African geography.