With al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Wazzān al-Zayyātī (more commonly known as Leo Africanus) and his The Cosmography and Geography of Africa (1526) at its center, this article examines an early modern traveller and a text that journeyed across time, space, and multiple translations. Understanding both al-Wazzān and The Cosmography as mobile agents navigating often-clashing worlds, the article foregrounds early modern encounters between Africa and Europe as mediated, relational and always contested. By tracing the ambiguities, contradictions, and subversions within al-Wazzān’s text and its many translations, I attend to how the global circulation of such works shaped and intertwined early European and African imaginaries.
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Africanus, Johannes Leo (Al-Hasan Ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan). 2023. The Cosmography and Geography of Africa, translated by Anthony Ossa-Richardson and Richard J. Oosterhoff. London: Penguin.
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With al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Wazzān al-Zayyātī (more commonly known as Leo Africanus) and his The Cosmography and Geography of Africa (1526) at its center, this article examines an early modern traveller and a text that journeyed across time, space, and multiple translations. Understanding both al-Wazzān and The Cosmography as mobile agents navigating often-clashing worlds, the article foregrounds early modern encounters between Africa and Europe as mediated, relational and always contested. By tracing the ambiguities, contradictions, and subversions within al-Wazzān’s text and its many translations, I attend to how the global circulation of such works shaped and intertwined early European and African imaginaries.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 509 | 509 | 44 |
Full Text Views | 12 | 12 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 21 | 21 | 1 |