Proceeding thence to Mali, or Melli, and remaining there a short time,
being honourably received and presented with valuable gifts by the king,
he next departed for Timbuctoo, which at that time appears to have
been quite an inferior place, dependent on Mali. Returning thence by
the way of Sigilmāsa to Fez, in the year 1353, he there concluded his
wanderings, and in all probability employed the remainder of his life
in the composition of those travels of which we merely possess a meager
abridgment, the most complete copy of which was brought to England by
Mr. Burckhardt. The translation of this abridgment by Professor Lee,
useful as it is, must be rendered greatly more valuable by extending
the English, and rejecting the Arabic notes; and by the addition of an
index, which would facilitate the study of the work. How long Ibn Batūta
survived his return to his native country, and whether the travels were
his own work, are facts of which nothing is known.
LEO AFRICANUS.
Born about 1486.—Died about 1540.
The original name of this distinguished traveller was Al Hassan Ben
Mohammed Al Vazan, surnamed Fezzani, on account of his having studied and
passed the greater part of his youth at Fez. He was, however, a native of
the city of Granada in Spain, where he appears to have been born about
the year 1486 or 1487. When this city, the last stronghold of Islamism
in the Peninsula, was besieged by the Christians in 1491, the parents
of Leo, who were a branch of the noble family of Zaid, passed over into
Africa, taking their son, then a child, along with them, and established
themselves at Fez, the capital of the Mohammedan kingdom of the same
name. Fez, at this period the principal seat of Mohammedan learning
in Africa, was no less distinguished among the cities of Islamism for
the magnificence and splendour of its mosques, palaces, caravansaries,
and gardens; yet Leo, who already exhibited a vigorous and independent
character, preferred the tranquil and salubrious retreat of Habbed’s
Camp, a small place originally founded by a hermit, upon a mountain six
miles from the capital, and commanding a view both of the city and its
environs. Here he passed four delightful summers in study and retirement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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