Customer Reviews

Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book does its best to wipe the cobwebs off the figure generally known in the West as Leo Africanus, a man raised in Fez by a family displaced from Muslim Spain during the Christian conquest, who travels widely as a diplomat through Africa, and then is brought to Rome as a captive where he authors a number of fascinating books, including a book on Africa and his African travels. This is a meticulously researched book, replete with voluminous footnotes full of both detail and inciteful asides.

However, the book is doomed to fail in its central project from the outset: even after the author's diligent research and careful writing, Leo Africanus remains hidden behind the folds of cleo's gown. The underlying documentation of his life is simply too sparse. Too much of "Trickster" is too speculative. Too little of the book relies on quotations of the subject's own words. Too many threads are started but then reluctantly abandoned by Zemon-Davis because of unavailable or incomplete sources. Most of what survives today of Leo Africanus is simply his work, his books written in Rome, and getting beyond the work to the man himself may simply be beyond the ability of any historian.

However, Zemon-Davis is crystal clear throughout the book as to where she is speculating or supposing and where she has evidence, and what her evidence is, and she does incorporate a number of useful quotations. Every sentance of this book is the work of a truly diligent professional historian.

While failing in its central project, the book succeeds in helping us to visualize and understand key elements of the age, and Zemon-Davis does a great job (particuarly in those wonderful footnotes) of bringing to life both the life of an Andalusian family in Fez and the life of intellectual circles in 16th century Rome. Reading the book, I was struck on page after page with interesting thoughts and questions; the book truly sparked my curiosity. What of all those differing translations of Leo Africanus' work? What might they say about the societies in which they were written? What of all that poetry referenced by Leo Africanus? How did that Arabic poetic sensibility influence the Christian regions it touched? And What of those African civilizations he visited?

I am left wondering if this very good book Zemon-Davis has written might have been a truly great book if its focus shifted just slightly from this fascinating but inscrutable man, perhaps acknowledging and acceding to the limitations of the existing research material. Her title refers to "a sixteenth-century muslim between worlds", but it is the two worlds more than the subject himself that she best elucidates.

And so, despite its flaws, reading this book has been a pleasure, and I can recommend the book to others very highly, though I still suspect that had the author conceived the work as more of a history and less of biography, it just might have been a classic on the same scale as her "Return of Martin Guerre." And so I withhold the fifth star, and give this one a very solid four stars.

TRICKSTER TRAVELS: A SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MUSLIM BETWEEN WORLDS could also have been featured in our 'travel' section for its fascinating travelogue entries; but is reviewed here for its value to any studying 1500s history. Al-Wazzan trveled widely as an ambassador and merchant throughout Africa in the early 1500s, was captured by Spanish pirates and presented to Pope Leo X, where he converted to Christianity while explaining Islam to his puzzled audience. The charged politics and turmoil of his life and times brings history to life, with history professor Davis using manuscripts of the times - including some previously unknown - to explore fully al-Wazzan's image and importance. Unfamiliar with his name? Try 'Leo Africanus', author of the first geography of Africa.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book isn't really history or biography for that matter. Its an in-between kind of book that wants to imagine a past into existance based on speculation rather than evidence or fact. The factual details of the life of Leo Africanus would make a chapter. And even the facts we do have about his life are colored by a particular point of view which has to be questioned.

Natalie Davis does her best based on all sorts of other material to imagine a public and private life for the man. As speculative fiction, it works. The only problem being that ignorant readers will begin to take this book as if were fact rather than a created story. The fault I find is that the book doesn't draw enough distinction about what is being imagined versus the actual facts of his life.

The book is very good, but its not history or biography and should not be read as history or biography.

This book starts out with the mention of "King Manuel I of Portugal presenting Pope Leo X with a white elephant from India". I know that Professor Zemon Davis (ZD) didn't intent this as irony but it is. Most of this book, a white elephant in itself, is based on heresy, guesses and flights of fantasy. The only parts of the book that she is truly able to document are the nine years that 'Leo Africanus: Giovanni Leone" spent in Europe, with seven of those being in Italy.

While in Italy he is purported to have written "Description of Africa" which was considered one of the few books written in Europe in the sixteenth century to document the Geography and sociology of North Africa. The book was written in Italian by the slave "Yuhanna al-Asad" who was born in Granada (Spain), brought up in Fez (Morocco) and captured by Christian pirates and given as a gift to Pope Leo X. This is the extent of what is known about our hero.

ZD spends over two hundred and seventy pages telling us this story that could be contained in a paragraph. The rest of the book are her musing on the Roman Catholic Church and the machinasation of the church curia over how to counter Martin Luther and to recapture North Africa and the Holy Land from the Moslems.

If your interested in this book read the Intro and the Chapters on Italy and the Comparison between Islam and Christianity, and skip the rest. As an example of the 'wistfulness' of this book, ZD spends sixteen pages on his 'return' after telling us that nothing is known about what happened to him after he left Italy.

To read a really excellent book about Leo The African, I recommend the far superior "Leo Africanus" by Amin Maalouf, a winner of several literary awards and an amazing book.

Obviously there is sopposed to be a message here. Leo Africanus, geographer, Muslim, married to a Jewish convert, himself a Muslim convert, victim of priacy, vegabond, scholar, man of mystery, a polymath able to move between the cultures of Europe and North Africa during the time of the reformation and the rennaisance. What can one make of this. Is this sopposed to teach us tolerance? What is does teach us is that there apparently was more connection between cultures in the 16th century then we are allowed to know about today. Today we are todlt hat 'evil' barborous 'crusading' Europe was busy colonizng and enslaving the world, which consisted of either African slaves or Muslim victims. Perhaps this book sheds light on how scholarship has twisted European history so much, so that it no longer resmbles what it was in the least bit. Here, throught the life story of one man, we see the actual interplay of culture, diversity and religion in the 16th century.

Seth J. Frantzman

One star, there being no zero. While the wish to explore the subject is understandable, the outcome is confusing and boring. Read it if you want to find out how an interesting subject can become dull.