45 pages • 1 hour read
Leo Africanus
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Cosmopolitanism
From the beginning of the book, it is clear that Hasan views himself as a man without a country. He writes, “my wisdom has flourished in Rome, my passion in Cairo, my anguish in Fez, and my innocence still flourishes in Granada” (2). His travels have affected him to the point that he no longer identifies as a citizen of either Granada or Fez.
However, the narrative presents not only Hasan but also the nature of the world itself as cosmopolitan. Spain is populated by Christians, Jews, and Muslims. In his travels, Hasan comes across great cities, tribes, wealthy and poor communities, and ancient ruins, often in the same region. Egypt’s ruling elite are Christian Circassians who convert to Islam. Hasan himself meets and falls in love with the Circassian widow of an Ottoman Turk in Cairo and later a Granadan Jew in Rome.
Governments that resist this cosmopolitanism harm themselves. It is implied that, through their heavy-handed policies against Muslims, Castile has lost the services of talented, affluent Muslims like Hasan and his father Muhammad. Instead, these talents are simply given away to an enemy country.
Religion and Truth
Along with cosmopolitanism, Hasan develops a relative view of religion. “That which unites the believers is not so much a common faith as the ritual acts they perform in common” (330), Hasan tells Pope Clement. He is still a Muslim, but he has come to believe that religion leads people to perform both good deeds and evil acts.
The narrative is especially critical of religion that becomes too rigid. Astaghfirullah does not prevent the fall of Granada by burning “immoral” books. Instead, his view of religion leads him to denounce the only practical solution: Muslim nations adopting canons. When a plague strikes Cairo, the Sultan’s acts of penance and moral legislation apparently do nothing, nor do they prevent him from trying to profit from the plague. The strict Pope Adrian harms Rome by driving off scholars and artists. Likewise, Maddalena’s abbess is cruel to her simply because she was once Jewish. Instead, the best practitioners of religion are people like Pope Clement, ‘Abbad, and Hasan, who are sincere in their beliefs but do not hold themselves or others to strict standards.
Class, Gender, and Power
The narrative explores a society in which the idea of equality would have been quite unknown. It is a world in which monarchs have absolute power, slaves are commonplace, and men have virtually unquestioned power over women. However, a theme of the novel is that even people who are in a low social position can sometimes exercise power. For example, even though she is a slave and concubine, Warda has resources a wife would not. Salma explains:
[Warda] had all the wiles of seduction at her disposal; she could go out unveiled, sing, dance, pour wine, wink her eyes, and take off her clothes, while I could never, as a wife, abandon my reserve, still less show the slightest interest in your father’s pleasures (6).
Likewise, Hiba exploits her tribe’s sense of honor to trick the leading men into paying Hasan a large amount of money. Lastly, it is implied that Nur marries Hasan to find a protector for her son, Bayazid.
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By Amin Maalouf
