Léon l'africain

This imaginary autobiography is based on a true story. In 1518, a Maghreb ambassador, returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, was captured by Sicilian pirates, and offered as a gift to Leo X. This traveller was called Hassan al-Wazzan. He became the geographer Jean-Léon de Medicis, says Léon l'Afranin. His life, which is punctuated by the great events of his time, is fascinating: he was in Granada during the Reconquista, from where he had to flee the Inquisition, in Egypt during the conquest of the country by the Ottomans, in Black Africa at the apogee of the empire of Askia Mohamed Touré, finally in Rome at the most beautiful times of the Renaissance, as well as at the moment of the bag of the city by the soldiers of Charles Quint.Man of the East and West, a man of Africa and Europe, one could hardly find a person whose life was more in line with the amazing times of the xvie century.