It was only recently I had the chance to get a copy and begin to read Natalie Zemon Davis' biography of the man who the west remembers as Leo Africanus. Pope Leo X had brought Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan into papal protection in the Vatican, eventually, after he was delivered to Rome having been captured by Christian pirates during the summer of 1518. But this man was no mere castaway Moor coughed up by pirates for absolution of sins. As Davis explains, al-Wazzan had been returning from his second diplomatic mission to Cairo, sent over a year before for the pleasure of the Sultan Muhammad al-Burtughali in Fez.
The pirate who found him (we're not sure how or where) was named Don Pedro de Cabrera y Bobadilla. He also happened to be the brother of the bishop of Salamanca, who lived at Rome at the time, and thus, could deliver this man to the current pope. It was common for pirates of whatever nobility in those days to bring captured and kidnapped notables to the ports which would provide the best exchange. It is an interesting question, (though the specifics less known and little discussed) why this diplomat could fetch the best price in Rome of all places. But so it occurred.
By the fall of that same year, the reputation of this diplomat, as it was initially (and mostly mistakenly) reported all over Italy, was said to be representing a number of different far off places. He was also still being held in the Castell San'Angelo in Rome. This much at least (and much else, to be fair) Marin Sanudo in Venice could learn about this diplomat, if not exactly where he was from. While it seems that the officials in Rome tasked with dealing with these matters really had little by way of context to understand who this guy was, still, it was reasonably surmised he was some kind of ambassador: an orator, as Italians called them then.
Al-Wazzan may have been busy that fall rebuilding his repute in such a foreign world as the tunnels under the Castell San' Angelo certainly were for him, lying under the ancient city of Rome. Even so, this was a place that held errant clerics, as well as sometimes noted artists like Benvenuto Cellini. A wealthy banker who had fallen into bad repute that November was also brought to the tunnels. It must have seemed a very strange world to al-Wazzan, but some things remained the same. Rapidly, even among this sort of company, al-Wazzan would ascend.
Within a month of his arrival, with his own bags confiscated, he was given Arabic texts to read, and in time, even allowed to autograph them as having been read by his own eyes. The librarian at the Vatican then, the Dominican Zenobi Acciaiuoli was naturally "interested in the prophetic renewal of Christianity" - meaning, in those days, the subjugation of Islam - and thus could find much to learn from this very literate and well-spoken Moor. It turns out, he had a lot of experience. Yes, he had met with, and even bathed with the Ottoman Sultan Selim in Cairo after his conquests there. But there were so many stories, and the whole place at the Castella was mostly run by Christian clergymen. There was the jailer Giuliano Tornabuoni, bishop of Saluzzo, who Davis tells, could even confide to him how many cardinals, for instance, had been imprisoned there, literally, beneath Rome, just in the previous year.
There were the three clergymen later, in 1519, who Ms Davis asserts al-Wazzan had to impress before getting to the favors that the pope could confer on him. One was the master of ceremonies Paride Grassi, who Davis also draws much information from on al-Wazzan's time in Rome, as she documents much else in concurrent news with Sanudo's Diarii. Even the footnotes Davis provides are rich and far-flung, yet also, pointedly specific.
As example, she points out an additional 'et' in the manuscript of Grassi's Diarium detailing these doings, found in MS E53, vol 2 in the Special Collections of the Spencer Research Libraray at the University of Kansas [in n.21, p 296], which the Vatican manuscript does not have. This is what leads her to the assertion that Grassi himself had a leading hand in determining al-Wazzan's connection, and then consequent protection by Pope Leo X.
There was also Gabriel Fosco, archbishop of Durazzo, who had just returned from a trip to Spain in order to raise funds for a crusade against the Turks. However many there were, so important seemed this orator, these men were tasked with chatechizing and observing al-Wazzan during his imprisonment in Rome, until such time he could be baptized in the Christian faith. This did take time and was sure to conjure images and memories for al-Wazzan from his childhood. He and his family had left Granada in the years when war circled around that city leading up to its eventual conquest by the Spanish crown. His family was one of many that did not want to live under the rule of the Christian monarchs there, and so had left for Fez. And that is a different story.
There are several stories regarding al-Hasan. He had several patrons and godfathers while in Rome. They had friends and acquaintances who certainly may have found him intriguing. He would spend some time in Rome with several of them, and even in some of their households doing transcription and translation work. He would go on to become acquainted with ambassadors who knew the kings and rulers of Europe. In addition to being baptized during the celebration of Epiphany in Rome, January 1520, al-Hasan would begin a new kind of life there, surrounded by clergy, humanists, philosophers and diplomats in the midst of the Italian Renaissance.
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from pp. 54-65 in Davis, Natalie Zemon: Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth Century Muslim Between Worlds, Hill and Wang, A Division of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, NY, 2006
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