Robert Irwin writes:

Leo Africanus was one of the most famous geographers of the Renaissance. Davis’s study of his life and times is thoughtful, subtle and wide-ranging. In his book, The Description of Africa, Leo confesses that, when his native Granada is criticised, he pretends to be North African, and vice versa. Davis suspects that some such slipperiness underlies his status as a Muslim who has become a Christian and who perhaps would return in his last years to Islam. She rightly draws attention to the importance in Islam of taqiyya, or the dissimulation of one’s religion in threatening circumstances. For Muslims faced with threats and coercion, as those in Spain often were in this period, Muslim jurists held that it was permissible to pretend to convert to Christianity. Davis also points to the importance of the trickster figure in Arabic literature: the fast-talking and deceitful Abu Zayd in al-Hariri’s Maqamat is the most famous example and was possibly Leo’s role model.

(LRB 8 February 2007)

Available in a paperback edition

Faber | hardback 448pp |ISBN: 9780571202560