The original name of this distinguished traveller was Al Hassan Ben Mohammed Al Vazan, surnamed Fezzani, on account of his having studied and passed the greater part of his youth at Fez. He was, however, a native of the city of Granada in Spain, where he appears to have been born about the year 1486 or 1487. When this city, the last stronghold of Islamism in the Peninsula, was besieged by the Christians in 1491, the parents of Leo, who were a branch of the noble family of Zaid, passed over into Africa, taking their son, then a child, along with them, and established themselves at Fez, the capital of the Mohammedan kingdom of the same name. Fez, at this period the principal seat of Mohammedan learning in Africa, was no less distinguished among the cities of Islamism for the magnificence and splendour of its mosques, palaces, caravansaries, and gardens; yet Leo, who already exhibited a vigorous and independent character, preferred the tranquil and salubrious retreat of Habbed’s Camp, a small place originally founded by a hermit, upon a mountain six miles from the capital, and commanding a view both of the city and its environs. Here he passed four delightful summers in study and retirement.
Having at the age of fourteen completed his studies, he became secretary or registrar to a caravanserai, at a salary of three golden dinars per month, and this office he filled during two years. At the expiration of this period, about the year 1502, he accompanied his uncle on an embassy from the King of Fez to the Sultan of Timbuctoo, and in that renowned assemblage of hovels he remained four years. On his return from this city, which he afterward visited at a more mature age, he made a short stay at Tefza, the capital of a small independent territory in the empire of Morocco. The city was large and flourishing; the people wealthy; but divisions arising among them, several individuals of distinction were driven into exile, who, repairing to the King of Fez, conjured him to grant them a certain number of troops, in return for which they engaged to reduce their native city, and place it in his hands. The troops were granted—the city reduced—the chiefs of the popular party thrown into prison. The business now being to extort from them the greatest possible sum of money, they were informed, that unless they immediately produced wherewith to defray the expenses of the expedition, they should without delay be transported to Fez, where the king would not fail to exact from them at least double the amount. Being aware into what hands they were fallen, the chiefs consented, and desired their wives and relatives to produce the money. The ladies of course obeyed; but in order to make it appear that they had achieved the matter with the utmost difficulty, and had in fact collected all they possessed in the world, they included their rings, bracelets, and other ornaments and jewels, the whole amounting to about twenty-eight thousand golden dinars. This sum exceeding what had been demanded, there appeared to be no longer any pretence for detaining the men in prison; but the general, imagining that persons who possessed so much must infallibly possess more, could not prevail upon himself to part with them so easily. Therefore, calling together the prisoners, who were about forty-two in number, he informed them in a tone of great commiseration that he had just received letters from the king, peremptorily commanding him to put them all to death without delay, and that of course he could not dare to disobey the orders of his sovereign. At these words indescribable terror and consternation seizing upon the prisoners, they wept bitterly, and in the poignancy of their anguish conjured the chief to have mercy upon them. The worthy soldier, who had apparently been educated at court, shed tears also, and seemed to be overwhelmed with sorrow and perplexity. While they were in this dilemma, a man who appeared to be totally new to the affair entered, and upon hearing the whole state of the case, gave it as his opinion that the severity of the king might be mitigated by a large sum of money. The prisoners, who appeared to revive at these words, forgetting that, according to their own account, the former mulct had exhausted all their means, now offered immense sums in exchange for their lives, not only to the king, but likewise to the general. This being the point aimed at, their offer was of course accepted; and having paid eighty-four thousand pieces of gold to the king, and rewarded the astute general with a costly present of horses, slaves, and perfumes, the poor men were at length liberated. Leo, who was present at this transaction, admires the extraordinary ingenuity of mankind in extorting money; and observes that some time after this his majesty of Fez extracted a still larger sum from a single Jew.
The chronology of our traveller’s various expeditions it is difficult if not impossible to determine; but he appears shortly after this characteristic affair to have made an excursion into those vast plains, or deserts, of Northern Africa, inhabited by the Bedouins, where he amused himself with contemplating the rude character and manners of this primitive people. His first attempt, however, to visit these wild tribes was unsuccessful. Setting out from Fez, and traversing a mountainous and woody country, abounding in fountains and rivulets, and extremely fertile, he arrived at the foot of Mount Atlas, whose sides were covered with vast forests, while its summits were capped with snow. The merchants who cross this tremendous mountain with fruit from the date country usually arrive about the end of October, but are often surprised in their passage by snow-storms, which, in the course of a few hours, not only bury both carriages and men, but even the trees, so that not a vestige of them remains visible. When the sun melts the snow in the spring, then the carriages and the bodies of the dead are found.
It was some time in the month of October that Leo arrived with a large company of merchants at the ascent of Atlas, where they were overtaken about sunset by a storm of blended snow and hail, accompanied by the most piercing cold. As they were toiling upwards, they encountered a small troop of Arab horsemen, who, inviting our traveller to descend from his carriage and bear them company, promised to conduct him to an agreeable and secure asylum. Though entertaining considerable doubts of their intentions, he could not venture to refuse; but while he accepted of their civility, he began to revolve in his mind the means of concealing from them the wealth which he bore about his person. The horsemen, however, were all mounted and impatient to be on the march; he had, therefore, not a moment to lose, but pretending a pressing necessity for stepping aside for an instant, he retreated behind a tree, and deposited his money among a heap of stones at the foot of it. Then carefully observing the spot, he returned to the Arabs, who immediately began their journey. They travelled rapidly till about midnight without uttering a word, battered by the storm and severely pinched by the cold; when, having reached a spot proper for the purpose they had in view, they stopped suddenly, and one of them, coming close up to our traveller, demanded of him what wealth he had about him. He replied that he had none, having intrusted one of his fellow-travellers with his money. This the Arabs refused to believe, and, in order to satisfy themselves upon the point, commanded him, without considering the bitterness of the weather, to strip himself to the skin. When he had done so, and was found to be as penniless as he was naked, they burst into a loud laugh, pretending that what they had done was merely to ascertain whether he was a hardy man or not, and could endure the biting of the cold and the fury of the tempest. They now once more proceeded on their way, as swiftly as the darkness of the night and the roughness of the weather would permit, until they perceived by the bleating of sheep that they were approaching the habitations of men. This sound serving them for a guide, they dashed away through thick woods and over steep rocks, to the great hazard of their necks; and at length arrived at an immense cavern, where they found a number of shepherds, who, having driven in all their flocks, had kindled a blazing fire, and were eagerly crowding round it on account of the cold.
Observing that their visiters were Arabs, the shepherds were at first greatly terrified; but being by degrees persuaded that they intended them no harm, and merely demanded shelter from the inclemency of the weather, they recovered their self-possession, and entertained them with the most generous hospitality. After supper, the whole company stretched themselves round the fire, and slept soundly until next morning. The snow still continuing to fall, they remained two whole days in this wild retreat; but on the third the weather clearing up, a passage was cut through the snow, and merging into daylight they mounted their horses, and descended towards the plains of Fez, the kindly shepherds acting as their guides through the difficult passes of the mountains. They now learned that the caravan with which Leo was travelling when encountered by the Arabs, had been overwhelmed by the snow; so that no hope of plunder being left, our traveller’s friendly preservers seized upon a Jew with the design of extorting a large ransom from him; and borrowing Leo’s horse in order to convey the Hebrew prize to their tents, they commended its master to the mercy of fortune and the winds, and departed. Good luck, or the charity of some benevolent hind, furnished our traveller with a mule, upon which he made his way in three days to the capital.
Not being discouraged by this adventure, which, when safely concluded, appeared rather romantic than unfortunate, he again bent his steps towards the desert, and at length succeeded in his attempt to become the guest of the children of Ishmael. Here he found himself surrounded by that fierce and untameable people, who, having to their natural wildness and ferocity added those qualities of perfidiousness and treachery which the venom of the African soil appears to engender inevitably, might be regarded as the most dangerous of all those barbarians among whom civilized man could expose himself. Hunting the lion, taming the most fiery coursers, in short, all violent exercises, and bloodshed, and war, were their daily recreations. Nevertheless some traces of the milder manners of Arabia remained. Poetry, adapting itself to the tastes of these rude men, celebrated in songs burning with energy and enthusiasm the prowess and exploits of their warriors, the beauty of their women, the savage but sublime features of their country, or the antiquity and glory of their race. Making their sword the purveyor of their desires, they enjoyed whatever iron thus fashioned could purchase,—ample tents, costly and magnificent garments, vessels of copper or of brass, with abundance of silver and gold. In summer moving northward before the sun, they poured down upon the cultivated country lying along the shores of the Mediterranean, through a thousand mountain defiles, and collecting both fruit and grain as they were ripened by its rays, watched the retreat of the great luminary towards the southern tropic, and pursued its fiery track across the desert.
Returning from this expedition without undergoing any particular hardships, he shortly afterward passed into Morocco, where he remained during several years, visiting its most celebrated cities, mountains, and deserts, and carefully studying the manners of its inhabitants under all their aspects. The first place of any note which he examined was Mount Magran. Here, amid wild Alpine scenes, and peaks covered with eternal snow, he found a people whose simple manners carried back his imagination to the first ages of the world. In winter they had no fixed habitations, but dwelt in large baskets, the sides of which were formed of the bark of trees, and the roof of wicker-work. These they removed from place to place on the backs of mules, stopping and dismounting their houses wherever they met with pasture for their flocks. During the warm months, however, they erected huts of larger dimensions, roofing them with green boughs, and provender for their cattle being plentiful, remained stationary. To defend their flocks and herds from the cold, which is there always severe during the night, they kindled immense fires close to their doors, which, emitting too great a flame when fanned by tempestuous winds, sometimes caught their combustible dwellings, and endangered the lives both of themselves and their cattle. They were likewise exposed to the daily hazard of being devoured by lions or wolves, animals which abound in that savage region.
From hence he proceeded to Mount Dedas, a lofty chain eighty miles in length, covered with vast forests, and fertilized by a prodigious number of fountains and rivulets. On the summit of this ridge were then found the ruins of a very ancient city, on the white walls and solitary monuments of which there existed numerous inscriptions, but couched in a language and characters totally unknown to the inhabitants, some of whom supposed it to have been built by the Romans, though no mention of the place occurs in any African historian. The wretched race then inhabiting the mountain dwelt in caverns, or in huts of stones rudely piled upon each other. Their whole riches consisted in large droves of asses and flocks of goats; barley bread with a little salt and milk was their only food; and scarcely the half of their bodies were covered by their miserable garments. Yet the caverns in which they and their goats lay down promiscuously abounded in nitre, which in any civilized country would have sufficed to raise them to a state of opulence. The manners of these troglodytes were execrable. Living without hope and without God in the world, they fearlessly perpetrated all manner of crimes, treachery, thieving, open robbery, and murder. The women were still more ragged and wretched than the men, and the traveller found it, upon the whole, the most disagreeable place in all Africa.
As Leo did not make any regular tour of the country, but repaired now to one place, now to another, as business or accident impelled him, we find him to-day at one end of Morocco, and when the next date is given he is at the opposite extremity. Nothing, therefore, is left the biographer but to follow as nearly as possible the order of time. Towards the conclusion of the year in which he crossed Mount Dedas in his way to Segelmessa, he proceeded with Sheriff, a Moorish chief, in whose service he happened to be, towards the western provinces of Morocco, and travelling with a powerful escort, or rather with an army, had little or nothing to fear from the most sanguinary and perfidious of the barbarian tribes. One of the most remarkable places visited during this excursion was El Eusugaghen, the “City of Murderers.” The mere description of the manners of its inhabitants makes the blood run cold. The city, erected on the summit of a lofty mountain, was surrounded by no gardens, and shaded by no fruit-trees. Barley and oil were the only produce of the soil. The poorer portion of the inhabitants went barefoot throughout the year, the richer wore a rude species of mocassin, fabricated from the hide of the camel or the ox. All their thoughts, all their desires tended towards bloodshed and war, and so fierce were their struggles with their neighbours, so terrible the slaughter, so unmitigated and unrelenting their animosity, that, according to the forcible expression of the traveller himself, they deserved rather to be called dogs than men. Nor was their disposition towards each other more gentle. No man ventured to step over the threshold of his own door into the street without carrying a dagger or a spear in his hand: and as they did not appear inclined to bear their weapons in vain, were restrained by no principles of religion or justice, and were utterly insensible to pity, cries of “murder!” in the street were frequent and startling.
This atrocious stronghold of murderers was situated in the district over which Sheriff claimed the sovereignty, and his visit to the place was undertaken in the hope of introducing something like law and justice. The number of accusations of theft, robbery, and murder was incredible; and dire was the dissension, the commotion, the noise which everywhere prevailed. As Sheriff had brought with him neither lawyers nor magistrates who might undertake to compose their differences, Leo, as a man learned in the Koran, was earnestly conjured to fulfil this terrible office. No sooner had he consented than two men rushed in before him, accusing each other of the most abominable crimes, the one averring that the other had murdered eight of his relations; and the latter, who by no means denied the fact, asserting in reply that the former had murdered ten members of his family, and that, therefore, as the balance was in his favour, he should, according to the custom of the country, be paid a certain sum of money for the additional loss he had sustained. The murderer of ten, on the other hand, argued that it was to him that the price of blood should be paid, for that the persons whom he had slain had suffered justly, since they had violently seized upon a farm which belonged to him, and that he could in no other way gain possession of his right; while his own relations had fallen the victims of the mere atrocity of the other murderer. Such were the mutual accusations in which the first day was consumed. The evening coming on, Leo and the chieftain retired to rest; but in the dead of the night they were suddenly awakened by terrific shouts and yells, and springing hastily from their couches, and running to the window, they saw an immense crowd rushing into the market-place, and fighting with so much fury and bloodshed, that to have beheld them the most iron nature must have been shocked; so that, dreading lest some plot or conspiracy might be hatching against himself, the chieftain made his escape as rapidly as possible, taking the traveller along with him.