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915

[Africa - natural history] - LEO Africanus, J

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:3,000.00 - 3,500.00 EUR
[Africa - natural history] - LEO Africanus, J
[Africa - natural history] - LEO Africanus, Joannes - De totius Africae descriptione libri IX (...) [Latin trsl. from the Italian Joannes Florianus]. Antwerp, Joannes Latius, 1556, 8vo, contemp. limp overlapping vellum, flat spine, front endpaper renewed, [16]-302-[2] ff. (blank Pp7-8 preserved; minor stains, titleleaf soiled and partly underlaid, blank lower right corner of titleleaf torn off). Good copy. € 3000/3500 First edition of the Latin translation of "Della descrittione dell'Africa" (Venice 1550), a treatise of practical geography with essay on rivers, animals, minerals and plants, esp. in Sudan. It is one of the few works from the postmedieval Islamic world which had an influence in Europe. "For an long time this work was the chief authority on the geography of Africa, and the main source of information on the Sudan" (Cox). Leo the African (Granada c. 1485 - Tunis after 1554) was the European name of al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, geographer and Moroccan ambassador to the Ottoman court. He was captured by Italian pirates and given as a slave to Pope Leo X, and converted to Catholicism. In 1529 he returned to Tunis and reconverted to Islam. Woodcut mark on titlepage. Monastic ownership entries; a few contemp. marginal ms. notes. Ref. B.Typogr.1874. Palau 135.532. Adams L-480. Machiels L-179. STCDutch (BL London) p. 116. BN Paris (1).
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