Beschreibung:

LEO, Johannes (c.1494-c.1554). Historiale description de l'Afrique, tierce partie du monde . Lyons: Jean Temporal, 1556. Scarce French first edition coloured in a contemporary hand of the famous description of Africa by Johannes Leo Africanus, and the first collection of voyages printed in France. Johannes Leo took his Christian name from his sponsor Pope Leo X when he converted to Christianity after his capture in 1520. He was born Al Hassan Ibn Mahommed Al Wezaz Al Fasi probably in Grenada in about 1494, received a great part of his education at Fez, and while still very young began to travel widely in the Barbary States. In 1512 we trace him at Morocco, Tunis, Bugia and Constantine; in 1513 we find him returning from Tunis to Morocco; and before the close of the latter year he seems to have started on his famous Sudan and Sahara journeys (1513-1515). In 1516-1517 he travelled to Constantinople, probably visiting Egypt on the way; it is more uncertain when he visited the three Arabias, Armenia and 'Tartary'. His three Egyptian journeys, immediately after the Turkish conquest, all probably fell between 1517 and 1520; on one of these he ascended the Nile from Cairo to Aswan. The present work was probably first written in Arabic but the primary text now is in Italian, first published in 1526. No other auction record of a coloured copy in RBH or ABPC. Adams L-482; Howgego A17. Volume 1 only (of 2) folio (305 x 200mm). Wood-engraved title, woodcut double page map and 26 illustrations all but one coloured by a contemporary hand (repairs to lower margin of leaves * and *2 with slight loss of title border, some toning and soiling, water- and ink-stains, very occasional marginal tear or wormhole). 18th-century mottled calf, spine gilt (rebacked, joints cracking, spine head cap chipped, rubbed). Provenance : early marginalia and ink inscriptions on title (one of them reads 'Ex Bibliotheca Joh[annis] Huÿseri' (i.e. Johann Huyser) – the other ?’Pacauld’).