Trickster travels: cultural narratives and mythology

Davis, Natalie Zemon. Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds. New York: Hill & Wang, 2006.

One of the most famous Shakespearean plays is Othello, but few people today are aware of the figure who inspired the central character or how any early European modern authors gained knowledge of the Muslim world.[footnoteRef:1] In her book Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds. Natalie Zemon Davis chronicles the life of Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati (also known as Ioannes Leo Africanus), who wrote a series of volumes designed to introduce the Christian reader to the Muslim way of life. His works were to become seminal texts in defining how Europeans saw the Muslim world as well as Jews and Semitic persons deemed to be 'other.' The author was a Muslim who converted to Christianity after being captured and enslaved and wrote his text under the auspices of Pope Leo X, who was fascinated by Semitic languages and Muslim customs, partially because he had a desire to make his mark converting these peoples.[footnoteRef:2] [1: Eleazar Gutwirth, review of Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds. The Journal of Religion, 87. 2 (April 2007), p. 310.] [2: Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds. (New York: Hill & Wang, 2006), p.65.]

Davis structures her book by offering a general overview of her subject's biography and the world in which he lived from chapters 1-2, followed by a discussion of the specific details of the works he wrote in chapters 3-6, and concluding in the final chapters 7-8 with a discussion of the impact of her subject's legacy in terms of Christians perceptions of Muslims. It is noteworthy that in Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati's writings: "After an overview of the peoples and customs of Africa, he concludes with an account of the 'virtues' and 'vices' of the Africans… [saying] 'The author admits to not a little shame and confusion in…disclosing the vices and disgraceful qualities of Africa, having been nourished and raised there, and known as a man of purity.[footnoteRef:3]" Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati thus styled himself as a member of the African world who could provide a privileged perspective to European Christians: his view was similar enough to their own, and critical enough of his fellow Muslims that they felt comfortable reading his writings. His status as a 'pure' man and a convert underlined his exceptionalism, rather than suggested that the Christians needed to fundamentally re-evaluate their place in the world. [3: Davis 109.]

However, Davis makes clear that one should be suspicious of this so-called Ioannes Leo Africanus (who took his converted name from the pope): the central theme of her book are the inherent ideological tensions that arise when crossing borders of religion and race, which her subject did in his persona as well as his writings. The 'tricksters' of the title refer not only to Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati's posturing in regards to his audience but also the many interpreters and translators who later used his words and life stories for their own purposes. [footnoteRef:4] [4: Gurwith, p.311]