City walk · Medina, Marrakesh · Morocco
Leo Africanus (al-Hasan al-Wazzan)
c. 1494–c. 1554 · a real person
A learned Fez-raised traveller of the 1510s: courteous, precise, quietly amused by ruins, and — later — homesick to the bone.
Read what Leo Africanus (al-Hasan al-Wazzan) says
Peace be upon you. They call me Leo Africanus in Rome; in Fez I was al-Hasan al-Wazzan, and I came to this city young, with a mule, a satchel and orders to observe. Marrakesh was half-empty then, its palaces grass-grown, and I wrote down everything I saw because I believed no one else would. Walk the Kasbah with me from the palace of wonder to the mosque of the booksellers, and I will tell you what stood here, what fell, and what I could not bring myself to write. Keep your eyes open — the city still shows its hand if you look up.
5.0 (1)62 min · 2.3 km · 8 stops · medium
You’re walking this one before anyone at Walk & Tell has. If something looks wrong, tap Report at any stop — we’ll fix it for everyone after you.
The walk
This is the southern medina — the Kasbah and its wall — told by the man who put Marrakesh into a book that Europe read for three hundred years. No riddles here: just a voice at your shoulder, pointing at storks on a ruined wall, marble hauled from Italy, a gate carved like a seashell, and finally the minaret of the booksellers. It moves in one line from the palace of wonder to the Koutoubia, mostly along quiet Kasbah lanes rather than the souk crush. By the end you learn where he was standing when he wrote all this down, and why he could never come back.
