Leo Africanus

Hasan’s father, Muhammad, is a weigh-master in Granada. He is an affluent and wealthy man with connections to the Sultan’s court. However, he is deeply in love with Warda the slave. While he respects his wife and cousin Salma, their relationship is very formal. After Granada is conquered by the Castilians and the Aragonese and he is briefly separated from Warda, he becomes depressed. The narrative even implies that he has become an alcoholic.

Hasan grows to resent his father as a young man, both because of his treatment of his mother and because of the marriage he arranges between Mariam and the Zarwali. However, Hasan comes to understand his father’s flaws, and they reconcile. Like his father, Hasan marries a woman he does not love, Fatima, while continuing to have a relationship with a slave he loves, Hiba. Also like his father, he puts himself and others in danger for the sake of his passion. For example, he risks his arrest and that of ‘Abbad to help Princess Nur. Finally, both Hasan and Muhammad are adventurous, embarking on diverse business ventures throughout their lives. Muhammad dies while Hasan is in Tunis. 

Warda is the mother of Muhammad’s only daughter, Mariam. She is also Muhammad’s true love. She was born Esmerelda in the Castilian village of Ancantarilla. Captured in a Granadan raid, she became the slave and concubine of Muhammad. She has a brother named Juan who makes her return to her village during the Castilian conquest of Granada. However, she escapes and returns to find Muhammad. In the beginning of the novel, she has a rivalry with Salma. As Salma tells Hasan, “Warda herself showed me all the deference a servant girl owes to her mistress. But at night, she was the mistress” (6). However, the two women’s relationship becomes more friendly later. After Muhammad’s death, Warda’s fate is uncertain. However, Salma believes that she finally returned to Ancantarilla. 

Salma is Hasan’s mother, Muhammad’s wife, and Khali’s sister. A daughter of a bookseller, Salma is intelligent and from a well-off family. However, she is also superstitious, relying on soothsayers, folk medicine, and magic. Eventually, this tendency gets her into trouble, as Muhammad divorces her for pouring a perfume over him as he slept in an attempt to cure his depression. Her marriage to her husband and cousin Muhammad was arranged by their family. Their relationship is respectful, with them often referring to each other as “cousin.” However, Salma is heartbroken by Muhammad’s love for the slave girl Warda. Salma dies while Muhammad is imprisoned in Rome.

Abu Marwan, or Khali as he is called through most of the narrative, is Hasan’s uncle and Salma’s brother. A highly educated and politically savvy man, Khali worked at the Sultan of Granada’s court as a letter writer. He is the first of the family to leave Granada for Fez. There, he manages to prosper as a diplomat in the service of the Sultan of Fez.

Khali is concerned with the honor of his family and the entire Granadan émigré community. This concern causes him to fall out with Muhammad because of Muhammad’s neglect of Salma in favor of his concubine, Warda. In fact, when Muhammad and his family first arrive in Fez, Khali refuses to give them refuge. Still, Khali loves Hasan like a son. Before his death, he arranges for Hasan’s marriage to his youngest daughter, Fatima. 

Mariam is Hasan’s half-sister and Muhammad’s and Warda’s daughter. Despite being half-siblings, Hasan and Mariam grow up together and are close. Muhammad arranges her marriage to a much older man, the Zarwali, for the sake of a business deal. However, Hasan and Harun intervene by spreading accurate reports of the Zarwali’s behavior, leading the Zarwali to angrily call off the betrothal. The Zarwali cruelly arranges to have Mariam wrongly accused of being a leper and quarantined in an isolated leper quarter.

Mariam is compassionate, showing empathy for another leper when in the leper quarter. However, she becomes embittered because of her imprisonment. Harun helps her escape and later kills the Zarwali at her feet. The two become outlaws, robbing from the country’s corrupt elites. Gaudy Sarah claims, “It’s said she’s been seen with a sword in her hand, at her husband’s side” (250), although Sarah admits many rumors surround them. It is unclear if Mariam leaves with Harun for Constantinople. 

Harun is Hasan’s closest boyhood friend. Because he is the son of a porter, Harun has access to a community of workers with information across the city of Fez. His ability to “ferret” out information earns him the nickname “the Ferret.” A precocious boy, Harun grows up with a strong sense of social justice and religious devotion. He frees Mariam from her unwarranted imprisonment in a leper quarter, marries her, and later kills the man who put her there, the Zarwali. He and Mariam become outlaws, robbing from rich and corrupt individuals. Harun later becomes a diplomat under Sultan Sulaiman of the Ottoman Empire. 

Astaghfirullah is a shaikh or religious leader. He is rigid in his interpretation of Islam, finding even the prospect of using a canon to be sinful. When Granada is on the brink of being conquered, he leads a moralistic movement blaming Granada’s impending fall on the sins of the people and their leaders. In Fez, Harun and Hasan manipulate him into denouncing the Zarwali.

Despite his reputation, Astaghfirullah is not entirely cruel. After the fall of Granada, he urges the people to go into exile, arguing it is wrong for a Muslim to live in a land ruled by non-Muslims. However, when the gardener Sa’d becomes upset, saying he is too old and infirm to move, Astaghfirullah assures him he is under no obligation to leave. Astaghfirullah dies during Hasan’s travels. 

Named for the Bani Zarwal region he comes from, the Zarwali is a brutally effective tax collector who has developed connections at the court of the Sultan of Fez. The Zarwali claims to have been a shepherd who first became rich after finding treasure hidden in the mountains. In reality, he was a bandit who preyed especially on refugees from Granada. He is cruel to his wives, having murdered several of them out of jealousy and having their deaths disguised as accidents by his slaves. Out of the characters in the novel, he is one of the few who is completely unsympathetic.

The Zarwali agrees to support Muhammad’s idea for a silk business in exchange for a betrothal to Muhammad’s daughter, Mariam. Learning about the Zarwali’s reputation, Harun and Hasan get Astaghfirullah to spread information about the Zarwali to the Granadan community in Fez through a sermon, thus provoking the Zarwali into breaking off his betrothal with Mariam. In revenge, he has Mariam wrongly confined in a leper quarter until she is freed by Harun, who marries her. Hasan manages to convince the Sultan to exile the Zarwali for two years. While leaving the Sultanate of Fez for Mecca, the Zarwali is captured by Harun and killed at Mariam’s feet.

Khali’s youngest daughter, Fatima is also Hasan’s cousin and first wife. Hasan describes her as “sickly, grumpy and entirely unattractive” (170). She becomes hysterical during the wedding and faints. Hasan consummates their marriage anyway, demonstrating his dismissive attitude toward his wife’s wishes. Hasan also does not hesitate to continue his relationship with Hiba while married to Fatima.

Little is known about Fatima’s perspective. She appears eager to please her husband, attempting “dirty talk” at one point. She gives birth to a daughter, Sarwat. Later, she dies giving birth to a stillborn son. 

Hiba is an Arabic-speaking slave from a mountain tribe. Hasan is given her as a gift by a nobleman during his trip to Timbuktu. He falls in love with her and has a relationship with her while he is married to Fatima. Hasan vows to never separate from her. After he is exiled from Fez by the Sultan, however, Hasan returns her to her tribe. She saves Hasan’s life from a severe snowstorm by making him take refuge in a cave. After Hasan loses his wealth because of the snowstorm, she goads the leaders of her tribe into an auction to buy her freedom, giving Hasan a new fortune.

Nur is a Circassian woman, the daughter of an Egyptian officer, and the widow of ‘Ala al-Din, the nephew of the Ottoman Sultan. When ‘Ala al-Din dies from the plague, Nur secretly hides her son by him, Bayazid. Intensely ambitious, Nur hopes that Bayazid will one day press his claim to the Ottoman throne. Hasan encounters Nur when he relocates to Cairo. She takes him to see the pyramids before she convinces him to marry her and pretend Bayazid is his own son. It is heavily implied that this was Nur’s purpose in marrying Hasan. After Hasan is captured and taken to Rome, she leaves for Persia, hoping the Persians will support her son’s claim. When Hasan receives the news, his comment highlights how Nur has chosen ambition over personal happiness, at least if you rely on Hasan’s perspective: “What good is it to dream of a palace when one can find happiness in a hut at the foot of the pyramids!” (317-18).

Born Judith to a Jewish family from Granada, Maddalena and her family went to Italy after the Castilian conquest. After her entire family was killed by a plague, she was adopted by an old nun and taken to live in a convent. However, her benefactor died and was replaced by an abbess who abused Maddalena for being formerly Jewish. She was rescued from the convent by Cardinal Julius de Medici. Hasan avoids the question of whether she and Cardinal Julius were lovers. Regardless, it is implied that she was made to marry Hasan by Pope Leo X to avoid a scandal. Maddalena gives birth to Hasan’s only living son, Giuseppe or Yusuf. She and Yusuf leave Italy with Hasan for Tunis at the end of the story.