The province and city of Tripoli are
described by Leo Africanus (in Navigatione et Viaggi di
Ramusio, tom. i. Venetia, 1550, fol. 76, verso) and Marmol,
(Description de l'Afrique, tom. ii. p. 562.) The first of
these writers was a Moor, a scholar, and a traveller, who
composed or translated his African geography in a state of
captivity at Rome, where he had assumed the name and
religion of Pope Leo X. In a similar captivity among the
Moors, the Spaniard Marmol, a soldier of Charles V.,
compiled his Description of Africa, translated by
D'Ablancourt into French, (Paris, 1667, 3 vols. in 4to.)
Marmol had read and seen, but he is destitute of the curious
and extensive observation which abounds in the original work
of Leo the African.