Trickster History

Natalie Zemon Davis’ Trickster Travels is the story of al-Hasan al-Wazzan, an “extreme case” of early 16th century Muslim-Christian interaction and, as the title suggests, travels in the medieval world spanning Africa, the Mediterranean, and Iberia. Al-Wazzan is “extreme,” in other words, unusual, in that his experiences took him into diverse places, cultures, and circumstances, where he encountered some of the most powerful men of his time and used his diplomatic prowess to find his best possible standing while in captivity or “under the thumb” of some master. At least, that’s the premise of the book.

But is that really what it’s about? Davis cites al-Wazzan’s Description of Africa as the foundational document for her investigation into his life, but by her own admission, the contemporary record is full of contradictions, implausibilities, and periods of silence. What we end up with is a vivid and enthralling social history of the period and the region of al-Wazzan, but not the story of al-Wazzan and not his world through the lens of his own life, as we have had with other microhistories. It’s almost as if Davis approached this project determined to write a microhistory, but without actually having a subject that fully supported that endeavor.

“Throughout I have had to make use of the conditional—‘would have,’ ‘may have,’ ‘was likely to have’—and the speculative ‘perhaps,’” Davis states in her introduction (pg. 13). She is creating a “plausible” life story, but not necessarily a factual one. The facts are there, of course – she is not making up the history out of whole cloth, but the facts are those of the general history of 16th century North Africa, not of the life of one particular player in that history.

Trickster Travels is a social history of a prototypical 16th century North African man, albeit one with an extraordinary set of experiences. We get few personal details about the protagonist in the story, but we get plenty of details and insights into the environment in which such a man would have existed. Is it a microhistory? I think so, if the exception proves the rule. We can see what it is not: It is not a conventional, thematic, or regional history. It is certainly not a biography. It is not a religious history, a cultural history, or a political history, although there are aspects of all these woven into the narrative. The compelling narrative, and the inability to categorize it as anything else, leads to the conclusion that this is a microhistory, and a good one—and one unlike other works in the genre.