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Shihab al-Din Ahmad al Muqri al Fassi: Kitab al Kharidat min Mukhtasar Akhbar al-Zaman; (Pearls Collected from the Abbreviated Histories) (1450) Fez.
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Almokri: a professor who teaches reading the Koran. Herbelot calls this book: Perles recueillies de l’abrégé des histoires. The extract is also partly found in Sir Henry Stanley: In Darkest Africa Vol 2
Taken from: Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi tombe 2 p156 (1789)
The Isle of Magreb (Africa) is in the midst of the seas which water it on all sides. To the east it is bounded by the sea of Kulzum (Red Sea) ; to the south and west by the ocean of which God only knows the extent and limits ; to the north it has for limits the sea of Kharz (Mediterranean), which is that by which the Franks came into the Holy Land, by landing on the coast of Syria.
In the midst of the Isle of Magreb are the deserts of the negroes, which separate the country of the negroes from that of the Berbers. In this isle is also the source of that great river which has not its equal upon the earth. It comes from the mountain of the moon which lies beyond the equator. In the first night of the lunar month; the mountain begins to take colour; she takes always other colours, up to the middle of the month, when the moon is in its maximum, the eyes can’t bear the radiation of the mountain anymore. Many sources come from this mountain and unite in a great lake, from which the waters take the same colours as the mountain; we do not know if the colours are reflected from the lake onto the mountain, or from the mountain on the lake, or if one or the other receives them immediately from the moon. From this lake comes the Nile, the greatest and most beautiful of the rivers of all the earth. Many rivers derived from this great river water Nubia, and the country of the Djenawa (=Guinea). It is very remarkable that all the other rivers go east or west or south, and that the Nile alone runs north. This river cuts horizontally the equator, traverses Abyssinia, the country of Kuku (1), comes to Syene (2), cuts Egypt throughout its whole length and throws itself into the sea between Tunis and Damietta (in the Nile delta).
(1) Kuku: people of Central-West Africa also found in al-Zayyat 1058; Ibn al Jawzi 1257; Al-Dimashqi 1325; Ibn Wadih al-Ya'qubi (d897) has Qaqu; Yakut 1220 Koko.
(2) Syene: The ancient city of Syene is today known as Aswan.