Mansa Musa

Rise to power

Musa ruled Mali, the West African empire founded by Sundiata Keita, at the height of its power. His reign of about 25 years is usually dated 1312–1337, but these dates are estimates worked out from the king list of the 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun, and scholars still debate the chronology. According to al-Umari, Musa told officials in Cairo that his predecessor had sailed into the Atlantic with a fleet and never returned. In the king list discussed by Sirio Canós-Donnay in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History that ruler is named Muhammad; popular accounts, such as National Geographic's, call him Abu Bakr II. Canós-Donnay doubts that any Atlantic crossing succeeded.

The pilgrimage of 1324

Musa reached Cairo in 1324 on his way to Mecca. The fullest account is by al-Umari, a scholar from Damascus who wrote some years later and relied on what an emir who had dealt with the king told him. He describes Musa resisting the custom of kissing the ground before the Mamluk sultan, saying he bowed only to God. The sultan then seated him at his side. Musa gave gold to almost every emir and court official and sent large amounts of unworked gold to the treasury.

Al-Umari says this gold lowered its price in Egypt. The mithqal, which had been worth at least 25 dirhams, fell to 22 or less and stayed low for about twelve years. Much larger figures circulate today, such as an entourage of tens of thousands and camels each carrying 300 pounds of gold. National Geographic attributes these to Arab writers of the period. No surviving record allows them to be checked.

Building and learning

Around his return, Malian forces held Gao, where he is said to have dedicated a mosque. UNESCO links the first construction of Timbuktu's Djingareyber mosque to "Sultan Kankan Moussa" on his return from Mecca. The Met says he brought architects and scholars from the wider Islamic world. Timbuktu became a major centre of Islamic scholarship in the following centuries.

The question of his wealth

Musa's fame in Europe is clear from the Catalan Atlas of 1375, now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It shows "Musse Melly" enthroned, holding gold, and calls him the richest ruler in the region. Today he is often called the richest person who ever lived. That ranking is a modern claim, not a historical measurement. Smithsonian Magazine, while repeating the claim in 2019, noted there is probably no accurate way to put his wealth in modern terms. According to National Geographic, Mali's wealth came mainly from gold and salt, with ivory also important.