An entourage of sixty thousand including a personal slave train of 12,000 all clad in Persian silk. Five thousand servants were preceding the King on horseback, all carrying 2.7kg gold staffs. One hundred trained camels bearing no less than 300 pounds of gold intended to be used in charity.
The entourage of Mansa Musa was unlike any other seen in the world. One significant show of splendor and wealth that perhaps revealed more than any other to stupendous wealth and resources of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Arab historian Al-Makrizi wrote about Mansa Musa “He was a young man with a brown skin, a pleasant face and good figure…His gifts amazed the eye with their beauty and splendour.”
The emperor and his entourage gave away so much gold in charity and purchase that the value of Egyptian gold dinar crashed by 20% in relation to the silver dirham. Staggering inflation that took the economy of Cairo to recover.
So great was his generosity and exhibition of unparalleled wealth that his pilgrimage not only resounded through the Arabic world, it made a lasting impression into Europe.
Mansa Musa announced the isolated patch of earth that is Suh-Saharan Africa, with a grandeur that still echoes through history.
Who is Mansa Musa?
Of all the many empires and sophisticated political structures that have risen in Sub-Sahara Africa, none parallels the wealth and splendor of the Malian empire. It lasted for four centuries, founded by Sundiata Keita, with its capital located at Niani, its most important trading city being Timbuktu – The city of gold.
Mansa Musa was the tenth ruler of the Malian empire from 1312 to 1337. He was in charge of a vast empire that was rich in gold and copper. He was a Muslim like his predecessors, though, within the realm, individual cultures and ethnicities were allowed to practice their indigenous religion in peace without any religious imposition.
Mansa Musa oversaw what is described as the most significant period in the Malian empire. He employed the services of Muslim scholars and architects to a great extent, investing heavily in education and infrastructure.
He built schools around the empire and the mosque that put cities like Timbuktu into public notice.
Legacy
Of all the emperors that history ruminates about, none has come close to the projected amount of wealth ascribed to this Sub-Saharan African King. Only Solomon of the bible could be assumed to come a bit within the circle as projected for Mansa Musa, but even he, if he existed, wouldn’t be in the same class as Mansa Musa.
Musa put on a display of the awe-inspiring nature of wealth and resources that is within Sub-Sahara Africa. The legacy of Mansa Musa alongside several other rulers, warlords from the Sub-Saharan sociopolitical lot, depict the sophistication and wealth of Sub-Saharan politics and culture. This wealth today is eclipsed by colonial approximation and perceptual reduction of Sub-Saharan sociopolitical history to a crude elementary portrayal.
Given the relegation of Sub-Sahara Africa in world politics and economics as a third world region, one could begin to imagine at what point the economic and political sophistication of Sub-Saharan kingdoms took a turn for the worst to give rise to what it is today.
When the New World, today is known as America was a little more than a Mexican territory of largely unused lands, when European kingdoms were marred by the retrogressive nature of dogmatic impositions; empires and political structures in Sub-Sahara Africa thrived, trade and religious practices, education and agriculture, elaborate infrastructural development, and great economic systems and relationships.
This more than ever paints a grand picture of Sub-Saharan socioeconomic history that is more than not, largely ignored in the world today.
Up to this day, there has not been a single individual, of political or personal class, from accurate approximations that can be placed above Mansa Musa in terms of wealth estimation as it would as of today’s standards surpass well over $400 billion.
He remains, up until this moment, the richest King/emperor and man in history.
