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Entry 133 of 240Economic

Mansa Musa and the Empire of Mali

1324 CE/Africa/Mali Empire
Today West Africa (Mali; the city of Timbuktu)Span Mali Empire · c. 1235–1600 CE

The West African empire of Mali, successor to Ghana, controlled the gold that minted much of the medieval world's money — and its emperor Mansa Musa may have been the richest person in all of history. On a legendary 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca, he handed out so much gold in Cairo that he wrecked the region's economy for years. His city of Timbuktu became a fabled center of Islamic scholarship, its libraries holding hundreds of thousands of manuscripts.

◆ Worth knowingMali's wealth so impressed Europe that a 1375 Spanish atlas drew Mansa Musa enthroned with a golden orb, one of the first depictions of an African ruler in European mapmaking — and Timbuktu's book trade reportedly rivaled its trade in gold.
◆ The mechanismTrade-route shift

The path or medium of exchange moves, and a place or power rises or declines because it sits on or off the new route.

Also: Wealth concentration & leveling · Ideological movement

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