Mansa Musa

Mansa Musa was the mansa, or emperor, of the West African empire of Mali during its height in the early 14th century. His full name was Kanku Musa Keita, and he is also known as Mansa Musa.

After Sundiata, the most famous ruler of the Mali empire is Mansa Kankan Musa I, who came to power several decades after the death of his legendary predecessor. Mansa Musa left a realm notable for its extent and riches and is widely considered to be the wealthiest person in history.

Kanku Musa Keita, known to history as Mansa Musa, became emperor of Mali in 1312 and reigned until 1337, guiding the empire through its most prosperous years. His accession placed him at the head of the Mali Empire at the height of its power. He held the title of Mansa, or king, of the Mali Empire. Born around 1280 in the Mali Empire, he died there around 1337.

Musa's reign strengthened Mali's position within trans-Saharan trade networks and helped establish Timbuktu as a major center of commerce and Islamic learning. Timbuktu and Gao were among its key cities. The empire also acquired control over the salt trade.

Musa was a grandson or grandnephew of Sundiata, the founder of the dynasty. Sundiata Keita had risen to power by defeating the king of the Sosso in 1235 and brought all the Mandinka clan rulers under his leadership, declaring himself overall Mansa.

Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire, performed the hajj to Mecca, the pilgrimage that stands at the center of Islamic devotion. He set out in 1324 and returned in 1325, making a stopover in Cairo along the way. He arrived in Cairo in July of that year, where his presence caused an absolute sensation.

Arab chroniclers reported that Mansa Musa was accompanied by a caravan of 60,000 men, including a personal retinue of 12,000 enslaved persons clad in brocade and Persian silk. The emperor was said to have ridden on horseback, preceded by 500 enslaved persons each carrying a gold-adorned staff. His baggage train included 80 camels, each carrying 300 pounds of gold.

Al-Umari notes that the mithqal fell from 25 dirhams or more to no more than 22 dirhams, and that the cheapened price lasted about twelve years because of the gold brought into Egypt.

Al-Umari reports that the Malian king forwarded many loads of unworked native gold and other valuables to the royal treasury of Cairo.

In the sultan's presence Mansa Musa refused to kiss the ground in the customary way, declaring that he made obeisance to God who created him, after which the sultan seated him by his side. Al-Umari records that when the Malian ruler was pressed to visit the Mamluk sultan, he insisted that he had come for the pilgrimage and nothing else.

Mansa Musa directed his wealth into construction on a scale that outlasted his reign. His principal building work was the Djinguereber, or Great Mosque, at Timbuktu, completed by 1330. He is also credited with commissioning the mosques at Gao and Jenne.

Inspired by the universities he had seen on that journey, he brought books and scholars back to Mali, and Timbuktu became the holiest city in the Sudan region of Western Africa.

At Timbuktu, Musa reportedly commissioned a Granada poet and architect who had travelled with him from Mecca to build a mosque and a palace. Scholars interested in history, Quranic theology and law made the mosque of Sankore in Timbuktu a teaching center under his patronage. The city's three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, recall Timbuktu's golden age.

Musa also commissioned a cupola at Niani for holding audiences.

Mansa Musa was succeeded first by his son Mansa Maghan I, who had ruled as regent during the pilgrimage, and then by his brother Mansa Sulayman.

The historian Ibn Khaldun describes the considerable gifts assembled by the later Mali ruler Mansa Suleiman for a sultan in the north, while Ibn Battuta criticises his meanness.

The three most important Arabic sources for the Empire of Mali at its height are al-Umari, Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun. The account of Mansa Musa's visit to Cairo in 1324 was written by Al-Umari, who gathered what the Cairenes remembered of the Malian ruler.

Al-Umari wrote in the years 1342 to 1349 and reflected the impression that Mansa Musa had left in Cairo. He probably never met the emperor in person but talked with people who had. The story of Mansa Musa's predecessor Abu Bakr II, who sailed into the Atlantic with his fleet never to return, is preserved in Musa's own account given to the scholar al-Umari.

Ibn Battuta recorded his own tour through Mali, and his account by such an experienced traveller is a first-rate historical document. Because he travelled in a region well known to his own countrymen and met Moroccans all over the Sudan, he was inhibited from exaggerating or introducing incredible stories.

The empire extended over an area larger than western Europe. In the 14th century cowrie shells were established in Mali as a form of currency for trading and taxation.

The mansas of Mali received taxes from the gold miners in the form of gold but never exercised direct control over mining, and at one point the miners stopped working when the mansas tried to convert them to Islam.

The Catalan Atlas of about 1375, drawn in Spain, shows the world known to a fourteenth-century European, covering the Mediterranean, the Canary Isles in the Atlantic, and parts of the west coast of Africa, Scandinavia and Asia.

The atlas was a gift to the king of France in 1381 and remains in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It has been used in history courses to explore the extent of European knowledge of the world and the representation of Africa, especially king Mansa Musa, on the threshold of the age of exploration. Only fifteen years after his pilgrimage to Mecca, Mansa Musa was featured prominently on the most advanced maps produced by Majorcan cartographers. The image of Mansa Musa bearing nuggets of gold was subsequently commemorated in maps of the African continent.