Mansa Musa Essay

Mansa Musa was one of the most prestigious and wealthiest emperors of all time. As the emperor of the Mali Empire, Central West Africa of what is now known as Mauritania from 1312 to 1337, Mansa Musa ascended the kingdom into decades of prosperity and stability. During his reign, Mansa Musa conquered immense territories and stretched the Mali Empire from the Atlantic Ocean to the present-day states of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Mansa Musa was best known for his affluent, flamboyant lifestyle filled of over-the-top extravagances and lavish. To this day he is said to be the richest man of all time. Mansa Musa also played a significant role in the spread of education and Islamic Law to the people of Mali. During his earlier years of rule, his devotion to the religion of Islam put him at odds with groups who maintained traditional African religions, but he was able to avoid conflict being

a strong ruler and affective administrator.

“In 1324 Musa embarked on his famous hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that all Muslims are expected to make at least once in their lives if they can afford to do so,” says Judson Knight.

But it was Mansa Musa that would make the hajj to Mecca in such an ostentatious manner that it would never be forgotten. According to Al-Umari, “Mansa Musa was accompanied by 100 camel-loads of gold, each weighing 300 lbs.; 500 slaves, each carrying a 4 lb. gold staff; thousands of his subjects; as well as his senior wife, with her 500 attendants.” The trip took Mansa Musa and his entourage through Cairo, Sudan, Egypt, and the Red Sea. He generously distributed so much of his gold to his hosts and the poor that it began depreciating in value nearly destroying the Egytian economy. The Egyptian historian Al-Omari later quoted a friend as saying, “This man spread upon Cairo the flood of his generosity: there was no person ... who did not receive a sum of gold from him. The people of Cairo earned incalculable sums from him.... So much gold was current in Cairo that it ruined the value of the

money.”

Mansa Musa returned from his expedition with Arab scholars, government bureaucrats, and famous architect Ishaq El Teudjin who constructed several monumental buildings in his favor. Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca perpetuated Islamic education in Mali by building mosques, libraries and universities. Mansa Musa’s fame and notoriety, spreading amongst the outskirts of Mali, attracted major increases in commerce, scholars, poets, and artisans. By this time, Mali had become one of the leading territories of the Islamic world.

One of the repercussions of Mansa Musa’s flashy quest to Mecca was the inadvertent attraction of Europeans to the African kingdom. For years, there had been rumors of Mali’s vast gold supply, but in 1375, when maps with Mansa Musa’s picture of him holding a gold nugget began to circulate, it sparked the beginning of the end Africa’s brief flourishing. It also initiated the obliteration of West Africa’s valuables by the Europeans and Portuguese, meanwhile bringing about the Atlantic slave trade.