Mansa Musa: The Richest Man in History and His Legendary Hajj

Mansa Musa had gold. How did gold become an empire's wealth? A map from 1375 shows the ruler of Mali holding a piece of gold, and an account collected in Cairo says his spending during the 1324 pilgrimage pushed down the value of gold in Egypt. This video looks past the man holding the gold to the system behind him: Saharan caravans, salt and gold, Ghana's taxes as al-Bakri described them, Sundiata and the founding of Mali, Timbuktu's scholars, Ibn Battuta's visit after Musa's reign, and Songhai's rise and fall. It ends with the Swahili coast and Great Zimbabwe, two different African answers to the same question. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open: the Catalan Atlas, 1375 0:56 Across the Sahara 1:55 Ghana and the tax on salt 3:29 Sundiata and the making of Mali 5:12 The hajj and the price of gold in Cairo 7:24 Wealthy for whom? 8:14 After Musa: Ibn Battuta's Mali 9:04 Songhai 11:11 Kilwa and Great Zimbabwe 13:04 Back to the map PRIMARY SOURCES Catalan Atlas, 1375, attributed to Abraham Cresques, Majorca. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Espagnol 30. Al-Bakri, Kitab al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik (Book of Routes and Realms), 1068. Trans. in N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, eds., Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Cambridge University Press, 1981. The Epic of Sundiata, oral tradition performed and passed on by griots. One recorded version: D. T. Niane, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, trans. G. D. Pickett. Longman, 1965. Al-Umari, Masalik al-absar, c. 1337. Trans. in Levtzion and Hopkins, Corpus, 1981. Ibn Battuta, Rihla, dictated to Ibn Juzayy in 1355. In H. A. R. Gibb, trans., Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354 (selections). Routledge, 1929. Abd al-Rahman al-Sa'di, Tarikh al-Sudan, c. 1655. In John O. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa'di's Ta'rikh al-sudan down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents. Brill, 1999. FURTHER READING Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali. Methuen, 1973. Michael A. Gomez, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa. Princeton University Press, 2018. Mark Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili: The Social Landscape of a Mercantile Society. Blackwell, 2000. Peter Garlake, Great Zimbabwe. Thames and Hudson, 1973. ARCHIVAL FILM AND IMAGES Bibliothèque nationale de France: the Catalan Atlas (1375) and the Mecia de Viladestes chart (1413). Period maps: al-Idrisi's world map of 1154 in Konrad Miller's 1929 reconstruction; Abraham Ortelius, 1575 printing of a map first published in 1570. Tarikh al-Fattash manuscript pages, Mamma Haidara Library, CC BY 4.0. Objects and photographs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, the Rijksmuseum and Wikimedia Commons; Creative Commons credits appear on screen with each image. Map relief: Natural Earth; terrain from SRTM, GMTED2010 and ETOPO1. What do you think the famous story leaves out? #History #MansaMusa #AfricanHistory