Politicians

Mansa Musa

Ninth Mansa of the Mali Empire (c.1280-1337), who brought the West African polity to its territorial peak. His 1324 hajj to Mecca, with a retinue of 60,000 attendants and 12,000 enslaved porters each bearing 1.8 kg of gold, depressed the value of gold in Cairo for more than a decade according to Al-Umari. He returned with the Andalusi architect Abu Ishaq al-Sahili and oversaw the construction of the Djinguereber Mosque and the Sankore Madrasah in Timbuktu, plugging the western Sahel into the Islamic learned world. Mandé griots criticised him as a wastrel of imperial wealth; modern outlets now habitually rank him among the wealthiest individuals in recorded history.

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