Musa I of Mali, Musa also spelled Musa or Mousa, also called Kankan Musa or Mansa Musa, (d. 1337), was the mansa (emperor) of the West African empire of Mali from 1307. Mansa Mūsā left a realm notable for its extent and riches—he built the Great Mosque at Timbuktu — but he is best remembered in the Middle East and Europe for the splendor of his pilgrimage -- his hajj -- to Mecca in 1324.
Mansa Musa was the ninth mansa -- the ninth emperor -- of the Mali Empire. The Mali Empire of Mansa Musa reached its territorial peak during his reign. Musa is known for his wealth and gift-giving, and has sometimes been called the wealthiest person in history. His riches came from the mining of significant gold and salt deposits in the Mali Empire, along with the slave and ivory trade.
At the time of Musa's ascension to the throne, Mali in large part consisted of the territory of the former Ghana Empire, which Mali had conquered. The Mali Empire consisted of land that is now part of Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, The Gambia, and the modern state of Mali.
Musa went on a pilgrimage -- a hajj -- to Mecca in 1324, traveling with an enormous entourage and a vast supply of gold. En route, he spent time in Cairo, where his lavish gift-giving is said to have noticeably affected the value of gold in Egypt and garnered the attention of the wider Muslim world.
Musa expanded the borders of the Mali Empire, in particular incorporating the cities of Gao and Timbuktu into its territory. He sought closer ties with the rest of the Muslim world, particularly the Mamluk and Marinid Sultanates. He recruited scholars from the wider Muslim world to travel to Mali, such as the Andalusian poet Abu Ishaq al-Sahili, and helped establish Timbuktu as a center of Islamic learning. His reign is associated with numerous construction projects, including part of Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu. Musa's reign is often regarded as the zenith of Mali's power and prestige.
Mansa Musa, either the grandson or the grandnephew of Sundiata, the founder of his dynasty, came to the throne in 1307.
Mansa Musa's personal name was Musa, the Arabic form of Moses. Mansa, "ruler" or "king" in Mande, was the title of the ruler of the Mali Empire. The term "Mansa" has also been translated as "conqueror" and "priest-king". In oral tradition and the Timbuktu Chronicles, Musa is known as Kanku Musa. In Mande tradition, it was common for one's name to be prefixed by their mother's name, so the name Kanku Musa means "Musa, son of Kanku", although it is unclear if the genealogy implied is literal. Mansa is also called Hidji Mansa Musa in oral tradition in reference to Mansa Musa having completed the hajj.
In the Songhai language, rulers of Mali such as Musa were known as the Mali-koi, koi being a title that conveyed authority over a region: in other words, the "ruler of Mali".
Much of what is known about Musa comes from Arabic sources written after his hajj, especially the writings of al-Umari and Ibn Khaldun. While in Cairo during his hajj, Musa befriended officials such as Ibn Amir Hajib, who learned about Mansa Musa and his country from Mansa Musa and later passed on that information to historians such as Al-Umari. Additional information comes from two 17th-century manuscripts written in Timbuktu, the Tarikh Ibn al Mukhtar and the Tarikh al-Sudan.
Musa's father was named Faga Leye and his mother may have been named Kanku. Faga Leye was the son of Abu Bakr, a brother of Sunjata, the first mansa of the Mali Empire. The date of Musa's birth is unknown, but he still appeared to be a young man in 1324. The Tarikh al-fattash claims that Musa accidentally killed Kanku at some point prior to his hajj.
Musa ascended to power in the early 1300s under unclear circumstances. According to Musa's own account, his predecessor as mansa of Mali, presumably Muhammad ibn Qu, launched two expeditions to explore the Atlantic Ocean (200 ships for the first exploratory mission and 2,000 ships for the second). Muhammad led the second expedition himself, and appointed Musa as his deputy to rule the empire until he returned. When he did not return, Musa was crowned as mansa himself, marking a transfer of the line of succession from the descendants of Sunjata to the descendants of his brother Abu Bakr. Some modern historians have cast doubt on Musa's version of events, suggesting he may have deposed his predecessor and devised the story about the voyage to explain how he took power. Nonetheless, the possibility of such a voyage has been taken seriously by several historians.
In the 17th year of his reign (1324), Mansa Musa set out on his famous pilgrimage to Mecca. It was this pilgrimage that awakened the world to the stupendous wealth of Mali. Cairo and Mecca received this royal personage, whose glittering procession, in the superlatives employed by Arab chroniclers, almost put Africa’s sun to shame. Traveling from his capital of Niani on the upper Niger River to Walata (Oualâta, Mauritania) and on to Tuat (now in Algeria) before making his way to Cairo, Mansa Musa was accompanied by an impressive caravan consisting of 60,000 men including a personal retinue of 12,000 enslaved persons, all clad in brocade and Persian silk. The emperor himself rode on horseback and was directly preceded by 500 enslaved persons, each carrying a gold-adorned staff. In addition, Mansa Musa had a baggage train of 80 camels, each carrying 300 pounds of gold.
Mansa Musa’s prodigious generosity and piety, as well as the fine clothes and exemplary behavior of his followers, did not fail to create a most-favorable impression. The Cairo that Mansa Musa visited was ruled by one of the greatest of the Mamluk sultans, Al-Malik al-Nasir. The emperor’s great civility notwithstanding, the meeting between the two rulers might have ended in a serious diplomatic incident because Mansa Musa was so absorbed for so in his religious observances that it was only with difficulty that he was persuaded to pay a formal visit to the sultan. The historian al-'Umari, who visited Cairo 12 years after the emperor’s visit, found the inhabitants of this city, with a population estimated at one million, still singing the praises of Mansa Musa. So lavish was the emperor in his spending that he flooded the Cairo market with gold, thereby causing such a decline in its value that the market some 12 years later had still not fully recovered.
Rulers of West African states had made pilgrimages to Mecca before Mansa Musa, but the effect of his flamboyant journey was to advertise both Mali and Mansa Musa well beyond the African continent and to stimulate a desire among the Muslim kingdoms of North Africa, and among many of European nations as well, to reach the source of this incredible wealth.
Mansa Musa, whose empire was one of the largest in the world at that time, is reported to have observed that it would take a year to travel from one end of his empire to the other. While this was probably an exaggeration, it is known that during his pilgrimage to Mecca one of his generals, Sagmandia (Sagaman-dir), extended the empire by capturing the Songhai capital of Gao. The Songhai kingdom measured several hundreds of miles across, so that the conquest meant the acquisition of a vast territory. The 14th-century traveler Ibn Battuta noted that it took about four months to travel from the northern borders of the Mali empire to Niani in the south.
Mansa Musa was so overjoyed by the new acquisition that he decided to delay his return to Niani and to visit Gao instead. In Gao, Mansa Musa received the personal submission of the Songhai king and took the king’s two sons as hostages. At both Gao and Timbuktu, a Songhai city almost rivaling Gao in importance, Mansa Musa commissioned Abu Ishaq al-Sahili, a Granada poet and architect who had traveled with Mansa Musa from Mecca, to build mosques. The Gao mosque was built of burnt bricks, which had not, until then, been used as a material for building in West Africa.
Under Mansa Musa, Timbuktu grew to be a very important commercial city having caravan connections with Egypt and with all other important trade centers in North Africa. Side by side with the encouragement of trade and commerce, learning and the arts received royal patronage. Scholars who were mainly interested in history, Qur'anic theology, and law were to make the mosque of Sankore in Timbuktu a teaching center and to lay the foundations of the University of Sankore.
The organization and smooth administration of a purely African empire, the founding of the University of Sankore, the expansion of trade in Timbuktu, the architectural innovations in Gao, Timbuktu, and Niani and, indeed, throughout the whole of Mali and in the subsequent Songhai empire are all testimony to Mansa Musa’s superior administrative gifts. In addition, the moral and religious principles he had taught his subjects endured after his death.
Mansa Musa is renowned for his wealth and generosity. Online articles in the 21st century have claimed that Mansa Musa was the richest person of all time. Historians have argued that Musa's wealth is impossible to accurately calculate. Furthermore, it is difficult to meaningfully compare the wealth of historical figures such as Mansa Musa, due to the difficulty of separating the personal wealth of a monarch from the wealth of the state and the difficulty of comparing wealth in highly different societies. Nevertheless, it is estimated that Musa's wealth exceeded $400 billion in today's United States currency, an amount that would make him the richest man in history.
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