Is Mansa Munsa the Richest Man in History?
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest man on the planet, according to the 2019 Forbes billionaires’ list released in March 2019. He is the richest man in contemporary history with a fortune of approximately $131bn (₤ 99bn). However, he is in no way the wealthiest man to ever live. That title is thought to belong to Mansa Musa, the 14th Century West African leader that was so wealthy that his charitable handouts damaged an entire nation’s economy.
” Contemporary accounts of Musa’s wealth are so flabbergasted that it is practically inconceivable to get a sense of simply exactly how rich as well as powerful he was,” Rudolph Butch Ware, associate professor of history at the University of California, informed the BBC.
Mansa Musa was ” richer than anyone might describe ” Jacob Davidson covered the African king for Money.com in 2015.
The US website ” Celebrity Net Worth ” estimated his riches at $400bn in 2012. However, economic historians acknowledge that his riches are impossible to determine to a number.
The ten wealthiest men to ever live
- Mansa Musa, king of the Mali empire (1280-1337) – immensurable wealth.
- Augustus Caesar, Roman emperor (63 BC-14 AD) – $4.6 tn (₤ 3.5 tn).
- Zhao Xu, emperor Shenzong of Song in China (1048-1085) – immensurable wealth.
- Akbar I, emperor of India’s Mughal dynasty (1542-1605) – immensurable wealth.
- Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919, Scottish-American industrialist) – $372bn.
- John D Rockefeller (1839-1937) American company magnate) – $341bn.
- Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (1868-1918, Tsar of Russia) – $300bn.
- Mir Osman Ali Khan (1886-1967, Indian royal) – $230bn.
- William The Conqueror (1028-1087) – $229.5 bn.
- Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011, long-time ruler of Libya) – $200bn.
The golden king
In 1280, Mansa Musa was born into a family of rulers. His brother, Mansa Abu-Bakr, ruled the empire till 1312, when he relinquished to explore.
According to 14th Century Syrian historian Shibab al-Umari, Abu-Bakr was infatuated with the Atlantic Ocean and what lay past it. He reportedly started an exploration with a fleet of 2,000 ships and thousands of men, women, and servants. They cruised off, never to return.
Like the late American historian Ivan Van Sertima, some consider the concept that they got to South America. However, there is no proof of this.
All the same, Mansa Musa acquired the kingdom he left.
Under his control, the kingdom of Mali expanded considerably. He annexed 24 cities, consisting of Timbuktu.
The kingdom stretched for roughly 2,000 miles, from the Atlantic Ocean to modern-day Niger, absorbing parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Ivory Coast.
With such a vast landmass came fantastic resources such as gold and salt.
According to the British Museum, throughout the sovereignty of Mansa Musa, the empire of Mali accounted for nearly half of the Old World’s gold. And, all of it belonged to the king.
” As the leader, Mansa Musa had practically unlimited access to the most highly valued source of riches in the medieval world,” Kathleen Bickford Berzock, specializing in African art at the Block Museum of Art at the Northwestern University, told the BBC.
” Major trading centers that traded in gold, as well as other products, were also in his territory, and also he amassed riches from this trade,” she included.
The trip to Mecca
Despite the empire of Mali’s abundance in gold, the kingdom itself was not well known.
This shifted when Mansa Musa, a devout Muslim, decided to pilgrimage to Mecca, traveling through the Sahara Desert and Egypt with a reported caravan of 60,000 men.
He took his entire royal court as well as officials, soldiers, griots (entertainers), merchants, camel drivers, and also 12,000 servants, as well as an extensive train of goats and sheep for food. It was a city migrating across the desert.
A city whose inhabitants, entirely down to the slaves, were outfitted in gold brocade and finest Persian silk. A hundred camels remained in tow, each camel lugging numerous pounds of pure gold. It was a view to look at.
Furthermore, the view got even more opulent once the caravan reached Cairo, where they might flaunt their wealth.
The Cairo gold crash
Mansa Musa left such an unforgettable image on Cairo that al-Umari, who visited the city 12 years after the Malian king, stated how highly individuals of Cairo were speaking of him.
So extravagantly did he hand out gold in Cairo that his three-month stopover created the cost of gold to drop in the region for ten years, damaging the economy.
US-based modern technology company SmartAsset.com estimates that Mansa Musa’s expedition led to approximately $1.5 bn (₤ 1.1 bn) of economic losses throughout the Middle East due to the depreciation of gold.
On his back home, Mansa Musa traveled through Egypt once more. According to some, he attempted to assist the country’s economy by removing some of the gold from circulation by borrowing it back at an expensive interest rate from Egyptian lending institutions. Others claim he spent so much that he lacked gold.
Lucy Duran of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London mentions that Malian griots, who are singing historian narrators, particularly, were disturbed with him.
” He gave out much Malian gold in the process that jelis [griots] do not like to commend him in their tunes since they assume he threw away neighborhood sources outside the empire,” she claimed.
Education at heart
There is no question that Mansa Musa spent, or wasted, a great deal of gold throughout his pilgrimage. However, it was this extreme generosity that additionally stood out of the globe.
Mansa Musa had placed Mali and also himself on the map, rather actually. An illustration of an African king seated on a golden throne atop Timbuktu, holding a portion of gold in his hand, was found in a Catalan Atlas map from 1375.
Timbuktu ended up being an African El Dorado, and also, people came from near and far to have a peek.
The legendary status persisted to the 19th Century as a shed city of gold at the edge of the globe, a flare for European fortune hunters and explorers. This was mainly due to the ventures of Mansa Musa 500 years prior.
Mansa Musa returned from Mecca with many Islamic scholars, consisting of direct progenitures of the prophet Muhammad and also an Andalusian poet and also architect by the name of Abu Es Haq es Saheli, that is commonly credited with designing the famous Djinguereber mosque.
The king supposedly paid the poet 200 kg (440lb) in gold, which would undoubtedly be $8.2 m (₤ 6.3 m) in today’s money.
In addition to encouraging the arts and architecture, he likewise funded literary works and constructed schools, libraries, and mosques. Timbuktu quickly turned into a center of education, and individuals journeyed from all over the world to study at what would undoubtedly turn into Sankore University.
The wealthy king is often credited with beginning the practice of education in West Africa, although the tale of his empire largely stays unfamiliar outside West Africa.
According to Britain’s World War II Prime Minister Winston Churchill, history is written by victors.
After Mansa Musa passed away in 1337, aged 57, the empire was inherited by his sons, who could not hold the empire together. The smaller states broke short, and the empire fell apart.
The later arrival of Europeans in the area was the empire’s last straw.
According to Lisa Corrin Graziose, director of the Block Museum of Art, the tale of Mansa Musa is not widely known because the medieval period’s history is still mainly seen only as Western history.
“Had Europeans showed up in substantial numbers in Musa’s time, with Mali at the height of its armed forces and also economic power as opposed to a couple of hundred years later, things likely would have been various,” states Mr. Ware.
Originally published on bbc.com. Read the original article.
