Africa’s forgotten £400bn ruler who experts think was the richest person ever | World | News
A forgotten ruler of Africa was worth £400 billion and almost crashed the Egyptian economy through his gift-giving.
Mansa Musa was the ninth Mansa of the Mali Empire. His reign in the 14th century is often regarded as the height of Mali’s power and prestige.
The ruler was incredibly wealthy, being described as inconceivably rich by his contemporaries. He is now thought to be the richest person who ever lived.
“Contemporary accounts of Musa’s wealth are so breathless that it’s almost impossible to get a sense of just how wealthy and powerful he truly was,” Rudolph Butch Ware, associate professor of history at the University of California, told the BBC.
Local manuscripts and travellers’ accounts state that Mansa Musa’s wealth came from the Mali Empire’s control and taxation of the salt trade in northern regions and gold mining in the south.
During the reign of Mansa Musa, the empire of Mali accounted for almost half of the Old World’s gold, according to the British Museum. Mali is also believed to have been involved in the trade of goods such as ivory, slaves, spices, silks, and ceramics.
The empire comprised land in west Africa that is now part of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Ivory Coast.
Musa went on Hajj, an annual Islamic pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, in 1324 – travelling over 4,000 miles with an entourage of 60,000 and a vast supply of gold.
He gifted powerful allies cloth made of gold thread, furs, goldwork jewellery and weapons, and horses. It is also said he would give gold to the poor and build mosques on his route.
En route, he spent time in Cairo, where his lavish gift-giving is said to have depreciated the value of gold in Egypt and garnered the attention of the wider Muslim world.
Contemporary writer Al-Umari said that before Musa’s arrival, a mithqal of gold was worth 25 silver dirhams, but that it dropped to less than 22 dirhams afterwards and did not go above that number for at least 12 years.
US-based technology company SmartAsset.com estimates that due to the depreciation of gold, Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage led to about $1.5billion (£1.1billion) of economic losses across the Middle East.
On his way back home, Mansa Musa passed through Egypt again, and according to some, tried to help the country’s economy by removing some of the gold from circulation by borrowing it back at extortionate interest rates from Egyptian lenders. Others say he spent so much that he ran out of gold.
Historians have argued that Musa’s wealth is impossible to calculate accurately. Those present at the time may have been trying to simply express that Musa had more gold than they thought possible.
It is also hard to meaningfully compare the wealth of historical figures, as it is difficult to separate a monarch’s personal wealth from the state’s and compare wealth across highly different societies.
