Thread by @DavidZabinsky

Gates, Bezos, Musk

We've heard their stories

But how about the story of Mansa Musa, former King of the Mali Empire, whose wealth and influence were SO vast that he at one point owned half of the world's gold and single-handedly caused a $1.5bn crash in the Middle East?

Thread:

1) Musa became Mansa (king or emperor) of the Mali Empire in 1312 and ruled until 1337

Annexing 24 cities during his reign, he saw his kingdom expand over 2,000 miles, taking up much of West Africa

Naturally, ownership of so much land came with ownership of so much...gold

2) Still relatively unknown outside of West Africa in the year 1324, Musa decided to organize a trip that'd be heard all around the world

He gathered a caravan of 60,000 men (soldiers, entertainers, and slaves) dressed in gold and silk to make the 2,700mi pilgrimage to Mecca

3) With each slave carrying 4 pounds of gold bars and each camel towing hundreds of pounds of gold dust, Musa's caravan reportedly had 18 TONS of gold in transit

18 tons of gold in July 2021?

$1.04bn

But why carry so much gold to perform the religious hajj in Mecca, you ask?

4) Mansa Musa had a reputation to earn

Stopping in Cairo en route to Mecca, Musa began to literally litter the streets with gold

Handing gold out like candy, Musa caused the gold price to collapse, leading to $1.5bn economic decline in the area that'd take 12 years to recover

5) Despite such opulence, Musa did indeed have concrete, impactul visions for his empire

Back then, one of the bigger cities in the Mali Empire was Timbuktu, used primarily as a trade hub for African merchants

But Musa wanted Timbuktu to be something more than just a trade hub

6) He hired renowned poet and architect Abu Isaq Sahili for 440lb of gold (worth $11.6m today) to remodel Timbuktu into a cultural world icon

Musa built the city up with universities and mosques, turning Timbuktu into what some historians call the 'Paris of the Medieval World'

7) Perhaps proudest of Musa's accomplishments in Timbuktu was Sankore Madrassah: a learning center that taught Quran, math, science, languages, and more

Sankore Madrassah in Timbuktu STILL exists today, making it the oldest contiously-operating school in Sub-Saharan Africa

8) Musa died in 1337 and handed his empire to his sons to crumble, catalyzed of course by the European's arrival in West Africa only a century later

Even today, Mansa Musa is considered one of if not the richest man in world history, with some estimating a net worth of $400bn

9) Asking yourself why you've never heard of Mansa Musa and his story?

Perhaps Winston Churchill said it best:

'History is written by the victors'

Learn something today?

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