Universal Encyclopedia
Who was Mansa Musa?
Mansa Musa (reigned c.1312–1337) was the emperor of Mali, the great West African empire, whose 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca — a caravan of 60,000 people carrying tons of gold — made him famous across the medieval world and the basis of his reputation as the richest person in history.
Last updated: October 2026
His spending in Cairo was so lavish that the price of gold in Egypt stayed depressed for a decade. On his return he poured wealth into Timbuktu and Gao, building mosques and madrasas that made Mali a center of Islamic scholarship — and put a crowned black king on European maps, notably the Catalan Atlas of 1375.