Mansa Musa

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Mansa Musa^[1] was a 14th century king (or Mansa) who ruled the Mali Empire between 1312 and 1337. He is remembered for his fabled hajj and as a benefactor of Islamic scholarship.

[edit] Biography

Mansa Musa was the grand-nephew of the founder of the Mali Empire, Sundiata Keita, and ruled over Mali while it was the source of almost half the world's gold. Musa was a devoted Muslim, and Islamic scholarship flourished under his rule. With Musa as a benefactor, Sankore University in Timbuktu reached its height. Craftsmen and especially Islamic scholars came from all over the Muslim world to receive a free education at Sankore's guilds and madrasas.

When he passed through Cairo in July of 1324, he was reportedly accompanied by a caravan that included thousands of people and nearly a hundred camels, giving away so much gold that it took over a decade for the economy across North Africa to recover, due to the rapid inflation that it initiated. The Arab historian al-Umari records that Musa was so generous that he ran out of money and had to take out a loan to be able to afford the journey home.^{[citation needed]} Musa's hajj, and especially his gold, caught the attention of both the Islamic and Christian worlds.

In 1352, Ibn Battuta spent a month at the royal court of the Mansa. He described a society where Islamic practice was integrated with local religious rituals. During Battuta's visit to Nyani he is noted as writing ""On feast days...the poets come in. Each of them is inside a figure resembling a thrush, made of feathers, and provided with a wooden head with a red beak, to look like a thrush's head..." .^[2] He was succeeded in 1337 by his son Maghan and in 1341 by his brother Suleyman.

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