The story of Mansa Musa

Many people when talking about the richest people will say names like Rockefeller, Gates, Bezos but the man I’m going to talk about today is considered to be the wealthiest man to ever live so wealthy that it can’t be put into a number this man is named Mansa Musa a king who ruled the kingdom of Mali in West Africa in the 14^th century.

Musa comes from a long line of rulers he was not born as the heir to the throne his brother was the first to come to power and when his brother went on an expedition and never returned Musa came to power and over the next 25 years under his rule the kingdom would grow to become the wealthiest the world had ever seen and expand its borders to from modern day Niger all the way to the Atlantic Ocean that is 2,000 miles of land.

With so much land came many resources in the from of salt and gold the kingdom of Mali accounted for almost half of the old world’s gold according to the British Museum. Musa was also able to acquire a couple of key cities including Timbuktu So many cities did not mind joining because of the lavish lifestyle that people who lived under Musa had been subjected to.

Regardless this was merely the introduction to the world of the abundance of wealth he what he would do next would make him a household name see Musa was a devout Muslim and in Islam taking a pilgrimage to the holy city of mecca is a big deal so Musa took 60 thousand men dressed in the finest silks and slaves who carried 3-5 pounds of gold and camels that carried about 300 pounds of gold each and as he would travel through all these various places on his journey he would give gold to the poor he gave out so much gold on his journey he destroyed several economies and made the value of gold drop in the whole region but he continued to spread his wealth and to stabilize the value of gold he decided to borrow gold from different places with high-interest rates to stabilize the cost of gold this to me is the most impressive and unselfish thing done by a human.

What he did on his way to and from Mecca showed how one man who was not born into wealth can work his way to the top and gain it and also share it with others this is something I can only hope to do in my lifetime but I believe that if the richest man in history was able to do something so selfless we all can no matter how small