Everything you offer with charity, seeking the face of God, will be blessed by Him.
Sweet words of the Koran, but a tad ironic when they are compared to the richest man of all time, by the developers of a game that turns civilizations, trade, wonders, culture and armies of history into a long and wonderful strategy game.
When we think about money it may happen that we are reminded, perhaps with genuine envy, of the wealth of the currently richest people in the world. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk et alii, famous and important names, some more and some less, for the most disparate reasons.
Names and riches that pale in front of the richest man in the world, or rather, the one who is unanimously defined as the historically richest man rich everything in the history of man. Who is? Who he was, rather: Muse I, better known as Mansa Musa, ninth mansa (hereditary ruler) of the Mali Empire since 1312.
The ninth emperor of Mali: Mansa Musa
Mansa Musa, born around 1280, belonged to a wealthy family close to the royal court. In the 1312 he ascended the throne after the mysterious disappearance of King Mansa Abubakari, who left on an expedition to the Atlantic Ocean. During the reign of him, Mansa Musa transformed the Mali empire into one of the richest nations and powerful people in the world.
One of Mansa Musa’s first acts was the transformation of Timbuktu in a cultural and intellectual center. The city became a magnet for scholars and intellectuals from all over Africa, thanks to the construction of schools, libraries and mosques. Two birds with one stone: strengthened the cultural cohesion of the empire and exponentially increased its prestige.
An example? Let’s look at the famous man about ten years after ascending the throne, as described by a historian.
Musa left with a huge following of 60,000 men, 12,000 slaves loads of four pounds of gold in bars eachheralds dressed in silk with horses with golden stirrups and eighty camelseach with a sum of between fifty and three hundred pounds of gold powder donated to each poor person he met on his path. Along the waywhich took him through Cairo (where he met the Mamluk sultan al-Nasir Muhammad) and Medina, distributed in various ways an enormous quantity ofgold as well as building every Friday a new mosque to pray in; it is said that the gold given was such that cause a period of inflation in Egypt that lasted for twelve years.
And what an empire, that of Mali. An inescapable heritage
The Mali empire, 50 million people under the leadership of Mansa Musa, included what today includes just a few places: southern Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Southern Algeria and Chad.
Mansa Musa made his fortune through manufacturing and trade in gold and salt, two of the most valuable resources of the time. His caravans crossed the Sahara to bring these riches to the Mediterranean markets. What is certain, however, is that a significant part of his wealth also came from trade of slaves, a reality not exactly applicable in our historical period, fortunately. And how lucky was he? 367 billion dollars, more or less.
We’re way beyond modern names, aren’t we?
