Mansa Mūsā

King of Mali (r. 1312-1337)

• Born: c. 1280
• Birthplace: Probably Niani, Mali
• Died: 1337
• Place of death: Niani, Mali

Mūsā was the ruler of the empire of Mali, the dominant political and cultural force in West Africa in the fourteenth century and a major influence in the development of an Islamic intellectual and religious environment in the region.

Early Life

Mansa Mūsā (MAN-sah MOO-sah) was a member of the powerful Keita clan, whose members ruled the West African empire of Mali from around 1250 until some two centuries later. According to the Muslim historian Ibn Khaldūn, Mūsā was the ninth ruler of Mali and a grandnephew of its founder, Sundiata. (“Mansa” is an honorific title analogous to “highness” or “excellency” in Europe.)

Almost nothing is known about Mūsā’s childhood, since the various chronicles that mention him are little more than dynastic narratives. It is reasonable to suppose that he was educated as a Muslim, a matter of importance in assessing his later achievements. Mali was the first large Islamic polity in West Africa, and the Keita Dynasty was generally Islamized by Mūsā’s time. There is considerable disagreement over whether Sundiata, the founder of the line, was a Muslim; he is usually depicted as a pagan sorcerer-king. For a time, the use of Arabic names for the Keita rulers was observed only indifferently, but by Mūsā’s reign, the practice was firmly established.

Life’s Work

Historians generally identify Mūsā’s reign with the height of Malian prestige and cultural achievement. This tendency is, in part, a result of the fact that much more is known about Mūsā than about others of his clan. Ibn Khaldūn covers Mali, particularly the career of Mūsā, extensively, despite the empire’s position on the edge of the Islamic world, and the historian is effusive in his praise. Shortly after Mūsā’s death, the accomplished traveler Ibn BatŃtŃūtŃah made his way to Mali and passed on a detailed and positive account of its culture. Mūsā also made himself more accessible to posterity by undertaking the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, together with an enormous entourage. In 1324-1325, his party passed through Cairo, where he was interviewed by Egyptian government secretaries, and in 1338, some of these interviews were recorded by al-ՙUmarī, whose work still survives.

Evidence suggests that Mūsā was a devout Muslim, in contrast to the rather nominal piety of some of his predecessors. Although he was the third ruler of the Keita Dynasty to undertake the hajj, the first two did not take Arabic names, and one of them died en route under mysterious circumstances. Mūsā appears to represent the growing Islamic influence in Mali, but local traditions about him also imply that pagan religious and political elements resented this development and on occasion may have resisted it.

Mūsā was the builder of a strong and growing empire, rather than the caretaker of a kingdom in its golden age, as some popular accounts suggest. Even during his pilgrimage, Malian armies were active, and the capture of the enormous Songhai principality of Gao, east of the great bend of the Niger River, may have forced the king to end his travels early and hasten back to Mali. By the end of Mūsā’s reign, Mali extended from the Atlantic coast, near modern Senegal, close to the borders of contemporary Nigeria in the east and far into the Sahara Desert in the north. Only the forest fringe of the West African coast from Liberia to Benin remained outside direct Malian authority. Some historians describe Mali as substantially larger than all Europe. Though probably accurate as far as area is concerned, these estimates imply a far larger population than actually existed. A fairer comparison of the size and population of Mali would be to the Inca Empire in South America.

Mali’s livelihood derived principally from the export of gold across the Sahara to entrepôts on the Mediterranean, where it was purchased by European merchants. The trade itself began as early as Roman times, but during Mali’s period of development and greatest strength, it expanded by at least an order of magnitude. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, many European governments, pressed by expanding economies and currency demands, returned to minting gold coins after a hiatus of many centuries. The frantic demand for gold drove prices up and encouraged the systematization of gold production in Mali. Under Mūsā and other Malian kings, the gold trade became a state monopoly, and the revenue doubtless was critical to the ability of the empire to expand and consolidate in Mūsā’s time. In this sense, Mūsā and the Keita clan were as much a part of the medieval economic surge in the Mediterranean world as any European family of bankers or princes.

It was in religion and culture, however, that Mūsā may have had his greatest impact. He actively encouraged the spread of Islam and the development of Islamic institutions. His efforts included a campaign for the construction of mosques throughout his domain. Among the intellectuals who accompanied Mūsā back to Mali after his pilgrimage was Abū Isḥāq al-Sahili, possibly the most outstanding architect of medieval Islam. His varied talents included not only architecture and city planning but also poetry and music, and they indicate the richness of Islamic culture with which Mūsā seeded his kingdom. Abū Isḥāq perfected techniques of mosque construction using West African materials, including the difficult task of building minarets out of mud brick. Some of his mosques still stand in the cities of modern Mali.

Mūsā also encouraged the development of systematic study and education . At the Sankore mosque in the fabled city of Timbuktu, near the northernmost part of the Niger’s course, theologians, geographers, mathematicians, historians, and scientists gathered into a community that continued to publish until well into the eighteenth century. Just as Christian thinkers collected around cathedrals and thus began the European university tradition, Muslim intellectuals congregated around mosques, and Sankore was one of the best. Its fame spread as far as Egypt and Morocco. Professors summoned to teach in Timbuktu from some of the intellectual hotbeds of Islam often became the students of the Timbuktu scholars rather than their instructors.

Significance

Mansa Mūsā probably died in 1337. Under his rule, Mali had achieved a level of wealth and international prestige never before experienced in West Africa. It carried on diplomatic relations with Egypt, North African kingdoms, and other African states, and occasionally came to the notice of Europeans. Malian administrative and economic elaboration was crucial to driving the forces of medieval European expansion, trade, and capital accumulation. Thanks to Mūsā’s determination, Islam was able to sink its roots deeply into West African culture.

There was, however, a tragic element in Mansa Mūsā’s story. His was a tempestuous family; no firm rules of succession could be established. Mūsā himself may have come to the throne in circumstances of intrigue: He told the Egyptians a story that his predecessor had disappeared on an ocean voyage. Owing in part to this dynastic instability, much of the cultural efflorescence under Mūsā did not survive.

Nor did a substantial amount of his contrived Islamic influence. Underneath the struggles for power in Mali and the Keita clan lay a network of pagan priests and other royal families who regarded Islam as an adversary. Later, the Songhai broke away from Mali and eventually overwhelmed it. They were more disposed to paganism, and in the Songhai period, many elements of Islamic culture and influence in West Africa vanished or were seriously diminished. Many later historians, more familiar with recent African history than with the medieval period, consequently undervalued the influence of Islam in West African history.

The greatest irony of Mūsā’s career is something he himself could not have known. When his pilgrimage entourage arrived in Cairo in 1324, it brought so much gold that it dumbfounded local observers. In obedience to Muslim piety, the pilgrims distributed incredible amounts of wealth throughout Egypt, so much that some medieval historians believe that the gold standard in the eastern Mediterranean nearly collapsed. Inevitably, news of this phenomenon traveled along the commercial intelligence network in the Mediterranean, until it reached the famous guild of Jewish cartographers in the Balearic Islands.

By 1375, Mūsā’s likeness was appearing on European maps of West Africa, where previously there had been only fabulous beasts to conceal Europe’s ignorance of the region. On those maps, Mūsā was shown seated on a throne of gold. It was the beginning of the end. Almost at the same time as the pagan Songhai began to run amok, Portuguese mariners began probing their way down the African coast, electrified by tales of unbelievable wealth: Mali was doomed.

Bibliography

Bell, Nawal Morcos. “The Age of Mansa Mūsa in Mali: Problems in Succession and Chronology.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 5 (1972): 221-234. A summary of problems in Keita dynastic structure and chronology. Concludes that scholars have relied too heavily on Ibn Khaldūn’s assurances of legitimate succession and that it was really an ad hoc affair without clearly established rules.

Bovill, E. W. The Golden Trade of the Moors. London: Oxford University Press, 1968. A description of Mūsā’s era, emphasizing his contributions to the cultural and intellectual life of the empire.

Burns, Khephra. Mansa Mūsa: The Lion of Mali. Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. San Diego: Harcourt, 2001. Designed for young readers, a fictional account of Mansa Mūsā’s wanderings as a boy.

Davidson, Basil, ed. The African Past: Chronicle from Antiquity to Modern Times. Boston: Little, Brown, 1964. A translation of selected descriptions of Mūsā in Cairo during the pilgrimage to Mecca, and a portion of Ibn BatŃtŃūtŃah’s account of Mali. Also see Davidson’s The Lost Cities of Africa (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959).

Levtzion, Nehemia. “The Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Kings of Mali.” Journal of African History 4 (1963): 341-354. Summarizes the history of the Keita Dynasty, more or less according to Ibn Khaldūn. Describes how Mūsā usually received favorable treatment from chroniclers because he was a Muslim and shows how nearly every achievement in the history of Mali has been associated with his reign. Also see Levtzion’s Ancient Ghana and Mali (London: Methuen, 1973).

Palumbo, Joe. Mansa Mūsa, African King of Gold: A Unit of Study for Grades 7-9. Los Angeles: National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles, 1991. A teacher’s guide to preparing a unit on Mansa Mūsā.

Trimingham, J. Spencer. A History of Islam in West Africa. London: Oxford University Press, 1962. An extensive treatment of the empire of Mali, constructed both from the work of major Arab geographers and chroniclers and from Arabic-language sources written by contemporaneous West African scholars.