West Africa · a Light

Mansa Musa's hajj was still being discussed in Cairo years later

In 1324 Mansa Musa, ruler of Mali, crossed the Sahara for the hajj with a very large caravan. In Cairo he gave away and spent so much gold that, according to the Egyptian official al-Umari who was writing about twelve years afterwards, the price of gold in the city had still not recovered and local people were talking about it. On the way home he recruited scholars and an architect from Granada, Abu Ishaq al-Sahili, who worked at Timbuktu and Gao. The Djinguereber mosque at Timbuktu dates from that return. European mapmakers, hearing the reports, began drawing a king with a gold nugget in the middle of Africa.

Mansa Musa of Mali · hajj of 1324