A Lavish Trip That Ruined an Empire
The Mali Empire was founded in West Africa circa 1226, and became famous for its wealth. The empire’s riches were derived from huge gold deposits, salt, ivory, and slaves. The first few rulers piled up the gold, until Mansa Musa ascended the throne circa 1312, and began to splurge. His most lavish spree came when he decided to make the hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, about 2700 miles away, and do it in style to showcase his magnificence. Musa’s procession included 60,000 men, clad in expensive silk and brocade. Heralds were dressed in even more expensive silks and carried gold staffs, while 12,000 slaves bore 4 pounds of gold each. More wealth was borne on eighty camels, each with about 300 pounds of gold dust. As they trekked across the Sahara and savannah, Musa freely handed out gold to the poor he met along the way.
He made generous donations to cities along his route, and reportedly built a mosque every Friday. When he reached Cairo, he was fleeced by merchants exploited his ignorance of prices. His spending there caused prices to skyrocket, and pumped so much gold into the economy that inflation ravaged Egypt for years afterwards. Musa wanted to showcase his wealth, and he succeeded. A contemporary described his pilgrimage as “a lavish display of power, wealth, unprecedented by its size and pageantry“. However, Mansa Musa’s lavish pilgrimage nearly ruined his realm and set it on a steep decline. For generations, the Mali Empire had been known for its wealth. Two decades after Musa’s pilgrimage, medieval traveler Ibn Battuta visited Mali, and described it as poor. It fell to the neighboring Songhay Empire a few years later.