After 683 years, the King of Mali, Mansa Musa passed away and to this day he still leads the all-time list of the richest people in the world.
This list features his fellow African who ruled Libya for 40 years until 2011, Col Muammar Gaddafi.
Mansa Musa ruled Mali in the 14th century from 1312 to 1337, and was characterized by the expansion of the country in terms of borders, economy, and relations among others.
Although today the world has rich people including Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos, historians and economists say that no one will die to untie Mansa Musa’s shoelaces because, if the money he had is converted into the value of the dollar today, it is about 400 billion. The BBC reported that the wealth this man had could not be counted in money.
This is clearly explained by the professor of history at the University of California Rudolph Butch Ware who said: “Calculating the scale of Moses’ wealth today is unreasonable because it seems impossible to imagine the wealth and power he had”.
The blessing of this emperor begins in the way he gained power, because when the emperor who was there at the time and his elder brother Mansa Abu-Bakr was going on the holy pilgrimage to Mecca known as ‘Hajj’ in the Islamic religion, he chose that Mansa Musa would be left as his deputy.
This was the case until Abu-Bakr decided to continue his journey to discover what was across the Atlantic Ocean and ended up not returning.
From this time on, Musa, as the successor of the emperor, immediately retained power, since he also came from a powerful royal family.
After taking power, Mali began to develop and expand at a high rate where it annexed 24 cities including Timbuktu.
Today, the Kingdom of Mali extends 3,218 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean to parts of what are now Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire. Ivory.
As the empire expanded, so did its wealth, because all these areas were mined for gold and salt.
According to the British Museum, the Kingdom of Mali owned half of the world’s gold at the time.
African historian Kathleen Bickford Berzock told the BBC that this is where Mansa kept his wealth.
He said, “As a ruler, Mansa Musa had uncontrollable rights to the markets of great wealth at that time, the commercial areas where gold and other products were sold were also in his possession and he got wealth from this business”.
Although Mansa Musa was prosperous until now, the world did not know him well until he participated in the Holy Pilgrimage to Mecca.
This trip caused the world to start wondering about this emperor because of the activities he did in it and the way he planned it.
He traveled through the Sahara Desert to Egypt, from there to Medina until he reached Mecca.
This entire journey was accompanied by 60 thousand people including leaders, soldiers, entertainers, camel drivers and 12 thousand slaves.
Along the way, they had brought herds of goats and sheep for food and camels full of gold.
In all these ways he traveled, he gave gold to different people, especially Cairo where he stayed for three months.
Apart from giving people gold, historians say that Mansa Musa spent a lot of money building mosques around Mali where it is said that every Friday a new mosque was filled, the most famous one being called ‘Djinguereber’
In addition to building mosques, Mansa also contributed to the construction of many universities that are still visible in this country.
List of the richest people of all time
Mansa Musa (1280-1337, King of Mali) His wealth is uncountable because it is so great
Augustus Caesar (63 BC-14 AD, Roman Emperor) $4.6tn
Zhao Xu (1048-1085, Emperor Shenzong of Song in China) His fortune is uncertain
Akbar I (1542-1605, Mughal Emperor of India) whose wealth is uncertain
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) is worth $372 billion
John D Rockefeller (1839-1937) is worth $341 billion
Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (1868-1918) is worth $300 billion
Mir Osman Ali Khan (1886-1967) is worth $230 billion
William The Conqueror (1028-1087) net worth $229.5 Billion
Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011) is worth $200 billion
