Jakarta –
Who is richer man in who has ever lived world? The answer turned out to be no Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos outdoing each other in first place. There is another much richer person, Mansa Musa.
Quoted detikINET from IFL science, Mansa Musa or Emperor Moses, was the richest man of all time. So rich, he would have brought down the Egyptian economy in the Middle Ages.
He visited Cairo and generously spent his gold bars to the point of devaluing Egypt at that time.
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Musa became the 14th-century West African ruler from the Mali Empire who reigned from 1312 until his death in 1337. Born in 1280, Musa inherited the kingdom when Mansa Abu-Bakr left his position in 1312, to embark on a expedition across the Atlantic and never to return.
His own empire was already very rich thanks to the natural resources of West Africa. Not only is West Africa famous for its gold, it is also rich in copper, shells (used as currency for centuries in parts of Africa), spices, beads, salt and other luxury goods.
Compared to the list of the richest people in the world of modern times, Musa’s wealth is worth around $ 400 billion, while the wealth of Elon Musk 219 billion dollars e Jeff Bezos 171 billion according to Forbes records.
“The Western way and the way African history is viewed, most often through the lens of the slave trade and colonialism,” said Kathleen Berzock, curator of Caravans of Gold, an exhibition exploring global impact. of medieval West Africa.
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Shells have been currency in parts of Africa for centuries. Photo: Abraham Cresques, Bibliotheque Nationale de France / Public Domain |
“Because of that bias and its emphasis, the perception that has emerged is that Africa did not have an important history that preceded these global events.”
Indeed, history records that Mali was a rich and successful empire. In his day, trade, people and ideas traveled freely across the Sahara between West Africa, the Middle East and even East Asia.
Its territory stretched 3,200 kilometers from the Atlantic coast, including what are now Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Chad.
During his reign, Musa greatly expanded the empire and annexed 24 cities, including Timbuktu, then an important center of culture and trade.
Moses was an ambitious ruler. But beyond that, the natural resources in all of his lands offered unimaginable riches. Pure gold became the most famous and most valuable resource in the world at that time.
 The Catalan Atlas lists Mansa Musa as the richest man of all time. Photo: Abraham Cresques, Bibliotheque Nationale de France / Public Domain |
“In Arabic descriptions of the history of the Mali empire, it is said that for every gold nugget found or mined, the people must pay homage to the king in the form of a gold nugget,” Berzock said.
His determination to increase the wealth, trade and economic influence of his land, as well as his devotion to Islam, to his religion, led him to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324.
On his way, he was very generous and shared his gold. But his actions are said to have damaged the economy of Cairo and other cities he has gone through because the value of gold immediately dropped and prices soared.
To remedy this situation, on the way back Musa tried to borrow as much gold as he could bring from a Cairo moneylender at high interest rates, but this attempt failed.
History records this event as the only time anyone was able to directly control the price of gold in the Mediterranean region.
The story of his travels is so famous that it is immortalized in the Catalan Atlas, the most important map of the medieval period. The map also features an illustration of Moses, the richest man of all time, holding a gold coin.
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