Mansa Musa's Journey To Mecca

Mansa Musa, who ruled from 1312 to 1337 CE (often referred to as “the golden age of the Mali Empire”), was the tenth mansa, or king, of the Mali Empire, which was located in the Sahara Desert and “stretched across two thousand miles from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Chad” (Alkhateeb; Tesfu). In 1324 CE, Musa, a Muslim ruler, decided to begin his pilgrimage to Mecca, called the Hajj, which is the fifth pillar of Islam. Mansa Musa’s visit to Cairo, Egypt during his Hajj to Mecca had an incredibly negative impact on the economy in Egypt for over a decade. Mahmud Kali, a native scholar and Islamic judge of Timbuktu, provided insight into Mansa Musa’s initial reason for deciding to set out on his pilgrimage to Mecca: Muhammad Quma, a scholar, had told Kali that “the Mali-koy Kankan Musa had killed his mother, Nana Kankan, by mistake. For this he felt deep regret and remorse and feared

Wallerstein described how Cairo’s “economic crisis was accompanied by a breakdown of its monetary system.” The dramatic drop in the value of gold, which people majorly depended on as currency, showed that the economy there had clearly declined tremendously due to Musa’s distribution of gold in Egypt. Just as Alkhateeb stated, “the effect that Mansa Musa’s visit had on Egypt clearly shows the wealth and importance of the Mali Empire, even when it encountered far-off lands.” By the end of the fourteenth century CE, the economy in Egypt experienced a depreciation due to the substantial decline of the currency system. Although Mansa Musa set out on the Hajj in order to help others in need by generously giving out bountiful amounts of gold, the results ironically turned out to have a significantly negative impact that lasted for as long as 12 years—over an entire decade—until the Egyptian economy could gradually and finally recover from the damage Mansa Musa had