Al-Umari’s Account of Mansa Musa’s Visit to Cairo
Annotation
Mansa Musa was the leader of the Mali empire in the fourteenth century and reportedly the wealthiest person – allegedly ever. The empire covered modern-day Mali and parts of Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, and the Gambia, and Mansa Musa expanded the territorial claim to include Gao and Timbuktu. There are a number of written sources about Mansa Musa from the Arabic world and he was the ruler at what is considered the peak of the Mali empire.
Mansa Musa made a famous visit to Cairo, Egypt while he went on hajj, or a pilgrimage, to Mecca between 1324 and 1325. He sought to increase the empire's ties to the Muslim world. His spending was so extravagant with his spending and gift-giving in Cairo that contemporary writers such as Al-Umari noted that his trip affected the value of gold, which is what this primary source document discusses.
This source, written by Al-Umari, an Arab historian from Damascus, is one of the more well-known sources related to Mansa Musa and his hajj. Students can read this translated excerpt to gain an understanding of a large, prominent African empire from sub-Saharan Africa and the larger Muslim world during the post-classical period.
This virtual source can be found at this link.
Credits
"Mansa Musa's Visit to Cairo," from Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, Edited by Nehemiah Levtzion & J. F. P. Hopkins (Cambridge University Press, 1981) pp. 269-273. Sourced from Digital History at the University of Houston, 2021, https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/1492/mansa_musa_visit.cfm.