Editing Mansa Musa (section)

===Wealth===

Mansa Musa is renowned for his wealth and generosity. While online articles in the 21st century have claimed that Mansa Musa was the richest person of all time,{{sfn|Collet|2019|p=106}} historians such as Hadrien Collet have argued that Musa's wealth is impossible to calculate accurately.{{sfn|Collet|2019|p=106}}{{sfn|Mohamud|2019}} Contemporary Arabic sources may have been trying to express that Musa had more gold than they thought possible, rather than trying to give an exact number.{{sfn|Davidson|2015b}} Further, it is difficult meaningfully to compare the wealth of historical figures such as Mansa Musa, due both to the difficulty of separating the personal wealth of a monarch from the wealth of the state and to the difficulty of comparing wealth across highly different societies.{{sfn|Davidson|2015a}} Musa may have taken as much as 18 tons of gold on his hajj,{{sfn|Gomez|2018|p=106}} equal in value to over US$1.397 billion in 2024.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://ycharts.com/indicators/gold_price_in_us_dollar|title=Gold Price in US Dollars (USD/oz t)|access-date=24 January 2022|website=YCharts|archive-date=24 January 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220124150156/https://ycharts.com/indicators/gold_price_in_us_dollar|url-status=live}}</ref> Musa himself further promoted the appearance of having vast, inexhaustible wealth by spreading rumors that gold grew like a plant in his kingdom.{{sfn|Gomez|2018|p=121}}

According to some Arabic writers, Musa's gift-giving caused a depreciation in the value of gold in Egypt. Al-Umari said that before Musa's arrival a ''[[mithqal]]'' of gold was worth 25 silver ''[[dirhams]]'', but that it dropped to less than 22 ''dirhams'' afterward and did not go above that number for at least twelve years.{{sfn|Levtzion|Hopkins|2000|p=271}} Though this has been described as having "wrecked" Egypt's economy,{{sfn|Mohamud|2019}} the historian Warren Schultz has argued that this was well within normal fluctuations in the value of gold in Mamluk Egypt.{{sfn|Schultz|2006}}

The wealth of the Mali Empire did not come from direct control of gold-producing regions, but rather trade and tribute.{{sfn|Gomez|2018|pp=107–108}} The gold Musa brought on his pilgrimage probably represented years of accumulated tribute that Musa would have spent much of his early reign gathering.{{sfn|Gomez|2018|p=105}} Another source of income for Mali during Musa's reign was taxation of the copper trade.{{sfn|Levtzion|Hopkins|2000|p=272}}

According to several contemporary authors, such as Ibn Battuta, [[Ibn al-Dawadari]] and [[Ibn Fadlallah al-Umari|al-Umari]], Mansa Musa ran out of money during his journey to Mecca and had to borrow from Egyptian merchants at a high rate of interest on his return journey. Al-Umari and [[Ibn Khaldun]] state that the moneylenders were either never repaid or only partly repaid. Other sources disagree as to whether they were eventually and fully compensated.<ref>{{harvnb|Gomez|2018|pp=119–120}} "When Mansa Musa first arrived in Cairo he ‘and his followers bought all kinds of things … they thought that their money was inexhaustible.’ By the time they left for Mali a year later, they had to borrow the very resources they initially spent, as Ibn al-Dawadari relates: ‘Then these people became amazed at the ampleness of this country and how their money had become used up. So they became needy and resold what they had bought at half its value, and people made good profits out of them. And God knows best.’ […] Abu l-Hasan Ali b. Amir Hajib, who had befriended Mansa Musa, told al-Umari the former was forced to borrow money from Egyptian merchants (at) ‘a very high rate’ … ‘Avaricious people lent to them in the hope of big profits on their return [that is, to Mali], but everything they borrowed fell back on the heads of the lenders and they got nothing back. Among these was our friend the shaykh and imam Shams al-Din b. Tazmart al-maghribi. He lent them gold of good form but none of it came back.’… Ibn Khaldun records that the ‘Banu l-Kuwaykh’, or his family, were among those who loaned money to Musa, in this case 50,000 dinars. In partial repayment, Musa sold to Siraj al-Din the ‘palace’ given to him by the sultan al-Nasir, but to recover the entire amount, Siraj al-Din sent agents to Mali, later followed by his son Fakhr al-Din Abu Jafar. Other moneylenders did the same, and the sources disagree as to whether they were all eventually and fully compensated."</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343431925 |title=Mansa Musa's Journey to Mecca and Its Impact on Western Sudan (Conference: 'Routes of Hajj in Africa', at International University of Africa, Khartoum)|date=2020 |last1=Abbou |first1=Tahar |quote=With his lavish spending and generosity in Cairo, (Mansa Musa) ran out of money and had to borrow at high rates of interest for the return journey. Ibn Battuta says that Mansa Musa borrowed 50,000 dinars from Siraj al-Din ibn al-Kuwayk, a rich merchant from Alexandria, after he had spent all his wealth.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RwCHDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA308 |title=Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages: A Reader |publisher=University of Toronto Press |date=2011 |editor-last=Whalen |editor-first=Brett Edward |isbn=9781442603844 |pages=308 |quote=[Mansa Musa] could not meet his expenses. He therefore borrowed money from the principal merchants. Among those merchants who were in his company were the Banu l-Kuwayk, who gave him a loan of 50,000 dinars. He sold to them the palace which the sultan had bestowed on him as a gift. He [the sultan] approved it. Siraj al-Din b. al-Kuwayk sent his vizier along with him to collect what he had loaned to him but the vizier died there. Siraj al-Din sent another [emissary] with his son. He [the emissary] died but the son, Fakhr al-Din Abu Jafar, got back some of it. Mansa Musa died before he [Siraj al-Din] died, so they obtained nothing more from him.}}</ref>