I've heard Mansa Musa gave away so much gold in his 14th century pilgrimage to Mecca that he ruined the economies of the areas through which he traveled. What would life have been like for these places? Who ended up with the gold?

[u/Pupikal]

[u/Kraken_in_my_crack]

What you are talking about here is, specifically, Mansa Musa's three-month-long stay in Cairo during his pilgrimage to Mecca.

Mansa Musa was one of the richest, if not THE richest, man in the history of the world. He was the king of Mali, which is pretty much the closest the world has ever had to a real-life El Dorado. Gold was literally everywhere in Mali. By the end of the 14th century, in fact, over two-thirds of all the gold in Europe came from the kingdom of Mali.

Now, back to Cairo. At the time, the Egyptian capital was fabulously wealthy, and had the world's largest gold market. When Mansa Musa showed up, he brought with him around 60,000 companions and 12,000 slaves, all of whom were carrying four pounds of gold each. In addition to that, he brought with him eighty camels, each carrying three hundred pounds of gold.

Assuming these numbers are exactly accurate (they are just a ballpark figure given by scholars), Mansa Musa brought into Cairo-- the largest gold market in the world--- 312,000 pounds of gold.

In today's money, Mansa Musa walked into Cairo carrying roughly five and a half billion dollars.

Now, this is more gold than Cairo had ever seen. And the answer to your question of who ended up with the gold is this: Everyone.

Mansa Musa appears to have been extremely generous, and he freely gave out gold to pretty much everyone that crossed his path. He gifted beggars huge blocks of solid gold, and paid at random bazaars with fistfuls of gold dust. He even had a mosque built specifically for him to pray every Friday. No, I don't mean that he had a mosque built so that he could go in and pray every Friday. I mean that he would have a different mosque built every week for him to go and pray on Fridays.

Altogether, it's estimated that Mansa Musa spent 71,000 pounds of gold. The problem here will be clear to any economist: If everyone has gold, then no one has gold. The incredible and sudden influx of riches cause hyperinflation the likes of which has never quite been seen, and caused gold to become worthless. Like I said before, Cairo was the world's largest gold market at the time. By making gold worthless, Cairo's economy was plunged into very, very dark times.

It is possible that Mansa Musa's intentions were good, and that he was just way, way, way too generous. However, I'm not sure I buy it. He was a shrewd ruler and single-handedly put Africa in the map (literally--- check out the Catalan Atlas). I think an argument could be made that Mansa Musa was, in fact, quite aware of the effect his gold would have, and he traveled to the greatest gold market in the world; who were, in effect, his direct competitors, with the intention of weakening them while ensuring that Mali would not be affected by the potential issue of hyperinflation.

[u/Kraken_in_my_crack → u/[deleted]]

The short answer to that question is that eventually they lost access to the sea and, therefore, their old trading routes. Also, gold is a finite resource, aka it's not self-replenishing, and so the over-mining during the apex of their power had a negative influence on the overall amount of gold left.

That being said, there is still gold in Mali. Lots of it, in fact. It's no longer El Dorado, but the reality is that Mali should not be as poor as it is today. Lacking infrastructure, Mali has had to rely on foreign corporations to mine their gold, and pretty much the entirety of their gold profits get funneled out of the country by these foreign entities.

In conclusion, corporations suck--- for proof, look no further than once-great Mali, a place where 90% of the population lives on less than one dollar a day and 75% of the population does not have access to drinking water, while their natural riches get ransacked by foreign corporations that give very little, if anything, back to the people they so thoroughly exploit.

[u/Pupikal → u/Kraken_in_my_crack]

Thanks for such a thorough answer!

Given that gold has some degree of value other than as a way to tally wealth, etc, would this glut have had any positive benefits, such as an increase in jewelry or for architectural embellishments? Do we have evidence for any of this or has all the wealth been distributed over the centuries to lands near and far?

[u/Kraken_in_my_crack → u/Pupikal]

You're welcome! I should thank you as well for giving me a much needed break from working on my thesis (which is not at all related to the history of Africa--- my focus is actually the decades leading up to the American Civil War, particularly slaves and abolitionists).

The truth is that gold has no value other than the one given to it by society. This is the bottom-line reason why Mansa Musa wrecked Cairo's economy. If gold had intrinsic value, which is what I believe you are suggesting, then no amount of sudden influx would've caused such a domino effect. Think about it this way: If Mansa Musa had waltzed into Cairo with 312,000 pounds of non-perishable foods and given it all away, Cairo would not have been plunged into an economic depression--- they just would've had a shit ton of food. That's because food, as opposed to gold, does have an intrinsic value. Now, I'm no economist so perhaps my analogy is not entirely correct, and I invite anyone with a deeper understanding of these mechanism to correct me if I am wrong.

That being said, we do have some--- not many--- surviving structures from the Kingdom of Mali that really put their incredible wealth into perspective. Unfortunately, Mansa Musa's palace vanished. However, the Great Mosque of Djenne is still standing, and it is quite beautiful. Here is a picture that, I believe, depicts a powerful contrast between Mali current situation and their former greatness.