AFRICANS' BID TO DISCOVER AMERICA LED TO THE RICHEST MAN EVER

Malian Ships Head for America

Recently, it seems that billionaires like to spend much of their wealth on ways to get to places where no billionaires have gone before. In the future, perhaps exploring new lands (planets, moons) will depend on your bank account rather than your physical fitness, knowledge of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, and desire to ingest all meals in gelatin format. However, this process of "the rich get to go first" is not new. In fact, if we go back to the richest person in history, we will see a direct connection with one of history's greatest endeavors of discovery.

It is difficult to determine who was the richest person in history, because of exchange rates, the price of gold, and inflation. Oh, also because the concept of wealth changes over the course of thousands of years, making it murky when different cultures and time periods are compared. For instance, having a million Bitcoins now, won't help you at all if you're thrown back to the Roman Empire -- or even if you're thrown back all the way to 2008. Likewise, if you had cornered the Vespasiani market (look it up) in Roman days, your net worth would be in the toilet now, even considering inflation. But wealth can be determined, and compared between eras, by the effect it has on the economy of the time.

Mansa Musa I -- The Richest Person in History

Mansa Musa I

Historians' consensus is that Musa I (1280-1337), mansa (emperor) of the Mali Empire, was the richest person in history. During 1324-1325, Musa made his hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. At the time, the Mali Empire was the largest political entity in Africa, and produced more than half of the world's Gold and Salt, two of the most sought after products. Musa's caravan consisted of 60,000 people, along with 12,000 of their slaves. Gold and enough food and water to last the entire procession for months was carried by thousands of camels. Along the 2,700-mile route, he gave away all the gold as gifts or used it to buy extravagances for himself.

He gave/spent over 18 tons of gold during his hajj. His activities had such a devastating effect on the economies of Africa and the Middle East that it caused hyper-inflation and a financial depression that lasted 10 years. While Jeff Bezos is currently believed to be the world's richest person (this week), with nearly $208 B net worth, it is estimated that Mansa Musa I's fortune equaled about $473 B in present-day funds.

But that hajj wasn't "one of history's greatest endeavors of discovery" -- something I promised you in the opening paragraph of this blog entry. The hajj was not a trip of discovery, unless we mean some spiritual insight -- but even a good yoga session could supply that. The voyage of discovery I referred to does not directly involve Musa -- his story is interesting because of his wealth, and I was just dangling tales of his shiny gold in front of you to get your attention. This story actually is about Musa's predecessor.

Muhammad ibn Qu -- Expeditions to Discover America

Muhammad ibn Qu (MiQ, but he had many alternate spellings and names, including Abu Bakar II) became mansa of the Mali Empire around 1308. MiQ also was incredibly wealthy, but instead of investing his gold in showy vacations to the east, he was interested in what existed to the west -- beyond Mali's Atlantic Ocean shores. According to Mansa Musa himself, around the year 1310, MiQ equipped an expedition of 400 ships to sail on a voyage of discovery westward across the Atlantic Ocean. Only one ship returned, with news of the results: The armada came to a "river with a powerful current" to the west and all the ships except this one were carried away by it over the horizon. Nothing else was heard from them.

Rather than feeling discouraged, MiQ was motivated to do even more. He ordered another, larger expedition around 1311 -- this time with 2,000 ships -- to head westward again. And this time, he himself led the expedition. He placed Musa in charge of Mali until his return, and set off with his ships, which would communicate with each other via complex drum signals. MiQ and his expedition never did return to Mali, so Musa became mansa in 1312, expanded the country's wealth, and the rest is history, more or less.

Is this story credible? Yes, it is. Musa is certainly a believable witness, and he relates the details within 14 years of the events. Regarding the westward "river with a powerful current": The North Atlantic Equatorial Current -- similar to the more famous Gulf Stream -- begins offshore near Mali's coastline, and ends up along the northern coastline of South America. And there are strong northeasterly trade winds along the same Atlantic route. Also, the shortest distance between western Africa (near Mali) and eastern South America (Brazil) is only 1,800 miles (2,900 km). In comparison, Columbus had to sail over 2¼ times that distance to reach America from Spain. 

So what happened to the expedition? No one knows for sure. If some of the ships did make it to America, it would have been difficult to make the return voyage (because of the ocean and wind currents that helped get them there). There are no historical versions besides Musa's recounting. And even though there are accounts and circumstantial evidence of possible African interaction in pre-Columbian America (I won't get into those here), there is nothing that has been definitively substantiated.  

So, the bottom line is that Columbus's "discovery" in 1492 still stands as the event that opened Europe to possibilities of westward exploitation. However, there might have been African interactions over 180 years previously -- or at least a strong attempt to open the gates, by a leader willing to give up wealth and power for the chance to discover a new world, even it were to be without weightlessness or steak that is sucked through a straw.