
Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived - m-i-l
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47379458
======
gabbygab
"But he is by no means the richest man of all time. That title belongs to
Mansa Musa, the 14th Century West African ruler who was so rich his generous
handouts wrecked an entire country's economy."

How can anyone, let alone the BBC, make this claim? There aren't any records
or any legitimate evidence to seriously compare wealth between eras. But even
without records, we can safely say that mansa musa wasn't anywhere near the
richest man in the 14th century where the khanates of the mongol empire, the
holy roman empire, ottoman empire, etc reigned supreme.

Why make a claim as if it was a statement of fact when it is a conjecture at
best?

And is a website called "Celebrity Net Worth" really anything that the BBC
should be sourcing? What's the point of this article? It's not news. It's not
history. Why did I spend a few minutes reading this article?

The first time I heard of mansa musa was years ago on reddit's TIL, but even
there, it was ridiculed as being clickbait nonsense. Now the BBC is at it?

------
goto11
Fun list, but it is pretty impossible to compare riches across history.
Augustus personally owned Egypt, the breadbasket of the Mediterranean at that
time. How to you even assign a dollar amount on that? How do you compare the
purchasing power over time, when some valuables like gold or salt have become
much more abundant, and other things like slaves cannot legally be traded
anymore?

~~~
Tsubasachan
This brings up a question: does Trump own the American Treasury? I see the PM
of my country at Starbucks sometimes and he looks like any other office drone
but he makes billion euro decisions every day.

~~~
peteretep
> does Trump own the American Treasury

No, Congress controls that, and they're elected by the American people, who
ultimately own it.

Here's a more interesting example: [https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-
gb/resources/faqs/](https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/resources/faqs/)

> The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown',
> that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by
> virtue of their accession to the throne. But it is not the private property
> of the monarch - it cannot be sold by the monarch, nor do revenues from it
> belong to the monarch.

~~~
vntok
> No, Congress controls that, and they're elected by the American people, who
> ultimately own it.

Trump is also elected by the American people, though, right?

~~~
pjc50
Trick question: he's elected by the Electoral College. Which is why he's
president despite recieving fewer votes than the other candidate, because it's
not a direct election but a delegate system.

~~~
Frondo
For those haven't heard, there are plans underway to change that, too. Check
out the National Popular Vote movement:

[https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/](https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/)

They're more than halfway there. I'm all in favor of the movement, and am
holding out hope we'll see it click into place in the next decade or so.

~~~
Frondo
FWIW, I am happily planning to expend my 3500 magic internet points promoting
unions, worker's rights, and democracy in the strongly antidemocratic USA. In
fact, I am looking forward to it.

~~~
dang
You can't use HN primarily for political and ideological battle. This is in
the site guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
The reason is that it destroys intellectual curiosity, which is what this site
exists for.

We've warned you about this numerous times already. I don't want to ban you,
but if you keep doing this we're going to have to.

~~~
Frondo
I sincerely wish the site admins were as fastidious at minimizing ideology
when it's pro-capitalist, but I also understand that this site functions
largely as a promotional vehicle for a venture capital fund; it's never wise
to bite the hand that feeds one.

~~~
dang
Those are cheap and easy shots to take, with no burden of proof. But you
actually don't know how hard we work for those things _not_ to be true. Nor
does it change the rules or the request that you abide by them.

------
restalis
_" Mansa Abu-Bakr, ruled the empire until 1312, when he abdicated to go on an
expedition. Abu-Bakr was obsessed with the Atlantic Ocean and what lay beyond
it. He reportedly embarked on an expedition with a fleet of 2000 ships and
thousands of men, women and slaves. They sailed off, never to return."_

I wonder how America would have looked like if an African power could manage
to establish colonies almost 200 years before Europeans. The technological
superiority probably wasn't there but the presumed pandemics caused by the
contact may still have provided the invaders an advantage. If nothing else,
that would have provided the American natives some additional experience
before facing the Europeans.

~~~
novacole
Well if Mali has 2000 ships, that would have been “technologically superior”
to what the native Americans would have had, since they had boats, not ships.

But Mali also had guns so I’m not sure how Mali couldn’t have been seen as
more technologically advanced. I’m asking out of actual curiosity.

~~~
pacala
"Reportedly" had 2000 ships. The whole article is full of "reportedly"
whenever it comes to hard numbers. She appears to be cherry picking outlandish
accounts that are not corroborated with other sources.

For comparison, the Spanish armada, in 1588, posing a major challenge to
British rule of the seas, had 130 ships. From what I can tell, the distance
from Dakkar, the Atlantic port that appears in the map from the article to
Lisbon [Atlantic port in Iberic peninsula] is ~1700 miles, while the distance
from Lisbon to London is ~1000 miles. A force more than 10 times larger than
the Spanish Armada only twice as far should have been a sight to behold, and
reckon by European nations. Heck, if Abu-Bakr had cross-Atlantic ambitions,
his navy should have long reached Europe. Yet, the mighty Mali navy is
mysteriously a footnote in [or absent from] contemporary European maritime
accounts.

This belongs to click-bait sites [copiously cited in the article] like
money.com, celebritynetworth.com or smartasset.com, and not on the BBC. How
the mighty have fallen...

~~~
chewz
Not to argue with your arguments but it wouldn't had been so easy to sail from
Dakar to Lisboa due to prevailing winds. Sailing to America would be much
easier.

~~~
pacala
Fair enough, I'm not a maritime buff. Here's a bit more info to confirm your
point [0]. I was thinking more of intermediate stops, specifically Canary
islands and Morocco coast, which could have made the voyage easier, and allow
the gradual development of navigational prowess in the first place.

Speaking of intermediate stops, you'd expect a fleet of 2000 ships sailing to
Americas to be borne out of a maritime culture with a significant footprint.
You'd expect said culture to leave some archeological traces in the Cape Verde
islands, which are only 400 miles straight to the west of Dakkar. I have never
heard of any hard evidence of massive Mali empire / West African fleets
traveling to Cape Verde islands on a regular basis. According to Wikipedia:

> Before the arrival of Europeans, the Cape Verde Islands were
> uninhabited.[12] The islands of the Cape Verde archipelago were discovered
> by Genoese and Portuguese navigators around 1456.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Verde#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Verde#History)

~~~
chewz
Sailing west is easy with passat wind. Sailing North to Europe would require
sailing far into the ocean in NW direction and turning East when you catch
westerlies at 30 deg North. That would require lots of courage or prior
navigational knowledge.

It is almost impossible to sail North along the coast of Africa even for ships
that can go strong against the wind.

This is what most people misunderstand about Columbus. He did not discover
America, he discovered the way to go there and back which required sailing
first South looking for passat and returning by sailing North and then
catching western winds.

Columbus knew that (from studying reports) before he left on his first voyage,
he repeated this four times as all sailors who followed in his steps did for
300 years.

~~~
restalis
_" This is what most people misunderstand about Columbus. He did not discover
America, he discovered the way to go there and back which required sailing
first South looking for passat and returning by sailing North and then
catching western winds."_

You seem to take for granted the presence of New World in the mind of Columbus
and that the only problem to be solved was securing the access. That is wrong.
Columbus was looking for India. He descended to India's latitude and went
looking for it westward¹. I'm not aware of any initial plans to return back to
Europe on a similar manner, i.e. (this is a mere speculation but I'm inclined
to believe that) he could have returned back by some well-known route, to
minimize risks if he could find an actual Indian trade post, or anything
familiar, really. Given the "unknown part of India" he'd encounter, only later
it became a safer bet to attempt sailing back north-eastward.

¹
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbus#/media/File:Viajes_de_colon_en.svg)

~~~
chewz
I hear you. What I meant is that Columbus had enough pieces of a puzzle to
make that journey there and back possible. Based on earlier journeys of
Portuguese sailors, on reading different accounts both contemporary and
historical.

And that after his discovery this circular route became the only way to
America and back used by other sailors. This is more of an achievement then
placing flag on some piece of land.

------
edoo
So he was 32 when his brother handed over the throne. His brother was
presumably older, I'm guessing under 45 though. The brother is the king, has
everything, probably realizes he is getting old, and purposely heads out on a
final adventure to see for himself what lies on the other side of the ocean.
That is pretty epic.

------
cjlars
>A hundred camels were in tow, each camel carrying hundreds of pounds of pure
gold.

Or around $1bn in gold assuming 500 pounds per camel at current exchange
rates. As a percent of the then global GDP, this was likely well above the
modern super rich, but as a head of state, his pilgrimage would have been
perhaps comparable to a mid-sized war for that time period given the number of
troops and total expense.

------
_Microft
Interesting article but _Jakob Fugger the Rich_ was estimated to be worth 400
billion Euro at the time of death and he's missing from the list. How accurate
might the rest of the list be then?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Wait, the Fuggers were real? I thought that name and family were just an
invention of Stephenson's in the Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.!

~~~
toasterlovin
They are, indeed, real. And they make appearances in Stephenson's Baroque
cycle as well, IIRC.

------
teddyh
Extra History did 5 episodes on the empire of Mali, where episode 3 is about
Mansa Musa:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Un2xx6Pzo&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-Un2xx6Pzo&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5DDhUWNT_5GWuCnXHh70Zz7&index=3)

------
taneq
Based on their chart, "incomprehensible" is a bigger number than
"incalculable" and both are larger than $4.6 trillion.

~~~
estomagordo
No. Incalculable is less than 4.6 TUSD.

~~~
close04
If you mean literally, mentioning the result of the calculation or estimation
($4.6 trillion) certainly disqualifies it from being "incalculable".

Incomprehensible on the other hand is slightly more realistic as most humans
can't really comprehend such high values. They understand them as a number but
not the extent of it. Which is why when large numbers are involved you'll
surely find some equivalences: "as heavy as 1000 747s", "1000 times taller
than the Empire State Building", etc.

~~~
InitialLastName
Did you read the article?

They literally put $4.6 Trillion on an entry between wealth entries lableed
"incomprehensible" and "incalculable".

------
estomagordo
Am I the only one who primarily reacts to Gaddafi's inclusion? I knew the
crazy geezer was rich, but richer than Bezos and Gates rich?

~~~
dagw
Here's a critical breakdown of where that number came from:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwindurgy/2011/10/25/did-
moamm...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwindurgy/2011/10/25/did-moammar-
gadhafi-die-the-richest-man-in-the-world/)

TLDR: The $200 Billion number comes from the value of property and assets
owned by the Libyan government and sovereign wealth fund. And while Gaddafi
had zero qualms about using tax money to directly fund his lavish lifestyle,
treating government property as his own and using the sovereign wealth fund as
his personal trust fund, he never made any moves towards actually seizing the
assets or principal of the wealth fund for himself, so technically it
shouldn't count towards his wealth.

~~~
Udik
> using tax money to directly fund his lavish lifestyle

I am trying to find references for this _lavish lifestyle_ claim. His
Wikipedia entry says

"His home and office at Azizia was a bunker designed by West German engineers,
while the rest of his family lived in a large two-story building. Within the
compound were also two tennis courts, a soccer field, several gardens, camels,
and a Bedouin tent in which he entertained guests. In the 1980s, his lifestyle
was considered modest in comparison to those of many other Arab leaders."

I guess it's hard to say whether this amounts to a "lavish lifestyle" for a
dictator.

~~~
dagw
_I am trying to find references for this lavish lifestyle claim_

First relevant looking link I found on Google:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-gaddafi-
homes/aband...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-gaddafi-
homes/abandoned-gaddafi-homes-reveal-champagne-lifestyle-
idUSTRE77U5NL20110831)

~~~
Udik
Yes, there are several of those. I'm not very sure of their reliability
though, as it is customary to paint in the worst possible light the people
you've been waging war against.

------
sanxiyn
If you liked this, you may also want to read about Howqua, a Chinese merchant
who was the richest man in the world in the 19th century.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howqua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howqua)

~~~
markdown
There is a character in the James Clavell book, Tai-Pan that bears some
resemblance to Howqua. I wonder if he was based on him.

~~~
oblio
Quite likely. Clavell's novels are fiction but they were inspired by real
people and real events.

------
fnord123
Most of the story is ripped from the Wikipedia article. But then...

> Lucy Duran of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London

It's the School of Oriental and African Studies - SOAS. Not SAOS.

Yikes.

------
bibyte
This Wikipedia article is pretty good:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures)

------
akudha
Jeez, the numbers thrown around in the article are insane!

Sample:

 _The king reportedly paid the poet 200 kg (440lb) in gold_

 _A hundred camels were in tow, each camel carrying hundreds of pounds of pure
gold._

If this wasn't BBC, I'd have thought I was reading The Onion :P

 _The later arrival of Europeans in the region was the final nail in the
empire 's coffin._

:( Of course

~~~
peteretep
> The later arrival of Europeans in the region was the final nail in the
> empire's coffin.

> :( Of course

We're talking here about an empire that tracked 12,000 slaves both ways across
the Sahara. Most regions the Europeans colonized were plenty capable of
inflicting the suffering on their people that the Europeans managed, the
Europeans just industrialized the practices.

~~~
fnordsensei
I think we can all agree that you don't have to go back very far in time for
virtually everyone to appear like giant jerks (to put it mildly) when seen
with modern eyes. Industrialization of exploitation has its own particular
sinister aspect as opposed to just plain exploitation, though.

I do get sad sometimes that Europe bulldozered over virtually everything, not
from a "better or worse" perspective, or "right or wrong" (because how am I to
be a judge of that?), but from the perspective of curiosity as to where the
Mali, or Inca, etc., would have been today if that hadn't happened.

~~~
oblio
There's some anthropological research that basically says that remote
communities are generally more backwards than bigger communities. Some
examples of this being the populations of the Americas, compared to the ones
from the Old World; or the one in Tasmania, which managed to lose the use of
tools their forebears in Australia were using.

Of course, extrapolating is super hard and risky, but the impression I get is
that at least for the Americas, the local populations would be less
competitive than the ones in the Old World.

~~~
jcranmer
Tenochtitlan had about 150,000-200,000 people at its height. That was larger
than any city in Western Europe save Paris, and definitely far larger than any
city that most of the conquistadors would have seen. The Spanish capital at
Toledo was maybe 40,000-60,000 people.

~~~
oblio
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

The same people that lived in Tenochtitlan hadn't yet discovered iron or had
an alphabet.

By most objective measurements, their civilization was in an earlier stage
than say, Ming China.

A part of this was due to lower competition levels in the New World (fewer
people - and cultures - overall) and a part of it was environmental. For
example they didn't have wheeled vehicles because they didn't have horses or
oxen.

And regarding your city comparison, Ur had 100.000 people in 2100 BC (!),
Carthage had 0.5M in 300 BC, Rome had 1.2M in 200 AD, Baghdad had 0.9M in 900
AD and Beijing had 1M in 1500 AD. So? :)

~~~
jcranmer
> By most objective measurements, their civilization was in an earlier stage
> than say, Ming China.

Yeah, Tenochtitlan had a meritocratic system of governance, universal primary
education, ...

History doesn't work according to a Civilization-style tech tree. A lot of the
technological development is driven by the needs of the immediate area. Maize,
the staple crop of the Mesoamerica, is actually a superior crop to rice in
terms of caloric yield per acre (and the genetic engineering it took to turn
teosinthe into maize is amazing--far more involved than the domestication of
wheat or rice). Tenochtitlan didn't use wheeled vehicles because it was built
on a large lake bed and you could use flat boats to move a large amount of
goods.

The New World was probably more populated in 1492 than you think it was, and
newer archaeological evidence is starting to show that what we thought were
"empty" lands of people were actually fairly densely populated--say, the
Amazon rainforest. Pre-Columbian Americas are usually now figured at about 100
million people, which would be more than contemporaneous Europe and North
Africa in population.

~~~
oblio
> Yeah, Tenochtitlan had a meritocratic system of governance, universal
> primary education, ...

So did various places in the Old World. Were those systems you mention for
Tenochtitlan universal in the New World?

> History doesn't work according to a Civilization-style tech tree. A lot of
> the technological development is driven by the needs of the immediate area.
> Maize, the staple crop of the Mesoamerica, is actually a superior crop to
> rice in terms of caloric yield per acre (and the genetic engineering it took
> to turn teosinthe into maize is amazing--far more involved than the
> domestication of wheat or rice). Tenochtitlan didn't use wheeled vehicles
> because it was built on a large lake bed and you could use flat boats to
> move a large amount of goods.

Yes, and I even mentioned that there were various factors involved in the
whole thing. Still, at the end of the day, if I have 100 coins and you only
have 20, you're poorer than I am. Some things we can measure objectively, and
civilizations are rated on a scale. Otherwise the Stone Age would be
considered as developed as the Bronze Age and the Bronze Age would be as
developed as the Iron Age and... Yet things don't work like that.

> The New World was probably more populated in 1492 than you think it was, and
> newer archaeological evidence is starting to show that what we thought were
> "empty" lands of people were actually fairly densely populated--say, the
> Amazon rainforest. Pre-Columbian Americas are usually now figured at about
> 100 million people, which would be more than contemporaneous Europe and
> North Africa in population.

Yes, but the Old World was much bigger in sheer size plus the main population
centers were China and India, which you conveniently skip over :)

~~~
philwelch
> Some things we can measure objectively, and civilizations are rated on a
> scale.

No, they aren't.

But even if they were, the best objective measure might be: given the choice
of living within either of two different civilizations, which would people
prefer? And from that standpoint, the New World was actually _more_ advanced
than Europe:

> I asked seven anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians if they would
> rather have been a typical Indian or a typical European in 1491. None was
> delighted by the question, because it required judging the past by the
> standards of today—a fallacy disparaged as “presentism” by social
> scientists. But every one chose to be an Indian. Some early colonists gave
> the same answer. Horrifying the leaders of Jamestown and Plymouth, scores of
> English ran off to live with the Indians.

Also:

> Back home in the Americas, Indian agriculture long sustained some of the
> world’s largest cities. The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán dazzled Hernán
> Cortés in 1519; it was bigger than Paris, Europe’s greatest metropolis. The
> Spaniards gawped like hayseeds at the wide streets, ornately carved
> buildings, and markets bright with goods from hundreds of miles away. They
> had never before seen a city with botanical gardens, for the excellent
> reason that none existed in Europe. The same novelty attended the force of a
> thousand men that kept the crowded streets immaculate. (Streets that weren’t
> ankle-deep in sewage! The conquistadors had never heard of such a thing.)

> Spaniards, who seldom if ever bathed, were amazed by the Aztec desire for
> personal cleanliness.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/30...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/302445/)

~~~
oblio
1\. Why do you folks keep moving the goalposts? You're the second person that
replies to me almost the same way, primarily not reading my comments. I didn't
say the New World vs Europe, I said the New World vs the Old World.

There were Asian cities of 1 million people at the time, there's plenty of
Asian civilizations where people bathed, etc.

Plus saying that the Spaniards hadn't seen such a thing is not saying that
much in a time where the average person would travel, on average, at most 20km
from their hometown, throughout their entire lives. Even for the average
conquistador, this was the trip of their lives. They'd better be impressed by
what they see, now that they get to see thing thousands of km away from their
home village! :)

2.

> No, they aren't.

Yes they are, I don't adhere to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism).
A civilization that has discovered antibiotics is better, all other things
being equal, than one that hasn't.

~~~
jcranmer
> A civilization that has discovered antibiotics is better, all other things
> being equal, than one that hasn't.

What metric do you mean to use? If you want to measure by health outcomes, the
most technologically advanced societies did not surpass paleolithic societies
until about the 1950s. For 10,000 years, the healthiest people on the planet
would have been "backwards" hunter-gatherer, non-agricultural societies. Even
if you want to limit to comparisons between agricultural societies, the Aztecs
were probably healthier than the Spaniards they encountered.

Technological advancement does not necessarily mean superiority. Another fun
fact to point out is that early iron weapons were actually inferior to
contemporary bronze weapons. (And the Spaniards' reaction to the Aztec
macuahuitl was "ha ha, funny looking weapons… holy crap, those things are
deadly dangerous"). If you try to actually start defining objective criteria,
the assumption that Western society is/was superior is actually very shaky.

~~~
philwelch
Horseback archers in open grasslands also retained a massive advantage over
firearms until the Colt revolver.

------
rlglwx
Richest man in history and already unknown to most of the world, along with
many others on the list. Just goes to show that legacy is not measured on a
balance sheet.

~~~
TuringNYC
Yes. Legacy is governed by controlling the narrative. That is the real lesson.

Another lesson - there is no one legacy, we each have our own context. Go
overseas and they will know Mansa Musa better than our local legends. Sort of
like you comparing your high school music playlist with a friend in college
from another country and you're like...woah...never heard of these artists!

------
codeisawesome
Gaddafi was worth $200bn?!! What an ignominious way to go. It must have sucked
particularly hard to be that rich and die the way he did... money != power I
suppose, not always anyway.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
No, it should be clear that however they're calculating wealth is obviously
wrong. Augustus Caesar has the wealth of $4.6 trillion? There is simply no way
that is true.

