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"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?

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?
Even the ownership is a very relative term. Once I meet a homeless man who owned the whole universe, but the liquidity if this asset was nearly 0 as his ownership wasn't recognized by anyone.
Then you've got people like Joshua Norton who fall somewhere in between:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

And, of course, when some things we now take for granted wouldn't simply not have been available to even the richest of people. Say, air travel.
Air travel is a luxury compared to the availability of antibiotics, and not getting plague.
Comparing riches across history is precisely what Branko Mlianovic did: The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality

Really clever stuff: looking at the amount of labor one could buy, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0047T869M/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

Maybe a good KPI is:

What’s the share of people living that work for you?

Was Crassus not the wealthiest Roman ever?
And Truman didn't have a penny to his name though headed the US at the top of its might and unleashed more firepower on its ennemies than any army in history. It doesn't mean much.
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.
"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.

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.

It certainly might have been possible for them to reach Brazil, if they had set off in the right direction and could weather any storms.

I wonder, though, if Mali would have found the place as hostile as Vikings found North America.

If you want to play with these ideas a little, the excellent game Crusader Kings 2 (https://www.paradoxplaza.com/crusader-kings-ii/CKCK02GSK-MAS...) has a $5 DLC called Sunset Invasion that's worth picking up. It causes your session playing through 700 years of medieval European history to be interrupted at a random point by an cross-Atlantic invasion of Aztec conquistadors, who bring with them their own religion and strange new diseases.

The game disables this invasion by default, so you don't have to worry about it wrenching your playthrough in weird new directions unless you want it to. But it's a fun little way to shake up the usual with a bit of alternate history.

> The technological superiority probably wasn't there but the presumed pandemics caused by the contact may still have provided the invaders an advantage.

Assuming there would've been a clash at all. The kingdom of Cusco (precursor to the Incan empire) didn't start its huge expansion until 1438 under the command of Sapa Inca [1]. The Aztecs didn't found their capital until 1325. The Mayas were already past what seems to have been the peak of their civilization [3].

That's not to say there weren't powerful city-states in the region, and they probably would've unified under a shared enemy. If contact with Europeans is any indication, at least some natives would've opted to ally with the newcomers and Mansa Abu-Bakr probably would've done best accepting diplomacy.

If at all. Depending on where they land, they might've encountered land outside the influence of a powerful city-state (and empire). Assuming they would've tried to keep contact with Mali, and so open a permanent route, this could've been huge.

> If nothing else, that would have provided the American natives some additional experience before facing the Europeans.

If going for the theory above, where they settle a colony, perhaps skrimkish and go to war a cuploe of times, but are able to hold their ground, make a couple of allies and keep contact with Africa, they would've introduced the locals to a wealth of new knowledge, technology, and goods. And vice-versa, they would've learned a lot too.

Would it have meant Europeans caught wind of the American continent earlier, and thus colonization would've happened sooner? The black death happened from 1347 to 1351 so Europans at large were busy. The 100 year war between France and England happened from 1337 to 1453. There doesn't seem to have been much happening in Spain in the 14th century [6], but they weren't a single, unified kingdom until the marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon [7] in the 15th century. I wonder if the separate kingdoms would've had the political/economic capital to fund a full-fledged expedition to the Americas.

Portugal was relativley stable, but still seemingly having some quarels with the Spanish kingdoms [8]. In any case, they formed their royal navy in 1317, so they do sound like the country that could've (and would've) jumped to an expedition across the Atlantic soonest had they caught wind of the new world. Except, of course, Africans and Portuguese/Spanish were at war. In fact, Islam and Christianity at large were at war. Would they have caught wind? Would they have believed it? Would Mali had been able to stop them from establishing long-lasting colonies in the Americas?

I guess we'll never know and this comment is already getting too long, but it's interesting to think about nonetheless. The world would probably be a very different place for sure though.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inca_Empire#Kingdom_of_Cusco

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztecs#Mexica_migration_and_fo...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_civilization#Postclassic_...

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Spanish_history#14...

[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_I_of_Castile#Birth_of...

[8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal_in_the_Middle_Ages#Af...

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.
>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.

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?
I think they forgot the standard of first checking Wikipedia [1]. Though they might just have cherry-picked people for their comparison list.

(not that Wikipedia is always correct, but it usually more likely to be correct than most sources)

Though it is an interesting read on Mansa Musa.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...

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.!
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_...

Based on their chart, "incomprehensible" is a bigger number than "incalculable" and both are larger than $4.6 trillion.
No. Incalculable is less than 4.6 TUSD.
Alos half baked stuff like taking the highest estimate of Libya's sovereign wealth fund as Gaddafi's personal fortune.
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?
Here's a critical breakdown of where that number came from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwindurgy/2011/10/25/did-moamm...

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.

This figure is disputed, and it's not clear what happened to it after his death. Despite a large campaign to seize it.

On the other hand, Libya earns about $20bn a year in oil exports. Subtract cost of production and then consider how much of that could have been taken by Gaddafi personally.

The $200 billion gaddafi wealth was part of the psy-op to take down gaddafi a few years ago. I remember seeing it all over social media and the news before gaddafi was taken out.

Interestingly enough, guess who else has $200 billion?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/20...

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/financier-bill-browder-says-...

I'm sure they did a study to determine what wealth value was believable and anger inducing? Was $100 billion too low for people to care and $300 billion too high for anyone to take seriously? It'll be interesting to find ou thow they settled on $200 billion.

If I was maduro, I'd look for places to hide if the psy-ops start to mention his $200 billion or starts to focus on his wealth.

I've read this or a similar article before; the main thing is when a person's personal fortune is mixed with that of a country. If you'd consider idk, the value of the US and Trump to be one and the same, he'd have hundreds of trillions of USD (based on the US's $20 trillion / year GDP).
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

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.
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.

This Wikipedia article is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...
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

> 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.

Mansa Munsa was head of an empire himself. It seems incongruent to show displeasure for it had been replaced by yet another empire, just because it was based in some European country.
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.
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!

It would be interesting to see how well known he is in Africa. As westerners we have only a very limited view of history and we know only about people who were relevant to our own history.
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.
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.