Mansa Musa – Contextualization

Purpose

You have been introduced to the historical thinking skill of contextualization, and now you’ll deepen your understanding of this practice by considering the conditions that existed that allowed Mansa Musa to embark on a 3,000-mile journey in the thirteenth century. This will help you learn that context may not just be about the events of the historical time, a common misconception, but that context involves other factors and underlying causes.

Steps

1. Watch: Crash Course World History: Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa (10 minutes, 31 seconds). As you watch the video, take brief notes on the life of Mansa Musa, including information about his reign, his faith, and his travels.
2. Read: PRIMARY SOURCE EXCERPT

Mansa Musa (c. 1280 – c. 1337 CE) traveled from the capital of the Mali kingdom in Timbuktu through Egypt on his hajj to Mecca. On this journey, he brought nobles and servants along with camels loaded with gold and other gifts. West Africa and the kingdom of Mali was rich in gold and sat along the crossroads of trade that extended from West Africa across the Sahara to East Africa and beyond to the Mediterranean, Silk Road, and Indian Ocean trade routes. By about 800 CE much of northern Africa including the kingdom of Mali had begun converting to Islam. Many of the early converts to Islam in these regions were merchants and elites, including the rulers of many empires and kingdoms. As a result, networks of faith and trade connected many Afro-Eurasian peoples into a global community of interaction. From the beginning of my coming to stay in Egypt I heard of talk of the arrival of this sultan Musa on his Pilgrimage and found the Cairenes [people of Cairo] eager to recount what they had seen of the Africans’ prodigal [extravagant] spending. I asked the emir [ruler] Abu … and he told me of the opulence [wealth], manly virtues, and piety [faithfulness] of his sultan. “When I went out to meet him [he said] that is, on behalf of the mighty sultan al-Malik al-Nasir, he did me extreme honour and treated me with the greatest courtesy. He addressed me, however, only through an interpreter despite his perfect ability to speak in the Arabic tongue. Then he forwarded to the royal treasury many loads of unworked native gold and other valuables. I tried to persuade him to go up to the Citadel to meet the sultan, but he refused persistently saying: “I came for the Pilgrimage and nothing else. I do not wish to mix anything else with my Pilgrimage.” He had begun to use this argument but I realized that the audience [with the sultan of Egypt] was repugnant [offensive] to him because he would be obliged [required] to kiss the ground and the sultan’s hand. I continued to cajole [persuade] him and he continued to make excuses but the sultan’s protocol [rules] demanded that I should bring him into the royal presence, so I kept on at him till he agreed. When we came in the sultan’s presence we said to him: “Kiss the ground!” but he refused outright: “How may this be?” Then an intelligent man who was with him whispered to him something we could not understand and he said: “I make obeisance [this bow] to God who created me!” then he prostrated [bowed] himself and went forward to the sultan. The sultan half rose to greet him and sat him by his side. They conversed together for a long time, then sultan Musa went out. The sultan sent to him several complete suits of honour for himself, his courtiers [nobles], and all those who had come with him, and saddled and bridled horses for himself and his chief courtiers …This man [Mansa Musa] flooded Cairo with his benefactions [gifts]. He left no court emir nor holder of a royal office without the gift of a load of gold. The Cairenes made incalculable profits out of him and his suite in buying and selling and giving and taking. They exchanged gold until they depressed its value in Egypt and caused its price to fall. …Gold was at a high price in Egypt until they came in that year. The mithqal1 did not go below 25 dirhams2 and was generally above, but from that time its value fell and it cheapened in price and has remained cheap till now. The mithqal does not exceed 22 dirhams or less. This has been the state of affairs for about twelve years until this day by reason of the large amount of gold which they brought into Egypt and spent there. …

Source: Levtzion, Nehemia and JFP Hopkins. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2011 (pp. 269-273).

*The mithqal was a uniform measure of weight in the Islamic world. This equaled about 4.25 grams (a little over an eighth of an ounce) and was used as a common weight for precious metals such as gold.2 A dirham was a unit of currency in the Islamic world.)

3. Taking your notes from the video, your reading of “State and Religion in Afro-Eurasia,” and the Primary Source Excerpt above, come up with two ideas that help answer the question:

1. • What geographic and cultural factors enabled Mansa Musa to embark on his journey?
     • Attempt to include the following reasons:
       • One about the location (place in space)
       • One about the culture of that area (including the government and political systems, economic systems, and religious systems)
2. Now that you have worked through the above, come up with a paragraph that includes the following elements:
   • Timeframe – What historical events or processes were taking place before Mansa Musa traveled on his hajj?
   • Locations – Was your topic of study local, regional, national, or global?
   • What type of location was it (for example, farm, city, on land, on water)?
   • What do the frames suggest about the event or source at that time and in that place?
     • [COMM (communities), NET (networks), or P&D (production and distribution)].
   • How do modern day attitudes, values, and concepts differ from those at the time of your topic of study?
3. Post your paragraph on Slack: #mansa-musa