Mansa Mūsā (c. 1280 – c. 1337) stands, by all sober reckoning, as the wealthiest individual in recorded human history, his fortune estimated at the staggering sum of five hundred billion dollars. Elevated in 1312 as the ninth Mansa—Emperor—of the illustrious Islamic African Kingdom of Mali, he was the grand-nephew of the revered Sundiata Keita, noble founder of the Malian Empire. Mansa Mūsā is eternally enshrined in memory for his legendary Hajj to the holy city of Mecca, a majestic pilgrimage of some four thousand miles undertaken between 1324 and 1326. From his capital at Niani on the upper Niger River, the Emperor proceeded to Walata (Oualâta, in present-day Mauritania), thence to Tuat in what is now Algeria, before making his resplendent approach to Cairo, Egypt.

It is said that Mansa Mūsā advanced with a caravan of astonishing grandeur, comprising some sixty thousand soldiers, attendants, and heralds, all adorned in brocade and Persian silk befitting an imperial court. The Emperor himself rode on horseback, preceded by five hundred retainers, each bearing a staff richly ornamented with gold, while a train of one hundred camels followed, every beast laden with three hundred pounds of gold. So prodigious was his largesse, and so lavish his expenditures in alms and patronage, that the value of gold in the markets of Cairo was depressed for twelve years, a testament to the extraordinary opulence and munificence of his reign.