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Fun facts, Mansa Musa (Musa Keita) who's king in Mali Empire in Western Africa is the richest person ever lived [1]. It's reported that he unintentionally disr

Fun facts, Mansa Musa (Musa Keita) who's king in Mali Empire in Western Africa is the richest person ever lived [1]. It's reported that he unintentionally disrupted Eqyption economy for at least ten years. He did that by spending and giving charity in gold enroute to pilgrimage or Hajj in Mecca while staying about 3 months in Egypt. Allegedly he had hundred camels in towing, each camel carrying hundreds of pounds of pure gold. Pilgrimage to Mecca is the journey that every Muslim has to make once in a lifetime if they can afford it. [1] Mansa Musa: The richest man who ever lived (105 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19350951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19350951 [2] Mansa Musa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19350951 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19350951

opo 1y ago
As your wikipedia link states: >...While online articles in the 21st century have claimed that Mansa Musa was the richest person of all time,[91] historians such as Hadrien Collet have argued that Musa's wealth is impossible to calculate accurately. We don't know the exact wealth of Manda Musa and there really isn't a good way to compare wealth between different eras. Even in the same general timeframe, wouldn't the khanates of the mongol empire be considered more wealthy?
- teleforce 1y ago
  Nobody really know for sure to be honest but he's most probably one of the top ten. The linked BBC article in the HN post has the list for top 10 richest man in history with Mansa Musa at the very top but Shah Jahan the Mughal Emperor who's the owner of Taj Mahal is not even in the list [1]. The 10 richest men of all time: 1) Mansa Musa (1280-1337, king of the Mali empire) wealth indescribable 2) Augustus Caesar (63 BC-14 AD, Roman emperor) $4.6tn (£3.5tn) 3) Zhao Xu (1048-1085, emperor Shenzong of Song in China) wealth incalculable 4) Akbar I (1542-1605, emperor of India's Mughal dynasty) wealth incalculable 5) Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919, Scottish-American industrialist) $372bn 6) John D Rockefeller (1839-1937) American business magnate) $341bn 7) Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (1868-1918, Tsar of Russia) $300bn 8) Mir Osman Ali Khan (1886-1967, Indian royal) $230bn 9) William The Conqueror (1028-1087) $229.5bn 10) Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011, long-time ruler of Libya) $200bn [1] Is Mansa Musa the richest man who ever lived? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47379458 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47379458
  - jl6 1y ago
    Mansa Musa’s headline story is that his spending caused inflation in Egypt. I understand that estimate of Augustus Caesar’s wealth is based in part on him considering Egypt, in its entirety, to be his personal possession. It feels like “owning the whole country” should probably outrank “causing inflation in that country”, it’s probably meaningless to try to compare across such vast gulfs of time and place.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - notahacker 1y ago
      Musa had an empire too, one that possessed so much gold that his holiday tips devalued the principal store of wealth in foreign countries. Agree the comparisons aren't particularly meaningful; a lot depends on whether your consider having lots of gold to show off with to be more valuable than building an industrial empire, or even owning a bunch of now-common consumer goods and having access to healthcare more impressive than anything Augustus or Musa bought
      - wqaatwt 1y ago
        Problem is that gold is only worth as much as you can buy with it. If there aren’t enough goods it’s actual price will drop by many times
  - LunaSea 1y ago
    Aren't Bezos, Musk, Gates & co richer the first half of the people on the list?
    - flohofwoe 1y ago
      Not until one of them buys the entire US armed forces, installs himself on the throne in Washington and declares all of California his own personal property - just to draw a parallel to the number 2 spot ;)
- yieldcrv 1y ago
  Mansa Musa was illiquid and could not exchange much wealth for goods and services and had nothing to invest in during a time where the gini coefficient around him would have been 1.0 It is marvelous he found gold and even then he could only give it away freely
romaaeterna 1y ago
Document-only claim without any archeological support means that I'm highly skeptical.
- dyauspitr 1y ago
  That’s the vast majority of antiquity unfortunately.
  - romaaeterna 1y ago
    In Classical history, we've got a number of competing historiographers that we can compare with each other, and a large about of archeological remains. Our estimates of how wealthy any given period of the Roman empire was are based on numismatics, built artifacts, etc. In comparison, this sort of thing is just a wild claim taken at face value (also something not done in Classics).
wqaatwt 1y ago
Presumably his wealth would go down massively in PPP terms since if gold was so abundant in Mali back then its buying power couldn’t be that high. In a way it’s similar to the Spanish silver mines in the New World it resulted in a significant increase in prices and a lot of wealth shifting around.

opo 1y ago

As your wikipedia link states: >...While online articles in the 21st century have claimed that Mansa Musa was the richest person of all time,[91] historians such as Hadrien Collet have argued that Musa's wealth is impossible to calculate accurately. We don't know the exact wealth of Manda Musa and there really isn't a good way to compare wealth between different eras. Even in the same general timeframe, wouldn't the khanates of the mongol empire be considered more wealthy?

teleforce 1y ago
Nobody really know for sure to be honest but he's most probably one of the top ten. The linked BBC article in the HN post has the list for top 10 richest man in history with Mansa Musa at the very top but Shah Jahan the Mughal Emperor who's the owner of Taj Mahal is not even in the list [1]. The 10 richest men of all time: 1) Mansa Musa (1280-1337, king of the Mali empire) wealth indescribable 2) Augustus Caesar (63 BC-14 AD, Roman emperor) $4.6tn (£3.5tn) 3) Zhao Xu (1048-1085, emperor Shenzong of Song in China) wealth incalculable 4) Akbar I (1542-1605, emperor of India's Mughal dynasty) wealth incalculable 5) Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919, Scottish-American industrialist) $372bn 6) John D Rockefeller (1839-1937) American business magnate) $341bn 7) Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (1868-1918, Tsar of Russia) $300bn 8) Mir Osman Ali Khan (1886-1967, Indian royal) $230bn 9) William The Conqueror (1028-1087) $229.5bn 10) Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011, long-time ruler of Libya) $200bn [1] Is Mansa Musa the richest man who ever lived? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47379458 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47379458
- jl6 1y ago
  Mansa Musa’s headline story is that his spending caused inflation in Egypt. I understand that estimate of Augustus Caesar’s wealth is based in part on him considering Egypt, in its entirety, to be his personal possession. It feels like “owning the whole country” should probably outrank “causing inflation in that country”, it’s probably meaningless to try to compare across such vast gulfs of time and place.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - notahacker 1y ago
    Musa had an empire too, one that possessed so much gold that his holiday tips devalued the principal store of wealth in foreign countries. Agree the comparisons aren't particularly meaningful; a lot depends on whether your consider having lots of gold to show off with to be more valuable than building an industrial empire, or even owning a bunch of now-common consumer goods and having access to healthcare more impressive than anything Augustus or Musa bought
    - wqaatwt 1y ago
      Problem is that gold is only worth as much as you can buy with it. If there aren’t enough goods it’s actual price will drop by many times
- LunaSea 1y ago
  Aren't Bezos, Musk, Gates & co richer the first half of the people on the list?
  - flohofwoe 1y ago
    Not until one of them buys the entire US armed forces, installs himself on the throne in Washington and declares all of California his own personal property - just to draw a parallel to the number 2 spot ;)
yieldcrv 1y ago
Mansa Musa was illiquid and could not exchange much wealth for goods and services and had nothing to invest in during a time where the gini coefficient around him would have been 1.0 It is marvelous he found gold and even then he could only give it away freely

romaaeterna 1y ago

Document-only claim without any archeological support means that I'm highly skeptical.

dyauspitr 1y ago
That’s the vast majority of antiquity unfortunately.
- romaaeterna 1y ago
  In Classical history, we've got a number of competing historiographers that we can compare with each other, and a large about of archeological remains. Our estimates of how wealthy any given period of the Roman empire was are based on numismatics, built artifacts, etc. In comparison, this sort of thing is just a wild claim taken at face value (also something not done in Classics).

wqaatwt 1y ago

Presumably his wealth would go down massively in PPP terms since if gold was so abundant in Mali back then its buying power couldn’t be that high. In a way it’s similar to the Spanish silver mines in the New World it resulted in a significant increase in prices and a lot of wealth shifting around.