5 min read · Apr 1, 2020
--
A few years ago Jeff Bezos caught some limelight for surpassing Bill Gates as the richest man in the world. Bezos, as of this writing, clocked in (as of February 5th, 2020, before the Dow’s slump, which knocked a couple of billions off his net worth, poor soul) with a net worth estimated by Forbes at around $120B billion. Surpassing Bill Gates’s paltry $100 billion.
That said, both Bezos and Gates are relative pikers compared to the richest man who ever lived, whose name, oddly, is relatively little known. Who was he? Glad you asked!
The great African emperor Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire of the 14th century was the wealthiest person in history.
Richer than Croesus.
Richer than Midas.
Much, much richer than Bezos.
TIME Magazine, ranking Musa’s wealth above that of Augustus Caesar (who, TIME scored at #2 and worth $4.6 Trillion) characterizes Musa simply as “richer than anyone could describe.”
According to Ferrum College history professor Richard Smith, Musa’s west African kingdom was likely the largest producer of gold in the world — at a time which gold was in especially high demand.
…
Some tales of his famous pilgrimage to Mecca — during which Musa’s spending was so lavish that it caused a currency crisis in Egypt — mention dozens of camels each carrying hundreds of pounds of gold. (Smith says one year of Malian gold production probably generated about a ton.) Others said Musa’s army consisted of 200,000 men, including 40,000 archers — troop numbers even modern superpowers would have a difficult time bringing to the field.
But to get caught up in the king’s exact wealth is to miss the point. As Rudolph Ware, an associate professor of history at the University of Michigan, explains, Musa’s riches were so immense that people struggled to describe them.
“This is the richest guy anyone has ever seen, that’s the point,” says Ware.
“They’re trying to find words to explain that. There are pictures of him holding a scepter of gold on a throne of gold holding a cup of gold with a golden crown on his head. Imagine as much gold as you think a human being…
