I have conquered twenty-four cities, each with their surrounding districts.

وقد فتحنا أربعا وعشرين مدينة بأعمالها.

Mansa Musa

Politicians

Mansa Musa

Ninth Mansa of the Mali Empire (c.1280-1337), who brought the West African polity to its territorial peak. His 1324 hajj to Mecca, with a retinue of 60,000 attendants and 12,000 enslaved porters each bearing 1.8 kg of gold, depressed the value of gold in Cairo for more than a decade according to Al-Umari. He returned with the Andalusi architect Abu Ishaq al-Sahili and oversaw the construction of the Djinguereber Mosque and the Sankore Madrasah in Timbuktu, plugging the western Sahel into the Islamic learned world. Mandé griots criticised him as a wastrel of imperial wealth; modern outlets now habitually rank him among the wealthiest individuals in recorded history.

View this figure's profile

Source: Al-Umari, Masalik al-absar — Ibn Amir Hajib によるムーサの談話の記録Verified

Mansa Musa's Other Quotes

My predecessors ruled but I know nothing about them, and so I do what I do that people may remember me.

I do not prostrate myself except to God alone.

He was an upright man and a great king, and tales of his justice are still told.

Related Quotes

If heaven had granted me five more years, I could have become a real painter.

-- Katsushika Hokusai

I used to measure the heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth.

-- Johannes Kepler

What I wanted was simple: to preserve what existed.

-- Klemens von Metternich

I am a rock of order.

-- Klemens von Metternich

If Maximilian I was the last knight, Franz Joseph is the last monarch.

-- Franz Joseph I of Austria

I do not prostrate myself except to God alone.

-- Mansa Musa