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Geography
The region known as Mali is located in the southern extremities of the Sahara Desert. Here there is a transitional region between the arid and barren deserts to the North and the rain forests along the coast to the south. This is known as the Sahel. What Mali lacks in fertile land, it more than made up for with valuable resources. Gold and salt mines have been the epicenter of Malis economy for hundreds of years. Trade routes extended north from Mali to the North African coast, where wealthy traders would pay high prices for the gold and salt to send to Europe and Southwest Asia. These trade routes made the Mandinka (the main ethnic group of West Africa) incredibly wealthy.
One Muslim state, Mali, was founded by an obscure figure called Sundiata Keita. The epic legend of his life has traveled down throughout the centuries as an oral story, and thus the truth of his story has been distorted over time (in one anecdote, he single-handedly uprooted a fully grown tree, and replanted it in his mothers yard). What we do know is that he founded the Mali Empire and created a role for the emerging Muslim population of West Africa in the 1230s. He took the title of Mansa, the Mandinka word for king.
While in Egypt, Musas incredible amount of wealth led to some unintended consequences. He gave out gold gifts to members of the government, the poor, scholars, and many others. Due to the laws of supply and demand, the price of gold in Egypt plummeted, effectively crippling the
economy. Even a decade later, during Ibn Battutas visit to Cairo, he noted that the economy still hadnt completely recovered from Mansa Musas visit. The effect that Mansa Musas visit had on Egypt clearly shows the wealth and importance of the Mali Empire, even when it encountered faroff lands.
Return to Mali
On his way back to his homeland after the Hajj, Mansa Musa insisted on bringing the smartest and most talent Muslims to his kingdom. With his immense wealth, he paid scholars, artists, teachers, architects, and people from all professions to come to Mali and contribute to the growth of Islam there. Great people were brought to Mali from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, al-Andalus, and the Hejaz. The effect this had on Mali was immense. Architecturally, the buildings in Mali began to show a mix of Spanish, Arab, and Persian design. This unique blend of cultures created a distinctly West African style that is still seen in its architecture. The legendary city of Timbuktu was especially blessed by Mansa Musas Hajj, with many mosques such as the Sankore Masjid being built by the best architects in the world. Mansa Musa even paid the Andalusian architect Ibn Ishaq 200 kilograms of gold to build the Sankore Mosque in Timbuktu. Being able to pay for the best architects, scholars, and teachers made Mali, and Timbuktu in general a center of Islamic knowledge.
A Center of Knowledge
The most significant impact Musas Hajj had on Mali was its subsequent growth as a center of knowledge. With the best scholars from all over the Muslim world, Mali developed one of the richest educational traditions of the world at that time. Libraries were all over cities such as Gao and Timbuktu. Public and private collections had thousands of books on topics from Islamic fiqh, to astronomy, to language, to history. Great universities attracted talented students from all over Africa to come study in this center of knowledge.
The Sankore Masjid and Univ ersity in Timbuktu, showing the distinctiv e architectural sty le of Mali
This tradition of knowledge lasts until today in Mali. Families still hold on to private library collections that number in the hundreds of books, many of them hundreds of years old. The people of Mali are fiercely protective of their knowledge that has been passed down from the time of Mansa Musa, making it very difficult for outsiders to access these great libraries. These manuscripts today are threatened by the desertification of the Sahel, where the environment threatens to turn these great books into dust. Political problems in West Africa also threaten to destroy the remaining manuscripts. Efforts are underway to preserve these great libraries by digitizing them. The Timbuktu Educational Foundation is leading efforts to scan individual pages before they are lost to history. You can find (and read) many of these manuscripts online. As Mali became a center of knowledge in West Africa, Islam ingrained itself deeply in the lives of its people. It was common for everyday people to be very well educated in religious and and secular matters. The effects of this knowledge on society is seen in Ibn Battutas trip to Mali in the 1350s, when he remarked that if a man wanted to have a seat in the masjid during the Friday prayer, he would have to send his son hours early to reserve a spot for him, as the masjids would be filled to the brim early in the morning.
Manuscript f rom Timbuktu about astronomy and mathematics
Conclusions
The importance of Mali and its contributions to the world cannot be overstated. In its history, it was one of the centers of Islamic knowledge and wealth. Its importance to the world decreased throughout the 16th-18th centuries until it was colonized by the French in the 1800s. This history is not lost forever, however. It lives on in the continuing experience of West Africas Muslims, and the legacy it left on the rest of the world. Sources: Hamdun, Said, and Noel King. Ibn Battuta in Black Africa. 2nd ed. Bellew Publishing Co Ltd, 1975. Print. Hill, M. (Jan, 209). The Spread of Islam in West Africa. Retrieved from http://spice.stanford.edu/docs/the_spread_of_islam_in_west_africa_containment_mixing_and_reform_from_the_eighth_to_the_twentieth_century/ Morgan, M. (2007). Lost History. Washington D.C. : National Geographic Society. Quick, A. H. (2007). Deeper Roots. (3rd ed.). Cape Town: DPB Printers and Booksellers.