Talk:Mansa Musa

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2019 and 12 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Ssial.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:16, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Murdered father

There is an unsubstantiated claim that he (supposedly Mansa Muss) murdered his father. Is this accurate and if so, is there a reference? Aholver93 (talk) 00:31, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

The Tarikh al-Fattash claims Musa killed his own mother, and the historian Michael Gomez suggests that there may have been palace intrigues involved in Musa's accession in his book African Dominion. I'm not aware of any claims that he killed his own father. Ornithopsis (talk) 09:15, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Etymology of Musa

The Arabic name Musa means "Moses" and a Mandinka dictionary released by the Gambian Peace Corps says the Mandinka name Musaa means "Moses". As such, it seems reasonable to infer that Musa's name can be said to mean "Moses". However, no reliable source I am aware of actually makes the connection—for all I know, the similarity is coincidental. If anybody could find a source for the etymology of Musa's name, it would probably be worth including in the article. Ornithopsis (talk) 09:07, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

jeliw

Not sure what "jeliw" in the article means. Is that a typo of "jealous people"? 92.6.237.83 (talk) 07:29, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

It's a typo. According to the cited source, it should be jelis, another name for Griot - a keeper and reciter of oral historical traditions. Have fixed and explained the term. Thanks for catching the error. Haploidavey (talk) 10:07, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

It's not a typo. Jeliw is the Manding plural of jeli, so the spelling was deliberate. In scholarly literature, it seems to be slightly more common to pluralize jeli as jeliw than as jelis, but I recognize that the way I originally wrote it would be confusing to many readers. Ornithopsis (talk) 16:56, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Ah. So anyway, I've just followed the cited source, who may well have been as ignorant as I am of Manding grammar. It's good to learn these things. Haploidavey (talk) 17:06, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

To give some idea of relative popularity of the spellings, on Google Scholar, "jeliw mali" provides 494 results and "jelis mali" provides 302 results, and "jeliw griot" provides 421 results and "jelis griot" provides 146 results. As such, I've restored the use of the Manding plural, but explained jeliw earlier and hopefully have rephrased things to be clearer.Ornithopsis (talk) 17:39, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

That's much clearer (it's always a good idea to give singular and plural forms). Nice work. Haploidavey (talk) 17:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

How to frame Musa's wealth

I think it's important to mention Musa's wealth in the lede, as he is world-famous as the wealthiest person ever (regardless of whether that claim is accurate). If you google "wealthiest person ever", close to half the results are about Mansa Musa, and if you google "mansa musa", about half the results call him the wealthiest person ever. I think it would be remiss not to address the most famous thing about Musa in the lede of the article. However, as has been discussed above, there are not adequate sources to support the extraordinary claim that he was actually the wealthiest person ever—and indeed it's reasonable to assume that rulers of larger and more powerful empires (such as the Achaemenid, Roman, Mughal, and Chinese empires) could have commanded greater wealth, albeit not necessarily in the form of an equal quantity of pure gold. However, there is a lack of reliable sources, as far as I am aware, that provide a rigorous evaluation of his wealth. Following Wikipedia's policy on verifiability best as possible, what I put in the lede was He has often been called the wealthiest person in history, though his wealth is impossible to accurately quantify and it is difficult to meaningfully compare the wealth of historical figures. This statement is backed up by some of the sources cited in the section on his wealth. However, the other day, an IP user removed these sentences from the lede. I would like to add those sentences back to the lede, but I am open for alternatives on how to address this situation. Ornithopsis (talk) 18:13, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Seriously, does anyone have any idea of how to address the thing Musa is most famous for in the lede of the article other than saying nothing at all? I figured the sentence that I wrote in the lede was a neutral enough statement, but Yeeno removed it for being POV (after I had restored it after an IP user removed it without much of an explanation). Ornithopsis (talk) 05:46, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ornithopsis: I don't think there's anything wrong with your statement, sorry for removing it. I had just done the revert to get rid of the IP's POV editing. It should be okay to put in the lead, since it's supported by sources in the body. Yeeno (talk) 🍁 06:39, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Of birth years and rap battles

Regarding two recent edit debates on this page: First, the year of his birth. The page currently says Musa was born c. 1280, but I'm not sure where that claim comes from. Gomez (2018) guesses that Musa would have been around 35 in 1324, based on the fact that he was presumably an adult when he acceded to the throne in 1312 (or 1307) and still appeared to be a young man in 1324. This is, however, only a guess. Unless someone can find a source supporting the 1280 date, we should probably do something different with the dates—I'm not sure if we can state the date of his birth any more precisely than "late 13th century". As far as Epic Rap Battles of History is concerned, poorly-sourced and indiscriminate "in popular culture" sections are precisely why such sections have a bad name—if somebody can find an adequate secondary source supporting the notability of the Epic Rap Battles of History episode, I'd be all for including it in the article, but on principle, only citing the video itself is bad practice. Ornithopsis (talk) 16:49, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Musa Keita?

None of the scholarly sources I have read call Mansa Musa "Musa Keita" at any point. "Musa Keita" turns up a handful of Google Scholar results, mostly of dubious veracity (several appear to be sourced from Wikipedia itself). As such, I am unconvinced that Musa is actually called "Musa Keita". Indeed, in general, reliable sources giving a clear sense of how the name Keita connects to the historical rulers of Mali seem rather sparse, though obviously they are regarded as Keitas in some sense. I have removed the references to Musa Keita from the article; I think we need a better source to back up use of the name. Ornithopsis (talk) 18:42, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Mansa musa

All about mansa musa 94.174.44.127 (talk) 19:16, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

A lot of this history is legend

Given that the value of gold being described is around 9 trillion USDollars. 60,000 men in his entourage would have been more than the population of Cairo! The logistics of feeding and watering them (most of the journey being across desert) would have been slightly difficult. Sources quoted from the time were obviously exagerated for his agrandissement. Why can't Wikipedia editors recognise this instead of feeding us fairystories? Francis Hannaway (talk) 16:42, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

@Francish7 I’m skeptical myself, but have no sources challenging this. Do you? Doug Weller talk 18:12, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Whether or not there are sources, it can still be included that sources are not reliable from that era. It's like reporting on the Exodus as historical fact. Wikipedia has to be more than repeating bad history reports. Francis Hannaway (talk) 19:07, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

We’ve loads of sources saying the Exodus isn’t fact. What sources do we have about the sources in question? Doug Weller talk 19:19, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Bear in mind that Exodus was written down by people centuries after the fact, whereas the most detailed account of Mansa Musa's pilgrimage (that of al-Umari) was written down only twelve years later based on eyewitness accounts. In fact, we have one direct eyewitness account written down by someone who personally saw Mansa Musa in Mecca! Regarding your claims of implausibility: Gold is currently worth USD$1,840 per ounce. It is claimed that Musa brought approximately 18 tons of gold (525,000 oz) on his pilgrimage. That's roughly a billion dollars worth of gold. Islamic Cairo states that the population of Cairo during the reign of al-Nasir Muhammad (i.e. at the time of Musa's pilgrimage) has been claimed to have been roughly 500,000. There is, admittedly, a detail currently overlooked in the article regarding the size of Musa's entourage; 60,000 is the number he's claimed to have left Mali with in the Tarikh al-Sudan, not the number he arrived in Cairo with. Many of his entourage fell ill en route and did not travel further than Tuat; he seems to have arrived in Cairo with closer to 10,000–20,000 people. So no, it is not being claimed that Musa arrived in Cairo with nine trillion dollars in gold and an entourage larger than the entire population of Cairo. While it's certainly true that there's a lot of room for improvement in the quality of Wikipedia's coverage of Musa and the Mali Empire—improvement I have dedicated a good deal of my free time to working on—if you're going to criticize this article for factual inaccuracies, at least try to be factually accurate yourself. Ornithopsis (talk) 19:59, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Typo in Legacy: Wealth section

"Musa Musa" instead of "Mansa Musa". Can't edit because locked. 2600:6C44:F7F:FD8F:D5DD:2CE7:3:5D54 (talk) 03:31, 16 June 2022 (UTC)\

Thanks very much, fixed. Doug Weller talk 10:13, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

As fake as Solomon

I have my doubts that Mansa Musa ever existed. There’s no artifacts of his empire and the earliest records are relatively recent Islamic “scholar” references, which brings me to my next point: I believe Mansa Musa’s story exists to try and one up the Jewish story of King Solomon. The details are similar: greatest wealth and greatest wisdom. There’s also no artifacts of Solomon’s empire. Shame on Smithsonian Mag for publishing their “article” on Mansa Musa. I wasn’t able to find any good support for any of the stuff they wrote. 173.79.150.89 (talk) 14:42, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Numerous Arabic sources written within several years of Musa's pilgrimage exist. Al-Umari interviewed people who had met Musa and Al-Yafii apparently saw him personally. Ibn Battuta traveled to Mali during the reign of Musa's brother Sulayman. Buildings in Gao and Timbuktu may date, at least partially, to Musa's reign, and the archaeological site of Sorotomo was a major town in Musa's time that shows evidence of being a place of imperial authority. When the Portuguese explored the coasts of Africa, a couple centuries after Musa's time, they learned from the coastal peoples they met that inland a great empire was ruled by the Mandi Mansa ("Mandi" and "Mali" are different pronunciations of the same word in various languages of West Africa). It's true that both the archaeological and documentary record leave a lot of gaps in our knowledge of Musa's reign, but his existence and having brought a lot of gold on his hajj are about as well-documented as you can expect of the Middle Ages. Ornithopsis (talk) 18:18, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

How rich is he 2603:9001:4D06:6927:1165:D62C:9964:1238 (talk) 03:40, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I also have a very serious doubt about the existence of this man. But let's assume he did exist. The insurmountable issue as I see it (shocking no one pointed it out here) is how can he be judged the wealthiest man ever when no monetary system existed in 14th century Sub Saharan Africa? There were no minted coins, no manufacturing of any kind, no concept of metallurgy, no system of writing, hence, no ledgers and no way to record anything. The wheel didn't even exist in Sub Saharan Africa at that time, meaning any significant amount of trading would be impossible. And just what could a 'wealthy' person purchase in 14th century Sub Saharan Africa? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:9000:62F0:6F40:7822:9100:FDDF:4F57 (talk) 23:12, 29 October 2023 (UTC)