76 West African Civilization

To govern these diverse peoples, Mansa Musa divided his empire into provinces with each one ruled by a governor (farba) appointed personally by him and responsible for local taxes, justice, and settling tribal disputes. The administration was further improved with greater records kept and sent to the centralized government offices at Niani. With more tribute from more conquered chiefs, more trade routes under Mali control, and even more natural resources to exploit, Mansa Musa and the Mali elite became immensely rich. When the Mali king visited Cairo in 1324 CE, he spent or simply gave away so much gold that the price of bullion crashed by 20%. Such riches set off a never-ending round of rumors that Mali was a kingdom paved with gold. In Spain c. 1375 CE, a mapmaker was inspired to create Europe’s first detailed map of West Africa, part of the Catalan Atlas. The map has Mansa Musa wearing an impressive gold crown and triumphantly brandishing a huge lump of gold in his hand. European explorers would spend the next five centuries trying to locate the source of this gold and the fabled trading city of Timbuktu.

Spread of Islam

Islam spread through parts of West Africa via the Arab merchants who traded there. Islam in West Africa really took off, though, from the reign of Mansa Musa I. He famously went to Mecca and, impressed with what he saw on his travels, Mansa Musa brought back home Muslim architects, scholars, and books. Mosques were built such as Timbuktu’s ‘Great mosque’, and Koranic schools and universities were established which quickly gained an international reputation. Studies were actually much wider than religion and included history, geography, astronomy, and medicine. Great libraries were built up with tens of thousands of books and manuscripts, many of which survive today.

As more people were converted, so more Muslim clerics were attracted from abroad and the religion was spread further across West Africa. Many native converts studied in such places as Fez, Morocco, and became great scholars, missionaries, and even saints, and so Islam came to be seen no longer as a foreign religion but a black African one. Despite the spread of Islam, it is also true that ancient indigenous animist beliefs continued to be practiced, especially in rural communities, as noted by travelers like Ibn Battuta who visited Mali c. 1352 CE. In addition, Islamic studies were conducted in Arabic not native languages, and this further impeded its popularity outside the educated clerical class of towns and cities. Even the Islam that did take hold in Mali was a particular variation of that practiced in the Arab world, perhaps because Mali rulers could not afford to completely dismiss the indigenous religious practices and beliefs that the majority of their people clung on to.^[2]