Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa: Crash Course World History #16

In which John Green teaches you about Sub-Saharan Africa! So, what exactly was going on there? It turns out, it was a lot of trade, converting to Islam, visits from Ibn Battuta, trade, beautiful women, trade, some impressive architecture, and several empires. John not only cover the the West African Malian Empire, which is the one Mansa Musa ruled, but he discusses the Ghana Empire, and even gets over to East Africa as well to discuss the trade-based city-states of Mogadishu, Mombasa, and Zanzibar. In addition to all this, John considers emigrating to Canada.

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Hi there,
my name’s John Green,

this is Crash Course World History

and today we’re gonna talk
about Africa.

Mr. Green Mr. Green!

We’ve already been talking
about Africa.

Egypt is in Africa,

and you haven’t shut up
about it the entire course—

Yeah that’s true,
Me from the Past.

But Africa’s big—
it’s like, super big—

much bigger than it appears
on most maps, actually.

I mean,

you can fit India and China,
and the United States if you fold in Maine.

All of that fits in Africa.

Like any huge place,
Africa is incredibly diverse,

and its a mistake to focus
just on Egypt.

So today let’s go here,
south of the Sahara desert.

[music intro]

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First, let’s turn to written record.

Oh, right.
We don’t have very many.

At least not written by
Sub-Saharan Africans.

Much of African history was preserved
via oral rather than written tradition.

These days,

we tend to think of writing as the most accurate
and reliable form of description,

but then again

we do live in a print-based culture.

And we’ve already said that writing is one
of the markers of civilization,

implying that people who don’t
use writing aren’t civilized,

a prejudice that has been applied
over and over again to Africa.

But 1.
if you need any evidence that it’s possible

to produce amazing literary artifacts without
the benefits of writing,

let me direct your attention to the Iliad
and the Odyssey,

which were composed and memorized by poets
for centuries before anyone ever wrote them

down.

And 2.
No less an authority than Plato said that

writing destroys human memory by alleviating
the need to remember anything.

And 3.
You think the oral tradition is uncivilized

but

HERE YOU ARE LISTENING
TO ME TALK.

But we do have a lot of interesting
records for some African histories,

including the legendary tale

of Mansa Musa.

By legendary I mean some
of it probably isn’t true,

but it sure is important.

Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

So there was this king Mansa Musa,

who ruled the west African empire of Mali,

and in 1324ish he left his home and

made the hajj,
the pilgrimage to Mecca.

He brought with him an entourage of over 1000

(some sources say 60,000)

and, most importantly,
100 camel loads of gold.

I wish it had been donkeys
so I could say he had

100 assloads of gold,
but no. Camels.

Right, so along the way

Mansa Musa spent freely and
gave away lots of his riches.

Most famously,
when he reached Alexandria,

at the time one of the most cultured cities
in the world,

he spent so much gold that he caused runaway
inflation throughout the city

that took years to recover from.

He built houses in Cairo and in Mecca to house
his attendants,

and as he traveled through
the world, a lot of people—

notably the merchants of Venice—

no, Thought Bubble,

like actual merchants of Venice—

right.

They saw him in Alexandria and returned to
Italy with tales of Mansa Musa’s ridiculous

wealth,

which helped create the myth in the minds
of Europeans that

West Africa was a land of gold,
an El Dorado.

The kind of place you’d like to visit.

And maybe, you know,
in five centuries or so,

begin to pillage.

Thanks Thought Bubble.

So what’s so important about
the story of Mansa Musa?

Well, first,

it tells us there were African kingdoms,

ruled by fabulously wealthy African kings.

Which undermines one of the many stereotypes
about Africa,

that its people were poor

and lived in tribes ruled by chiefs

and witch doctors.

Also,

since Mansa Musa was making the hajj,
we know that he was

A. Muslim and

B. relatively devout.

And this tells us that Africa,
at least western Africa,

was much more connected to the parts of the
world we’ve been talking about than we generally

are led to believe.

Mansa Musa knew all about the places he was
going before he got there,

and after his visits,

the rest of the Mediterranean world was sure
interested in finding out more about his homeland.

Mansa Musa’s pilgrimage also brings up a
lot of questions about west Africa,

namely, what did his kingdom look like and
how did he come to convert to Islam?

The first question is a little easier,

so we’ll start with that one.

The empire of Mali,

which Mansa Musa ruled until
the extremely elite year of 1337,

was a large swath of West Africa,

running from the coast hundreds of miles into
the interior and including many significant

cities,

the largest and best-known
of which was Timbuktu.

The story of the Islamization
of the Empire, however,

is a bit more complicated.

Okay,

so pastoral North Africans called Berbers
had long traded with West Africans,

with the Berbers offering
salt in exchange for

West African gold.

That may seem like a bad deal
until you consider that

without salt,
we die,

whereas without gold,

we only have to face the universe’s depraved
indifference to us without

the benefit of metallic adornment.

That went to an ominous place quickly.

Right, so anyway the Berbers were early converts
to Islam, and Islam spread along those pre-existing

trade routes

between North and West Africa.

Right,

so the first converts in Mali were traders,

who benefited from having a religious as well
as commercial connection to their trading

partners in the North and the rest of the
Mediterranean.

And then the kings followed the traders,

maybe because sharing the religion of more
established kingdoms in the north and east

would give them prestige,

not to mention access to scholars and administrators
who could help them cement their power.

So Islam became the religion of the elites
in West Africa,

which meant that the Muslim kings were trying
to extend their power over largely non-Muslim

populations that

worshipped traditional
African gods and spirits.

In order not to seem too foreign,

these African Muslim kings would often blend
traditional religion with Islam.

For instance, giving women more equality than
was seen in Islam’s birthplace.

Anyway,

the first kings we have a record of adopting
Islam were from Ghana,

which was the first “empire”
in western Africa.

It really took off in the 11th century.

As with all empires,
and also everything else,

Ghana rose and then fell,

and it was replaced by Mali.

The kings of Mali,
especially Mansa Musa

but also Mansa Sulayman
his successor,

tried to increase the knowledge
and practice of Islam

in their territory.

So for example,

when Mansa Musa returned from his hajj,

he brought back scholars and
architects to build mosques.

And the reason we know a lot about Mali is
because it was visited by Ibn Battuta,

the Moroccan cleric and scholar

who kinda had the best life ever.

He was particularly fascinated by gender roles
in the Malian empire—

and by Malian women—
writing:

“They are extremely beautiful, and
more important than the men.”

Oh. It must be time
for the open letter.

[rolls with wild, reckless abandon to the
caged inferno]

An Open Letter
to Ibn Battuta:

I wonder what’s in the
Secret Compartment today.

Oh. I appears to be
some kind of fake beard...

[a hirsute wish is made]

Movie magic!
[John = L4D Bill]

Stan,
why did you do this to me?

Dear Ibn Battuta,

Bro, I love twitter and

my x-box and
Hawaiian pizza,

but if I had to go into the
past and live anyone’s life,

it would be yours!

Because you were this outlandishly learned
scholar who managed to parlay your knowledge

of Islam into the

greatest road trip in history.

You went from Mali to Constantinople to India
to Russia to Indonesia;

you were probably the most widely traveled
person before the

invention of the steam engine.

And everywhere you went,

you were treated like a king and then you
went home and wrote a really famous book

which people still read today

called the Rihla,

and also you could grow a real beard and

I'M JEALOUS!

Best wishes,
John Green

That was a great open letter.

Not to brag er anything,

but you know,
it was.

One more thing about Mansa Musa:

There are lots of stories that Mansa Musa
attempted to engage in maritime trade across

the Atlantic Ocean,

and some historians even believe that Malians
reached the Americas.

DNA investigation may one day
prove it, but until then,

we’ll only have oral tradition.

The Malian Empire eventually fell to the Songhay,
which was eventually overthrown for being

insufficiently Islamic, meaning that centuries
after his death

Mansa Musa had succeeded at bringing Islamic
piety to his people.

All of which is to say that—

like China or India or Europe—

West Africa had its own empires that relied
upon religion and war and incredibly boring

dynastic politics.

Man,
I hate dynastic politics.

If I wanted to live in an ostensibly independent
country that can’t let go of Monarchy,

I’d be like Thought Bubble
and move to Canada.

Oh, come on,
Thought Bubble-

Shut up and take back Celine Dion!

that’s not fair.

Alright, now let’s move to the other side
of Africa where there was an alternative model

of “civilizational” development.

The eastern coast of Africa saw the rise of
what historians called the Swahili civilization,

which was not an empire or a kingdom but a
collection of city states—

like Zanzibar and
Mombasa and Mogadishu--

— All of which formed
a network of trade ports.

There was no central authority –

each of these cities was autonomous ruled,

usually, but not always,

by a king.

But there were three things that linked these
city states such that we can consider them

a common culture:

language, trade and religion.

The Swahili language is part of a language
group called Bantu,

and its original speakers
were from West Africa.

Their migration to East Africa not only changed
the linguistic traditions of Africa but everything

else, because they brought with them iron
work and agriculture.

Until then, most of the people living in the
East had been hunter gatherers or herders,

but once introduced,

agriculture took hold as it almost always
does.

Unless,

wait for it--

--you’re the Mongols.
[Mongol-tage horns sound]

Modern day Swahili,
by the way,

is still a Bantu based language,

although it’s been heavily influenced by
Arabic.

On that topic:

For a long time historians believed that the
East African cities were all started by Arab

or Persian traders,

which was basically just racist:

they didn’t believe that Africans were sophisticated
enough to found these great cities,

like Mogadishu and Mombasa.

Now scholars recognize that all the major
Swahili cities were founded well before Islam

arrived in the region and then in fact trade
had been going on since the first century

CE.

But Swahili civilization didn’t begin its
rapid development until the 8th century when

Arab traders arrived seeking goods that they
could trade in the vast Indian Ocean network,

the Silk Road of the sea.

And of course those merchants brought Islam
with them, which,

just like in West Africa was adopted by the
elites who wanted religious as well as commercial

connections to the rest of

the Mediterranean world.

In many of the Swahili states these Muslim
communities started out quite small,

but at their height between
the 13th and 16th century

most of the cities boasted large mosques.

The one in Kilwa even impressed Ibn Battuta,
who of course visited the city,

because he was having
the best life ever.

Most of the goods exported
were raw materials,

like ivory, animal hides and timber—

it’s worth noting, by the way,

that when you’re moving trees around, you
have a level of sophistication to your trade

that goes way beyond the Silk Road.

I mean, if you’ll recall they weren’t
just

trading tortoise shells and stuff---
[Pouf-dodges with cat-like agility]

Not again!

Africans also exported
slaves along the east coast,

although not in HUGE numbers,

and they exported gold,

and they imported finished luxury goods like
porcelain and books.

In fact,

archaeological digs in Kilwa have revealed
that houses often featured a kind of built-in

bookshelf.

Learning of books through architecture nicely
captures

the magic of studying history.

Archaeology, writing,
and oral tradition

all intermingle to give
us glimpses of the past.

And each of those lenses may show us the past
as

if through some funhouse mirror,

but if we’re conscious about it,

we can at least recognize
the distortions.

Studying Africa reminds us that we need to
look at lots of sources,

and lots of kinds of sources

if we want to get a fuller
picture of the past.

If we relied on only
written sources,

it would be far too easy to fall into the
old trap of seeing Africa as backwards and

uncivilized.

Through approaching it
with multiple lenses,

we discover a complicated,
diverse place that was

sometimes rich and sometimes not—

and when you think of it that way,

it becomes not
separate from,

but part of,
our history.

Thanks for watching.
We’ll see you next week.

CrashCourse is

produced and directed by Stan Muller,

Our script supervisor
is Danica Johnson,

The show is written by my
high school history teacher

Raoul Meyer and myself

And our Graphics Team is

ThoughtBubble
[Perhaps hanging at the Hoser Hut?]

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Animal Crackers

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And as we say in my hometown,

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