In July 1324, the road into Cairo glittered with gold, camels, and slaves, and at its centre rode Mansa Musa, the ruler of Mali, refusing at first to bow to Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad. When he finally did, he said it was for God alone. By then the whole Muslim world had heard of him, because this was no ordinary visit, but a procession so lavish that Cairo would still be talking about it years later.

Long before that journey, Musa had been born around 1280, probably into the Keita line linked to Sunjata, the first mansa of Mali. His own family story is tangled in the sources, with names such as Faga Leye, Kanku, and Abu Bakr appearing in different accounts. What is clear is that he came to power in the early 1300s, when he was still a young man, and that the empire he inherited stretched across lands now part of Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania, the Gambia, and modern Mali.

He ruled as the ninth mansa, and under him Mali reached its territorial peak. Its wealth came from control of trade, especially salt from the north and gold from Bambuk and Bure in the south, with copper tax adding to the treasury. Musa also pushed the frontier outward, bringing Gao and Timbuktu into the empire, and he sought stronger ties with the Mamluk and Marinid Sultanates. In Cairo he befriended Ibn Amir Hajib, who later passed on what he had learned to historians such as al-Umari.

The hajj of 1324 and 1325 was the hinge of his life. Musa travelled some 2,700 miles with as many as 12,000 slaves, 80 camels, and bars of gold, giving alms as he went and building, it was said, a mosque every Friday. In Cairo he stayed three months, and al-Umari recorded that his spending lowered the value of gold in Egypt for years. On the road back, the pilgrimage turned grim: by Suez, many had died of cold, starvation, and bandit raids, and Musa had run into debt.

Yet the journey also remade Mali. Musa brought back the Andalusian poet Abu Ishaq al-Sahili and other scholars, and he set about building mosques and madrasas in Timbuktu and Gao. Sankore Madrasah was developed under his reign, and Timbuktu became a centre of trade, scholarship, and Islam, drawing jurists, astronomers, and mathematicians. He also raised a grand palace and Djinguereber Mosque, and when Mossi took Timbuktu in 1330, he swiftly restored control, built a rampart and stone fort, and left a standing army there.