The Hajj That Crashed the Global Economy

1. 0:06When Mansa Musa's procession crossed the Sahara, [music] Egyptian merchants and traders came out of their caravans just to watch it pass.
2. 0:13No one had seen anything [music] like it. Columns of people and animals stretching for miles, gold staffed heralds at the front, camels carrying [music] sacks of gold dust in the middle, the sound of drums and griots rising over the desert wind, a city moving.
3. 0:30>> [music] >> By the time they reached Cairo in 1324, three months out of Niani, word had already preceded them. The Mamluk Sultanate was the most powerful state [music] in the Islamic world. They had defeated the Mongols at Ain Jalut. They
4. 0:44considered themselves the sword and shield of Islam. And their Sultan, Al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun, received dignitaries according [music] to strict protocol. That protocol required every visitor to kiss the [music] ground before the Sultan. Musa refused. He
5. 1:00replied, "I will not [music] prostrate myself before any man. I bow only before God."
6. 1:06A compromise [music] was reached. He bowed toward God, and the Sultan, who had never heard these words from a visiting king, accepted it. This is one of the most revealing moments in Musa's life. He had crossed 4,000 miles of
7. 1:20desert to make his submission before God, not before any earthly [music] ruler, not even the most powerful one in the world.
8. 1:29Then came the gold.
9. 1:30Musa spent three months in Cairo. He gave gold to every official, every court holder, every merchant, every poor person he encountered. He bought goods at whatever price was asked without bargaining because haggling was considered beneath a pious man. He
10. 1:47donated to every mosque and [music] shrine he passed. Al-Umari, an Egyptian scholar who interviewed court officials who had personally met Musa, >> [music] >> wrote, "This man spread upon Cairo the flood of his generosity. There was no
11. 2:01person, officer of the court, or holder of any office of the Sultanate who did not receive a sum of gold from him."
12. 2:09What followed was something no one had anticipated, including Musa.
13. 2:13Gold lost [music] its value. When you flood a gold-based economy with tons of gold in 3 months, the gold that already existed becomes less scarce. Less scarce means less valuable. Merchants who had priced their goods against gold found
14. 2:28their gold worth less than yesterday.
15. 2:30Wages fell in [music] real terms. Prices rose. The disruption spread beyond Egypt, across the Mediterranean trade networks, into North Africa, into the Levant. Al-Umari wrote 13 years later that the price of gold had still not
16. 2:46fully recovered. The richest man alive [music] had accidentally caused what may be the first recorded instance of individual-induced inflation in history by being too generous. When Musa learned what he had done, he attempted to
17. 3:00correct it. He went to money lenders in Cairo and borrowed gold back from them at interest to reduce the supply. The irony is almost too large to hold. The wealthiest man in the world sitting across a table from a money lender, paying interest to fix what his
18. 3:16generosity had broken. Whether it worked, the sources do not tell us. He left Cairo and turned south [music] and east toward Mecca. Behind him, 12 years of economic recovery. Ahead, the Kaaba.
19. 3:30[music] He did not look back.

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