In the fourteenth century, if you wanted to find one of the richest empires in the world, you wouldn’t have looked in Europe. Instead, you would have travelled to West Africa and the Mali Empire. The ...

Mansa Musa, emperor of the Mali Empire, is widely regarded as the richest man in history. He was exceptionally wealthy to an extent that historians have struggled to quantify it accurately.

A Photograph of Mansa Musa, King of Mali on a map of North Africa circa 1375. (Photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images) But his story was recorded by historians north of the Sahara. First it was those he ...