{"id":86030,"date":"2024-03-06T01:00:25","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T06:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=86030"},"modified":"2024-03-05T09:35:41","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T14:35:41","slug":"qotd-mansa-musas-disastrous-foreign-aid-to-cairo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/03\/06\/qotd-mansa-musas-disastrous-foreign-aid-to-cairo\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Mansa Musa’s disastrous foreign aid to Cairo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Mansa Musa’s good intentions may be the first case in history of failed foreign aid. Known as the “Lord of the Wangara Mines”, Mansa Musa I<\/a> ruled the Empire of Mali<\/a> between 1312 and 1337. Trade in gold, salt, copper, and ivory made Mansa Musa the richest man in world history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a practicing Muslim, Mansa Musa decided to visit Mecca in 1324. It is estimated that his caravan was composed of 8,000 soldiers and courtiers \u2014 others estimate a total of 60,000 \u2014 12,000 slaves with 48,000 pounds of gold and 100 camels with 300 pounds of gold each. For greater spectacle, another 500 servants preceded the caravan, and each carried a gold staff weighing between 6 and 10.5 pounds. When totaling the estimates, he carried from side to side of the African continent approximately 38 tons of the golden metal, the equivalent today of the gold reserves in Malaysia’s central bank \u2014 more than countries like Peru, Hungary or Qatar have in their vaults.<\/p>\n

On his way, the Mansa of Mali stayed for three months in Cairo. Every day he gave gold bars to the poor, scholars, and local officials. Mansa’s emissaries toured the bazaars paying at a premium with gold. The Arab historian Al-Makrizi<\/a> (1364-1442) relates that Mansa Musa’s gifts “astonished the eye by their beauty and splendor”. But the joy was short-lived. So much was the flow of golden metal that flooded the streets of Cairo that the value of the local gold dinar fell by 20 percent and it took the city about 12 years to recover from the inflationary pressure that such a devaluation caused.<\/p>\n

Orestes R Betancourt Ponce de Le\u00f3n, “5 Historic Examples of Foreign Aid Efforts Gone Wrong”, FEE Stories<\/em><\/a>, 2021-06-06.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mansa Musa’s good intentions may be the first case in history of failed foreign aid. Known as the “Lord of the Wangara Mines”, Mansa Musa I ruled the Empire of Mali between 1312 and 1337. Trade in gold, salt, copper, and ivory made Mansa Musa the richest man in world history. As a practicing Muslim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[362,25,7,370,41,11],"tags":[377,588,782,165,47,832,1033,315],"class_list":["post-86030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-economics","category-history","category-middle-east","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-conspicuousconsumption","tag-egypt","tag-foreignaid","tag-inflation","tag-islam","tag-mali","tag-unintendedconsequences","tag-wealth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-mnA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86030"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87856,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86030\/revisions\/87856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}