Mansa Musa Owned 12 Times More Slaves Than The US’s Largest Slaveowner
Just came across an interesting fact: Next to Mansa Musa, the US’s largest slaveholder was a piker. We have precise numbers for Joshua John Ward, who’s known as the largest American slaveholder. In 1850 Ward held 1,092 slaves.
We only have general numbers for the ninth Mansa of the Mali Empire, Musa I, aka Mansa Musa, aka the wealthiest person in history. When Musa made his pilgrimage to Mecca, history says he went with 60,000 men, including 12,000 slaves. Perhaps the numbers were exaggerated, but we have no reason to assume that. More importantly, we don’t know how many slaves were left behind. Musa may have owned far, far more than twelve times as many slaves as Joshua John Ward.
P.S. I mentioned this in the comments and should mention it here too: Chattel slavery existed in Africa. See Gaspar, D. B. (1998). More than chattel: black women and slavery in the Americas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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PS #2: To be clear, the models for slavery varied in Africa. Chattel slavery was only one of them. Wikipedia has a decent article about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa
