March 27, 2025 • 41 mins
Although it’s the cradle of our species, and a land as rich in culture as it is legendarily rich in resources, retellings of African history often place their focus heavily on the transatlantic slave trade. While this is valuable, too narrow a focus can make it easy to lose sight of how incredibly powerful, interconnected, and respected African people have been within the fabric of global history. This week, Danièle speaks with Luke Pepera about medieval Africa, what it would’ve been like to find yourself in one of the most powerful empires of the Middle Ages, and the famous pilgrimage of Mansa Musa.
You can support this podcast on Medievalists.net Patreon page, which sells this digital map of medieval Africa: https://www.patreon.com/medievalists/shop/map-of-medieval-africa-36747?source=storefront
You can support this podcast on Medievalists.net Patreon page, which sells this digital map of medieval Africa: https://www.patreon.com/medievalists/shop/map-of-medieval-africa-36747?source=storefront
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and eighty
four of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sebalski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. Although it's the cradle of
our species and a land as rich in culture as
it is legendarily rich in resources, retellings of African history
often place their focus heavily on the Transatlantic slave trade,
(00:37):
and while this is valuable, too narrow a focus can
make it easy to lose sight of how incredibly powerful, interconnected,
and respected African people have been within the fabric of
global history. The fourteenth century Empire of Mali is just
one example of how Africans represented the pinnacle of wealth, education,
and sophistication in the Middle Ages. This week I spoke
(01:01):
with Luke Pepperah about medieval Africa. Luke is the writer
and presenter behind the documentary Africa Written Out of History
for History Hit and the new mini series Empire of
Gold for Dan Jones's podcast This Is History from Sony,
a podcast that might just be familiar to some of
you listeners. Luke's new book is Motherland, a journey through
(01:24):
five hundred thousand years of African culture and identity. Our
conversation on his approach to such a huge and often
unsung part of history, what it would have been like
to find yourself in one of the most powerful empires
of the Middle Ages, and the story behind the famous
Mansa Musa is coming up right after this. Well, welcome
(01:46):
Luke to tell us all about medieval Africa as much
as we know about it, and even more the history
of Africa as you have told it in your new book.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh, thank you for having me. It's really great to
be here.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
So you have a new book out you decided to
take on sort of the history of Africa.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Why did you do that? That is a huge project?
What were you thinking behind it?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I basically just want to give people a sense that
there's so much to African people's, African history and African culture,
then the translated slave trading, colonialism, and with the best
available archaeological, genetic, ethnographic evidence that we have and linguistic
as well, we know that human beings Homo sapiens, the
species that we are, originated in Africa, and in fact
(02:29):
that every human being now living is descended from a
population that lived in Africa around one hundred and fifty
thousand years ago. So there is at least one hundred
and fifty thousand years of history in the colloquial sense,
not written records per se, but of a past. And
yet we focus on the recent past and also on
the recent events that end up painting Africans as victims,
(02:52):
as sort of rural backwards victims. And you know, for me,
it was I was born and grew up with Garna,
and I was exposed and you know, always back there,
and even if I was coming to school in the
UK and university in the UK, and I was exposed
to a knew about so much of the rich history
that was there in Garner of the songs, the stories,
you know, the masks, the drums, and mythology. And that's
(03:14):
just one place, or even sometimes just one group in
one place, you know, the history of one group in
one place. So I said, there's a rich tapestry of
stories of traditions of history here that we just don't explore.
And I wanted, really, I wanted to drive home that
sense of a deep, large, expansive past. And in order
to do that, I wanted to go as deep and
(03:34):
as wide as possible. So that's why I decided to
tackle this big topic. It's just to really say that,
you know, it is a huge topic and this is
just an easy introduction, but you know, let's let's let's
get into it, you know, let's explore it more.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yes, I completely understand where you're coming from, and that
that was the same impulse that brought me to the
Middle Ages, where you know, you're learning about it in
school and you're talking to other people and realizing like
there is so much here that needs to be tough about,
that needs to be explored. And so, yeah, I really
enjoyed your book, and I think that it's a great
introduction to the wider study of such an amazing continent
(04:11):
full of just so many different stories. And of course
we can't get into like the prehistory of Africa because
the system Medieval podcast and we only have a certain
amount of time.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
So let's get into.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
The part that you have talked about sort of more
extensively and widely, what we're going to tell people about
near the end of the podcast, but that is talking
about the Kingdom of Mali around the fourteenth century. So
can you set this up for us, like we're talking
fourteenth century, we're talking Mali. What would people find if
they were outsiders coming to Mali at this time.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well, thank you first of all for the really kind
of words about the book. And yeah, Mali. Mali is
one of the most fascinating African civilizations. I mean it
starts off as really a collection of small kingdoms or
series of small kingdoms around where the country of Mali
is about south west of where Mali is in southwest
Mali today. And in the early thirteenth century, the empire
(05:07):
itself was founded by a young prince called Sundiata Keita
who belongs to an ethnic group called the Mandingo, who
were indigenous to that part of West Africa. And he
basically defeats a larger kingdom called Soso, which is the
premier power in the region at the time. And after
he defeats Soso in its king Samarakante and conquers his territories,
(05:29):
then he founds Mali and he establishes a constitution. That's
the beginning of the empire as we know it. And
we have an exact date for that as well, which
is quite interesting, which is twelve thirty five, the year
he establishes that constitution. But if you're going to go
to Mali in the fourteenth century. By that time, the
kingdom has been expanded. It's also Muslim as well. The
elite and Mali had been Muslim since about the eleventh
(05:52):
or twelfth centuries AD, and that's because they were connected
to other Muslim states and kingdoms across the world via
the transfer and trade. And you know, Muslim traders and
Muslim merchants were the big dogs of that trade. You know,
they had access to markets and wealth and also to contacts,
and their rulers were huge consumers of luxuries and exotica.
(06:13):
So those are the merchants that he wanted to be
in contact with, and for the people in Mali, the
rulers and the merchants, in order to get close and
formed closer diplomatic ties and economic ties with those merchants,
they adopted Islam. So it's a Muslim. It's also a
giant as well. I mean, by the early fourteenth century,
it has a population of about fifty million and its
(06:33):
capital city has ac called Niani, which is in south
southwest Mali. Niani has a population of a few hundred
thousand people, at least one hundred thousand. It's absolutely gigantic.
It's also quite you know, well stratified. You have serfs
and farmers who mainly work the land, but actually the
nobles also there's nothing ignoble about working the land too,
(06:54):
so they're involved in it, but mainly serfs who work
the land. And then you also have a cast of
christ people, weavers, potters, blacksmiths as well, who serve the elite.
And then in sort of the center of the capital itself,
that's where the elite's households and the palaces are, and
the climate of the place. It's quite interesting because I
think we, you know, especially now with the cell and Sarah,
(07:15):
kind of think of that region as being quite sort
of dry and dusty, desiccated, but actually it's quite lush.
So in fact, that's where they can grow all kinds
of different fruits and vegetables. They grow rice as well,
and they have lifestyle including goats and cheap and cattle
which graze sort of in the outskirts of the empire.
So it's quite lush and it's quite cool, and it
gets like a fair amount of rainfall. So that's kind
(07:37):
of a little bit of the history of society what
it would feel like a little bit to be there,
and then also the makeup of its population and sort
of how it operates. And it is quite a hierarchical
society as well, so you know the serfs world ordinarily
there's not the same kind of feudal relationship as you
see in Western European kingdoms. So if they're where it's
land owned by particular noble who have you know, their
(07:58):
retainers who work at all them. There is tribute, but
it's not based on land ownership. It's basically just based
on the surfs. They keep the majority of foosels for themselves,
but they have to send a certain amount of tribute
to members of their ability, including the manser as well.
So that's how the empire looks and that's how it operates.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I mean, it would have been incredible, especially if you're
traveling from a long distance to arrive in this city
with all of these people, all of this wealth and sophistication.
It must have just been an amazing end point to
your journey. If you're traveling along the trade road, just
be like, I've never seen anything like this before, because
if you're traveling from Europe, you wouldn't have seen a
(08:36):
city this big most of the time, this would have
been just mind blowing to see such a beautiful and
rich city.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
I'm so glad that you painted that picture for me.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yes, and you mentioned the wealth, and that's one of
the things that really attracts a lot of foreign visitors
and merchants, Tomiley. I mean, the empire does have a
strong agricultural foundation. Most people derive their livelihood from working
the land. But one of the big commodities and one
of the big exports of Mali is gold. The Malei
emperors themselves don't own the necessarily huge reserves of gold.
(09:06):
But essentially in what's now Ghana, there are different you know,
gold fields, and there are groups or casts of gold
miners and gold traders who export gold from where they
are and you know, from the minds that belong to
them or that are local to them. They export them
up to Mali. So traders will come down from Mali
and then they will exchange whatever they have for the gold.
(09:28):
And then as it's coming into the empire, basically the
oh you know, as those traders take it back through
the empire and usually send it further afield to North
Africa or to the Mediterranean. The Mali emperor basically is
taxing and the merchants who are bringing the gold through
their empire, he'll take a little bit of the gold
they bring in. So that's how he kind of and
masses as wealth. Because he has close relations usually with
(09:48):
the merchants themselves, but also actually directly with the gold
miners and you know, the gold dealers, he has access
to extraordinary wealth. But you know, coppers also a big commodity,
so as a huge commodity as well. There's one town
called Tagaza which has these nearish the capital, but it
has huge amounts of salt reserves as well, and that's
(10:09):
essential for when you're crossing the Sahara too. So because
of its natural resources and the emperor's access to natural resources,
Male becomes extraordinarily wealthy, and a lot of that wealth
is invested in architecture as well, especially they're building with
a mud brick, sometimes in stone, usually of my brick,
but you know, the center of Niani is very built
(10:30):
up and it's very urbanized. And then also in clothing,
the elite or the nobility wear silk or sometimes actually
European fabrics and then are decked out and jewelry usually gold, silver.
You know, they have gold and silver maces, swords, scabbards, necklaces, circlets.
They also wear a lot of jewelry too, and so
(10:51):
that's all, you know, part of the demonstration of the
king as well. So I think as a traveler, this
is something and you know, we have accounts of travelers
where this is something that's obviously very parent to people
who are coming from different places. That actually just the
amount of wealth on display, and that's also just a
sketch of how will where the Mali elite and the
Mali emperor himself from where he drives his wealth.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
I think this is so interesting in that there is
so much gold there, there's so much richness there that
when the people from Mali are speaking to other traders,
they'll have a sense of how much the other traders
will value the gold. But I wanted to ask you,
do you feel like within the Empire of Mali itself
that people are like it's just gold whatever, it's not
as big a deal for them, or you feel like
(11:33):
it's still as valuable for them and they just have
a higher standard of living when it comes to making
themselves look good.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
That's a great question. I think there's something inherently alluring
about gold itself. You know that it's you know, it's sparkly,
it's heavy, and it's like and it's relatively rare that
you know, there is a sense of wanting to use
it esthetically basically, so you want to use it in art,
you want to use it in jewelry, and you want
to use it in fashion. But actually, for the most part,
the Malians themselves view gold as a valuable commodity really
(12:04):
only because other people find it so extremely valuable, and
because it's so abundant in the kingdom that it's not
seen in the kingdom itself as having as much intrinsic
value because of its abundance, but it's seen as a
very valuable export essentially, and also in order to demonstrate
to other people coming, whether that's rulers or traders or
(12:26):
merchants or diplomats, that Mali is rich, they will display
that gold because they know that it is something that
other people look on as valuable.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, I wanted to ask that question because often you'll
find when cultures mixed, where the culture made the home
culture that is having on contact from outside is like, oh,
I didn't realize that people thought this was so important.
So I was wondering, when you have an empire that
is so rich in gold, which is thought of outside
of it as being such a valuable commodity, if people
(12:54):
were just kind of more blasee within the empire itself.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Yes, the emperors, theselves are definitely also really well educated
in the value of their gold. I mean the minerals
as well, but especially gold, copper, and then to a
lesser extent soul to something that you know used and
you know it is seen as even in the medieval era,
this kind of international currency that is valued and accepting everywhere.
(13:18):
And the Marlins and especially the Marley and Lita really
profoundly aware of that and trade off on that in
order to highlight the impressiveness of themselves and of their kingdom.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Right exactly, if you've got it flanted directly, exactly. Okay,
So when we think about Mali, when we think about gold,
we have to be thinking about Manti Usa. And I
don't think we've spent much time on this podcast talking
about him. I think he's come up a few times,
but we haven't spent much time. So this is the
moment to talk about Mantimus, so tell us a little
bit about who this guy is when he first comes
(13:53):
on the scene.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So Manta Musa is the emperor of Mali in the
early fourteenth century, rules from about thirteen twelve to thirteen
thirty seven. And Mansa itself means emperor, so he's called
Mansa Musa, which translates in the Malinke language, the language
of the Mandinga people who are indigenous to Mali, as
(14:16):
Emperor Musa. But his full name is Kanka Musa Kita.
And he comes to the throne in quite an extraordinary way.
And when he's young, when he's about a teenager. So
we don't exactly when he's born, but it's probably around
the twelve eighties, some maybe between twelve eighteen twelve ninety,
so when he's quite young, you know, a teenage, or
(14:37):
perhaps even just before thirteen hundreds, I say, thirteen oh
eight or something. His father Abubaka. The Second Launch is
an expedition of ships to sail across the Atlantic. He
wants to know what's across the Atlantic a century. After
a few years, only one captain of one of the
boats comes back, and he basically says that there was
a huge whirlpool, you know, as we tried to sail across,
and everybody else drowned, and I was the only one
(14:58):
who made it back. And Musa is actually in the
audience with his father Abubaka, when the captain tells his story,
and Abubaka not believing the captain, and commissions then over
a few years, then three thousand boats. Initially the initial
expedition was three hundred, a few hundred, and now he
commissions to three thousand boats filled with gold and food
and water and sailors to go across the Atlantic and
to see if there's land beyond that huge body of water.
(15:21):
And Abubaka decides that he will lead it himself, so
he makes Musa regent and set sail, but then is
never seen again. So he disappears from Musa ends up
becoming emperor at quite a young age, and he develops
this aversion to the sea into the ocean, and yeah,
but he inherits his father's adventurousness. But also there's this desire,
(15:42):
this provandas are to make your name at something, you know,
of having accomplished something, there's a desire for glory that
Musa I think also also inherits, and you know, his
chance comes in the thirteen twenties. By this time, he's
maybe late teens, early twenties, whatever it is, and he
accidentally bills mother, probably during a ceremony. Now, the noble,
(16:03):
the nobility of Mali, one of their prerogatives. One of
the things they're allowed to do was walk around the
empire and also the capital wearing both quivers and arrows,
and quivers especially were seen as a symbol of nobility.
You know, there's some evidence for the Malians having either
during ceremonies for loosing bows and now you know, shooting
shooting arrows, you know, from their bows, or maybe potentially
(16:25):
having archery competitions. We know that the founder of the
Mali Empire, who's who's incidentally Musa's great uncle, Sundhiarta Keita.
One of the stories about how he dies is that
during one of these ceremonies, he's fatally struck by an
arrow that an archer or you know, someone engaged in
the ceremony has fired. And potentially the same thing might
have happened with with Musa and his mother. So we
(16:45):
know that she dies during a ceremony. It's potentially muse
himself who kills her. That's the story that comes down.
It's muse himself who kills her, but that it's a
complete accident. And he asks, you know, after having committed
what bo he sees is this incredibly tragic sin, He
asks his priests and arms as Muslim priests, basically, what
can I do in order to atone for this crime?
(17:05):
And the priest says that you have to go to
the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad and Medina and what's
now Saudi Arabia and pray there for Alice forgiveness. So
that becomes the call for action for Musa's life, is
to go to Medina. In a tone now as a
Muslim himself, he also knows that, you know, one of
the things that he has to be one of his
duties or obligations as a Muslim is to complete the
(17:25):
pilgrimage to Mecca, which is in the same country as
we know today, but it's very close to Medina. So
he decides that he'll go to Medina and then he
will also complete the pilgrimage to Mecca and ineffect killing
two birds with one stone, and also because he has
that desire for glory, he's not going to make it
an ordinary pilgrimage. He's going to make it an incredibly
spectacular pilgrimage in order to demonstrate his and Mali's wealth
(17:47):
and prestige. So he engages in this huge project, it's
a nationwide project of preparing for the pilgrimage. It involves
getting together sixty thousand of his subjects, all of whom
decked in silk can carrying gold bars, and some of
whom are carrying gold scepters, as well as one hundred camels,
each of which is loaded with one hundred kilograms of
gold dust. And this is in thirteen twenty three that
(18:10):
he sets off from his capital, Niani in order to
make the pilgrimage to Medina and then and then it's
on to Mecca. He goes across the Sahara, and he
passes through Gadamus town in Libya, and then he also
passes through Cairo as well. Just before he gets to Cairo,
he's camped outside, initially the Pyramids of Gizer and then
at the time the Mamluk Egyptians who are ruling Cairo
(18:32):
at that time, they hear and you know, some of
them even see this massive camp camped outside the pyramids.
Here this huge, massive people, and they think it's potentially
an invading army. So the Mamluk Sultan al Nazia Muhammad
sends an expeditionary force to find out what's going on.
And the leader or one of the advisors who's part
of that force can hardly believe his eyes. He basically
(18:53):
looks on the camp and says, you know, in all
my life, I've never seen anything like this. It competes
in glittering glory with the Acts and sun itself. This
is what he's recorded as having said. But you know,
with Musa and all those Malians of sixty thousand and
all their gods and their huge tents capped outside. You know,
as Musa's even been passing through on his journey, every
time the train, his train or his pilgrimage stops on
(19:14):
a Friday, he commissions a mosque to be built, or
at least one to be erected, either a simple one
or even just leave some people behind to build a
stone mosk in commemoration of his journey. When the expeditionary
forced the Mamlik expedition foresees the pilgrims in Gizo. They
you know that the leader invites them to come to Cairo,
to stay in Cairo where he has to meet Muhammad.
(19:35):
And there's this interesting diplomatic incident in Cairo because as
part of Mamluk court protocol, Musa is supposed to bow
and kiss the ground before alan As Mohammad, and he
doesn't want to do this because part of the reason
for his pilgrimage is demonstrating his wealth and his prestige
and his power, so he doesn't want to subjugate himself
in this way. In fact, initially, when the commander is saying,
(19:56):
we have to go see my mpraise, he's refusing him.
He's basically saying, no, I came from the pilgrimage. I
don't want to see anybody else. I don't want to
be engaged with anything else. But the commander actually even
even says this is recorded as him saying, basically, just
I just kept pestering him until he came. He's like,
I kept on at him until he came. So Musa
eventually relent and says, Okay, we'll go see an Isaya Mhammad.
But when he's in the Sultan's audience chamber, he refuses
(20:19):
to bow before him, and Alannazia Muhammad is not you know,
it's a ruthless monarch. He's a tough cookie. He's not
someone you want to mess around with. The Mamluk court
in Mamuk politics is exceedingly brutal. In fact, Annazia's brother,
older brother, had been killed by his father's counselors. Very
few Mamuick princes who lasted who survived beyond a few
years when they ascended the throne, but Alnazia has managed
(20:40):
to stay on the throne for fifteen years. So he's
an exceedingly impressive king generally, but especially amongst the Mamluks.
And Musa right in front of him just refuses to
bow down. Or the mamluks are you know, shouting at
him to kiss the ground before Alanzier Mussa saying no, no,
I refuse, you know, I'm just here for Pilgridge, et cetera.
And then his main advisor, for Seke, whisper something in
his ear. The Musa walks forward, says, I prostrate myself
(21:04):
in honor of Allah and goes down on the ground,
you know, and bows. That's what his advisor told him
to do. He said, if he bowed and submission to
Allah instead of submission to alan Asir. This is something
Alanasera is a past Buslim himself, wouldn't dispute. So it
gets him out of having to bow to Alanazer himself,
but then also disgracing the Mamluk sultan in his own court.
And after that there's you know, sort of celebration. There's
(21:27):
gift giving between alana Zer and Musa, and Musa gives
to every Mamluk official tons of just raw gold. It
is literally documented as unworked a native goal, so he's
literally just giving them raw like just unprocessed gold or
that he's brought along with him. And you know the
Malians themselves, you know the sixty thousand, they come into
(21:47):
Cairo and basically start souvenir shopping, and the Kyrine merchants,
who see how rich they are, increase their prices. So
suddenly these these Marlians are buying you know, things for
five times the price then you know, five times what
they're at worth. And Musa himself is also buying, you know,
at a time. He can sometimes tip up to twenty
thousand gold pieces. But it comes back to bite the merchants,
(22:08):
because basically the Marlians spends so much they flood the
Egyptian economy with gold, which reduces its price, and it
leads to just mass inflation of everything else. It causes chaos,
a complete economic of chaos, and the officials basically have
to beg Musifer his help, and Musa decides to borrow
back all the gold that he's spent before he carries
(22:28):
on to Medina and then to Mecca where he executes
his objectives as well. But you know, that gives a
sense of the kind of person Musiris and the kind
of impact actually that and African civilization, African societies and
an African monarch can have on other places and on
the world, because you know, the Malian spending in Egypt
doesn't just affect the gold markets of Kyrin, affects the
(22:50):
gold marker of Egypt more generally, and it affects the
gold markets of Africa, Asia and Europe to an extent,
so definitely the Mediterranean and probably as far as Western Europe.
And you know, Mussa is quite extraordinary, I think in
a lot of ways in African history and history more
generally then we know a lot more about him than
some other monarchs because of this extraordinary pilgrimage that he undertakes.
(23:12):
But you know, then he doesn't stop when he goes back.
As he'd been in Medina and Mecca, he had recruited
some of the best and brightest in the Islamic world scholars, lawyers,
you know, astronomers, poets, et cetera, architects, because he wanted
to develop Mali and that was part again of doing
his duty is the emperor, but then also part of
forming his legacy. And so when he goes to Mali,
(23:33):
you know, he passes through a town that was recently
conquered by his general whire he'd been away, called timbuck To,
and that's where he found one of the first universities
in the world, the Timbucto, you know, by his death
in the thirteen thirteen thirties, mid thirteen thirties. It has
twenty five thousand students and as a library of a
million manuscripts and has exchange programs with universities across the
(23:54):
you know, across the Islamic world, and it's turning out
world class engineers and poets and architects and lawyers and
It's one of the reasons the name Timbuktu has passed
into legend, you know, is because of Musa's investment in
that place and an investment his investment to Marley. So
that's sort of a sketch of Moosa's life and especially
(24:14):
the main part of his life, which is this pilgrimage,
and also the way in which he develops Marley. But
he definitely looms large in Mali and and I think
in African issue because of his I mean, his wealth
as a Malei emperor was a nesser extraordinary, but the
way in which he utilized it was something few, if
any other Maley emperor's copied or engaged with.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Well, I think that it illustrates so many of your points, dispautifully,
the story and the way that you've pulled out certain
details from it. Because for Musa to bring such gifts,
as you say, he was already aware of what an
impact this was going to have.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
So this is a very smart play on his part.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
He knows that this is going to really have an
impact on that marketplaces of Cairo. Maybe he didn't have
an idea of how deep and in fact it was
going to be. Because this is all based on like
the greed perhaps of the merchants who are inflating their
prices and things like that. But he knows what an
impressive figure he is, and he's coming with this self confidence.
And I think this is so important, especially to your
(25:16):
broader narrative of like we can't talk about people from
Africa as just being victims of a slave trade. You know,
when you look at Musa and his own self confidence,
he doesn't need to bow to anyone because he knows
how much he's worth. And then the other thing that
I think is really important that comes out of this story,
like famously I'm not very good at geography. I like
(25:37):
maps on the wall because I'm terrible at it. So
I looked at the distance that they would have been
traveling on this pilgrimage, and it is immense. So when
you're talking about the wealth of Malia at this time,
being not to school, but being food, like the amount
of food and resources it takes to make that journey
like that really speaks to the wealth of the Empire
of Mali. And then of course Timbukdu having this amazing university.
(26:02):
I think this is something that is missing from a
lot of history books.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yes, yes, and actually it's a five thousand mile journey.
You know, it's a long journey. It's interesting to also
think quite pragmatically about how a journey like that would
have been executed, because it's not just the carrying of
the gold itself or being decked out and silk. You
also have you know, food and water to feed the
camels and to feed the people as well, and also
you need guards to It's well known that the journey
(26:28):
is hazardous, not just because of the dangers of the desert,
but you know there are bandits, you know, indigenous saharan
or in other words, Amazeigue bandits who you know, who
look for caravans in order to rob But it's you know,
it takes Moosa eight months to get from you know,
Niani to Cairo, just Cairo itself, and probably about a
year to actually make it to Medina and then onto Mecca.
(26:50):
And it's a five thousand mile five thousand mile journey.
So the amount of planning coordination as well that goes
into it is also a testamer to Moosa's wealth. He
is very it's a very confident thing. And I think
there are so many leaders and rulers of African nations
and civilizations who have that feeling. And I think that's
the important thing as well, about not concentrating so much
(27:11):
on the last three hundred years, because you know, immediately
when you look just a little bit farther back, and
even sometimes during the later periods themselves, and when you
consider African agency, which I think is really the big
thing in my book, because the book Motherland, I don't
just you know, look at ancient and medieval afterc although
those feature quite heavily and I'm generally quite interested in those,
but even when I'm talking about, you know, some of
the later periods and some of that history encompassing the
(27:34):
Transatlantic stape, training colonalism, my focus really is on African
agency as well. What were you know, African people thinking,
feeling and doing and actually there was there was activity
on their part in shaping global affairs like there was
in the past too. And I should also say, for
anyone who's interested, it's like, you know, you did your
wonderful spinoff series for Dan James's This Is History, The
(27:56):
Iron King, and I'm doing one on Mansa musa actually
honest pilgrimage and on his life called This Is history
Empire of God. So if people are interested in learning
a little bit more about the detail of Musa's pilgrimage
and about his life and how he goes about things,
and also some twists in the tail that I neglect
to mention in my little sketch, and then that would
(28:18):
definitely be placed to check it out and for them
to check out your some spin off two.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Oh, thank you, thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Well, this is the reason I wanted to have you
on the podcast now. It's because I want people to
learn more about your work, but also about Manson Musa,
and this is the perfect opportunity to do that. You
brought this all together on This is History, which, yeah,
it was such a fun project for me to do,
and it sounds like it was fun for you to do.
I'm very glad that we both had the experience to
talk about individuals who shaped history, yes.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
And to also just consider them almost as almost as living,
breathing people as well, when you're ringing out the drama
of their lives, you know, not as dusty historical figures,
but the people who actually will you know, actually lived,
you know, living and breathing, and they had impact on
the well around them in action on our world too.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yes, and the decisions that they make, they're based on
those small moments or those big moments like accidentally killing
your mother that is going to set you want a
new trajectory. But those moments I think are so important,
which brings me to one of the questions I wanted
to ask you about your work specifically, and that one
of the things that you mentioned in your book Motherland
is that it can be challenging to talk about African
(29:25):
history broadly and then even in specifics because for a
lot of people who are living in Africa now, a
lot of people who are from Africa somewhere in the past,
thinking about the past is not something that is over,
It is something that is continuous, right, So can you
tell us a little bit about how this works into
your thinking when you're looking at the historical past as
(29:47):
somebody who is imagined in cultures, don't necessarily think of
it as like a temporal past, but as a continual present.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Yes, I think Africans generally more considered the plast as
being more fluid. There's not as clear distinction as there
is in for example, although you know, not exclusively, but
for example, European cultures, there's clear distinction between past, present,
and even future. Everything kind of flows into one or
the other. So some practices and sometimes even artifacts, just
(30:17):
because they're made in a certain time in a different time,
doesn't mean they belong to that time. They still belong
to the people who are of today. I mean, there
are festivals, for example in Ghana where I'm from, where
people will be firing guns that are two hundred years old,
you know, as they have done for the past two
hundred years, almost as if they were created yesterday or
bought yesterday. They aren't kept, for instance, behind glass and
(30:40):
museum and considered an artifact of a particular time, representing
a particular time and distinct from our time. But actually
they'll be looked after and considered and kept as you know,
as an object that still has relevance, because it does
still have relevance. So that was something that I think,
being African, I kind of felt, you know, I considered.
I mean, you will see it a little bit. I
saw it a little bit when I was doing my
(31:01):
research and you know, when I was looking a little
bit more on the academic literature, but also if you're
looking at history written by historians who've studied traditional history,
they will still create that distinction just in order to
make it more intelligible. But if at least if you're
looking more at and andropology, or at least for me
as I was writing it, I said, you know, it
doesn't really feel right to create those clear distinctions. I
know that there are some rituals, there are some practices,
(31:22):
there are some artifacts that don't belong to the past,
but they belong very much to the present, and they
are considered present day objects, not historical objects. But it's
almost like present day objects that we used by your ancestors.
Whether that ancestor was you know, someone who lived five
hundred years ago, or was your grandfather or father, you
think of it still as having that present day resonance
(31:42):
and that present day importance. So I think that's something
that does distinguish or something that's a little bit distinct
in African cultures, and it's something that I felt that
I had to explore or at least interrogate in a discussion,
which you know, the book is in a discussion of
the African past. I hope I've explained it sort of
in a way that kind of makes sense it's a
little bit intelligible.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yes, well, I mean it's something that is also found
in lots of indigenous cultures across the world. I was
speaking with James Flexner, who works on Oceania, and he
was talking about these oral tales which we can't really
talk about as being in the past. And here in
North America there's lots of indigenous cultures where it's weird
to talk about the past as being something that is over.
And so, you know, as somebody who's working on writing
(32:26):
history within a context of perhaps the English speaking tradition
of maybe European publishing, thinking about how to get this
across this is something that I'm sure that you had
to wrestle with quite a lot, like how do I
express this in a way that translates as you were saying,
that resonates today. And so when I'm thinking about the
(32:46):
sources that you were using for this book, how did
you approach this? So again we're talking about like there's
oral traditions, there was objects, how did you approach this
when you're coming at this book?
Speaker 3 (32:56):
In particular, I relied a lot on not just rip documentation,
but actually as well on some oral histories, stories and mythology,
and also on archaeologian anthropology in order to build up
a full picture of an event, a person, and most
especially a place or a society or a civilization. For
the places where some of the wild religions penetrated, for
(33:18):
instance Ethiopia, which I don't talk about a lot on
the book, but definitely for example the Swahili Coast, and
also Mali, that's when you have a more written documentation,
because Muslim traders and travelers were extremely mobile, went to
different places and recorded what they saw. One of the
great resources for actually both of those, at least as
far as the fourteenth century, in particular in the medieval
world more generally is concerned is the traveler ib In Batuta,
(33:40):
you know, the North African traveler ib In Petuta, who
visits Mali actually during the reign of Musa's brother, younger brother, Suliman.
He also goes to the Swahili coast and he records
what he sees there. And then later on as well,
you have some European accounts, like Portuguese accounts, but you
also have even slightly earlier than the two ten the
ninth and ten centry, for instance, as far as the
(34:01):
Sweeli Coast is concerned. You have Chinese accounts, for example,
with Chinese traders and travelers who actually did travel to
the Sweli Coast itself. I think one of the things
I would say that probably differentiates the book as a
history book as a popular history book, and differentiates me
as a historian a writer, or a popular story and
a writer, is that I gave as much weight to
(34:22):
archaeological and oral evidence as I did to written documentation.
For me, they're all just part of the same picture.
One isn't more credible or less credible than the other.
It all comes down in the interpretation. When you're looking
at oral history, you have to read between the lines
a little bit more. But actually they are much more
useful at giving you a psychology of a people and
actually just helping you to understand the values of those people,
(34:44):
what they are now, what they were before, and actually
how those have changed. For example, archaeology can be a
lot more empirical, and in fact sometimes it can help
to either support or even just give you a truth
that written documentation you know, wouldn't necessarily give you, but
more often than not is it's upplementary. So for example,
I mentioned the Chinese merchants or traders, but they maybe
(35:04):
wouldn't always necessarily write about what it was they were trading.
But then you would find, you know, Chinese stoneware or
Ming dynasty porcelain for example, across East Africa. So then
that also helps you build up a picture. You said, Okay,
not only was their direct contact, but these were the
kinds of things that were being brought. So I think
it's imported to consider all this and holistically, and I
think you're seeing it more in historical practice, especially when
people are exploring all the eras historians would look at
(35:27):
a lot more at archaeology. I also use things like
linguistics and genetics when looking at prehistory, and you know
human origins as well, And that's all just to build
up a picture of what I call the past. And
that's why sometimes in the book I will not just
talk about African history. I'll talk about the African past,
because it's just everything that you know has gone before
and what we use in order to build up that picture.
Whereas when we think of is, we think of it more.
(35:49):
There are certain connotations I think that come along with it,
usually derived from writing documentation and usually formed or shaped
into some kind of narrative rather than painting a picture.
For me, it was a little but it was a
little bit more like doing a painting than writing like
a novel, for example, in the way that I built
up the past, well.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I think this is an important discussion that we need
to keep having as historians, like how do we build
this picture of what things were like in the past,
because there are all sorts of world traditions, there's archaeology,
there's anthropology, and all of these things need to come
together if we're going to have a complete picture. And
so I always like to ask people whenever possible, how
(36:27):
are you putting together this picture? What are you involving,
and how are you weighing the evidence? Because I do
feel like there is a change in how we're doing
this as historians where we're not centering the text as
much when it's not as relevant. And so I found
this was a strength of your book in the way
that you are discussing, like being very transparent about like
here's how I'm looking at this, and here's the evidence,
(36:49):
and here's what I see within it. So one of
the things that you talk about within the book is
that part of your interest in studying the history broadly
of Africa, but especially of Ghana where you're from, is
that you didn't find very much of it at the
beginning of your journey.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
So how is it looking today?
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Can you tell us a little bit about what this
field looks like, maybe African studies more broadly, or what
you've seen in the history of Ghana as you're looking
at it from this point in your career.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
It's definitely a lot more expansive, it's definitely a lot
more involved. That's been more funding, and there's been more
genuine interest in trying to understand I think across African
I know, in Ghana, understanding our own history, cultures and
traditions and also respecting those rather than necessarily framing everything
with Europe in the background. Essentially, I tell the story
at the beginning of my book of going to the
(37:40):
National Museum of Ghana, which is just you know, and
mainly seeing their clearlier artifacts, and that's kind of what
started me on this journey to want to explore but
more parts to share stories from the deeper African past.
And you know, I think one of the big things
has been wanting to engage young people, especially in learning
about their own history and engage with it. So, for example,
(38:00):
I think Continental that's African Continental archaeology programs histories are important,
but you know, the departments, I think the professors s
have been really engaged in bringing up the next generation
and also in sharing those stories, you know, more widely.
One of the reasons I came into the space when
I did was that that was just a greater appetite
for wanting to know, you know, generally and cross culture,
(38:22):
but in African amongst Africans and other places, to learn
about our own history and to write it in a
way that was a little bit more natural to us.
But I think the field itself Africa has made, you know,
great strides and I think more important, there's much more
cognizance of wanting and you know, I think people are
generally more engaged, which allows Africans themselves to meet that
(38:43):
demand of wanting to tell stories of the deeper African past,
and not just after the last three hundred years, but
there has been a transformation, and I think as economic
and political confidence in certain parts of Africa hopefully increases
and improves, that will also lead to greater interest in
wanting to understand history and also in creating art which
reflects that history.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
I'm very glad to hear you say this. I'm starting
to notice that as well.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
On the field of medieval studies, we're starting to notice
more stories that are based on the African medieval pass
and centered around Ethiopia, especially with Rena Kreb's work, and
that's starting to spread and I'm hoping that people will
read your book and listen to your podcast series on
This Is History and become interested in more places within
(39:28):
this massive and rich continent. So thank you so much,
Luke for coming on and telling us all about Motherland
and especially Mons of Musa.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Thank you so much for having me. I had a
lot of fun. Thank you, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
To find out more about Luke's work, you can follow
him on Instagram at Luke Pepperah that's Luke pep Er.
You can also catch him in his mini series Empire
of Gold, which you can find directly in the podcast
stream for Dan Jones's This Is History. His new book
is Motherland, a Journey through five hundred thousand years of
(40:01):
African culture and identity. This is usually the part where
Peter Kanechni, the editor of Medievalist dot net comes on
to tell us what's new on his website, but Peter
is under the weather this week, so instead let's send
him our good wishes and check out his new article
on ten famous forgeries from the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Thank you to all of you.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Who support my work by letting the ads play through,
sharing your favorite episodes on social media, reading, borrowing and
lending my books, and becoming patrons on patreon dot com,
patrons can access all sorts of goodies like medievalist dot
net's book club, extensive lists of open access articles, and
access to this podcast at free. To find out more
(40:46):
or to become a patron, please visit patreon dot com
slash Medievalists for everything from Mali to Bali. Follow Medievalist
dot net on Instagram at medievalistnet or blue Sky at Medievalists.
You can find me Danielle Zibowski across social media at
five I n Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, and you
(41:06):
can find my books at all your favorite bookstores. Our
music is Beyond the Warriors by gee Frog. Thanks for
listening and have yourself an awesome day.
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and eighty
four of the Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sebalski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. Although it's the cradle of
our species and a land as rich in culture as
it is legendarily rich in resources, retellings of African history
often place their focus heavily on the Transatlantic slave trade,
(00:37):
and while this is valuable, too narrow a focus can
make it easy to lose sight of how incredibly powerful, interconnected,
and respected African people have been within the fabric of
global history. The fourteenth century Empire of Mali is just
one example of how Africans represented the pinnacle of wealth, education,
and sophistication in the Middle Ages. This week I spoke
(01:01):
with Luke Pepperah about medieval Africa. Luke is the writer
and presenter behind the documentary Africa Written Out of History
for History Hit and the new mini series Empire of
Gold for Dan Jones's podcast This Is History from Sony,
a podcast that might just be familiar to some of
you listeners. Luke's new book is Motherland, a journey through
(01:24):
five hundred thousand years of African culture and identity. Our
conversation on his approach to such a huge and often
unsung part of history, what it would have been like
to find yourself in one of the most powerful empires
of the Middle Ages, and the story behind the famous
Mansa Musa is coming up right after this. Well, welcome
(01:46):
Luke to tell us all about medieval Africa as much
as we know about it, and even more the history
of Africa as you have told it in your new book.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh, thank you for having me. It's really great to
be here.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
So you have a new book out you decided to
take on sort of the history of Africa.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Why did you do that? That is a huge project?
What were you thinking behind it?
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I basically just want to give people a sense that
there's so much to African people's, African history and African culture,
then the translated slave trading, colonialism, and with the best
available archaeological, genetic, ethnographic evidence that we have and linguistic
as well, we know that human beings Homo sapiens, the
species that we are, originated in Africa, and in fact
(02:29):
that every human being now living is descended from a
population that lived in Africa around one hundred and fifty
thousand years ago. So there is at least one hundred
and fifty thousand years of history in the colloquial sense,
not written records per se, but of a past. And
yet we focus on the recent past and also on
the recent events that end up painting Africans as victims,
(02:52):
as sort of rural backwards victims. And you know, for me,
it was I was born and grew up with Garna,
and I was exposed and you know, always back there,
and even if I was coming to school in the
UK and university in the UK, and I was exposed
to a knew about so much of the rich history
that was there in Garner of the songs, the stories,
you know, the masks, the drums, and mythology. And that's
(03:14):
just one place, or even sometimes just one group in
one place, you know, the history of one group in
one place. So I said, there's a rich tapestry of
stories of traditions of history here that we just don't explore.
And I wanted, really, I wanted to drive home that
sense of a deep, large, expansive past. And in order
to do that, I wanted to go as deep and
(03:34):
as wide as possible. So that's why I decided to
tackle this big topic. It's just to really say that,
you know, it is a huge topic and this is
just an easy introduction, but you know, let's let's let's
get into it, you know, let's explore it more.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yes, I completely understand where you're coming from, and that
that was the same impulse that brought me to the
Middle Ages, where you know, you're learning about it in
school and you're talking to other people and realizing like
there is so much here that needs to be tough about,
that needs to be explored. And so, yeah, I really
enjoyed your book, and I think that it's a great
introduction to the wider study of such an amazing continent
(04:11):
full of just so many different stories. And of course
we can't get into like the prehistory of Africa because
the system Medieval podcast and we only have a certain
amount of time.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
So let's get into.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
The part that you have talked about sort of more
extensively and widely, what we're going to tell people about
near the end of the podcast, but that is talking
about the Kingdom of Mali around the fourteenth century. So
can you set this up for us, like we're talking
fourteenth century, we're talking Mali. What would people find if
they were outsiders coming to Mali at this time.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well, thank you first of all for the really kind
of words about the book. And yeah, Mali. Mali is
one of the most fascinating African civilizations. I mean it
starts off as really a collection of small kingdoms or
series of small kingdoms around where the country of Mali
is about south west of where Mali is in southwest
Mali today. And in the early thirteenth century, the empire
(05:07):
itself was founded by a young prince called Sundiata Keita
who belongs to an ethnic group called the Mandingo, who
were indigenous to that part of West Africa. And he
basically defeats a larger kingdom called Soso, which is the
premier power in the region at the time. And after
he defeats Soso in its king Samarakante and conquers his territories,
(05:29):
then he founds Mali and he establishes a constitution. That's
the beginning of the empire as we know it. And
we have an exact date for that as well, which
is quite interesting, which is twelve thirty five, the year
he establishes that constitution. But if you're going to go
to Mali in the fourteenth century. By that time, the
kingdom has been expanded. It's also Muslim as well. The
elite and Mali had been Muslim since about the eleventh
(05:52):
or twelfth centuries AD, and that's because they were connected
to other Muslim states and kingdoms across the world via
the transfer and trade. And you know, Muslim traders and
Muslim merchants were the big dogs of that trade. You know,
they had access to markets and wealth and also to contacts,
and their rulers were huge consumers of luxuries and exotica.
(06:13):
So those are the merchants that he wanted to be
in contact with, and for the people in Mali, the
rulers and the merchants, in order to get close and
formed closer diplomatic ties and economic ties with those merchants,
they adopted Islam. So it's a Muslim. It's also a
giant as well. I mean, by the early fourteenth century,
it has a population of about fifty million and its
(06:33):
capital city has ac called Niani, which is in south
southwest Mali. Niani has a population of a few hundred
thousand people, at least one hundred thousand. It's absolutely gigantic.
It's also quite you know, well stratified. You have serfs
and farmers who mainly work the land, but actually the
nobles also there's nothing ignoble about working the land too,
(06:54):
so they're involved in it, but mainly serfs who work
the land. And then you also have a cast of
christ people, weavers, potters, blacksmiths as well, who serve the elite.
And then in sort of the center of the capital itself,
that's where the elite's households and the palaces are, and
the climate of the place. It's quite interesting because I
think we, you know, especially now with the cell and Sarah,
(07:15):
kind of think of that region as being quite sort
of dry and dusty, desiccated, but actually it's quite lush.
So in fact, that's where they can grow all kinds
of different fruits and vegetables. They grow rice as well,
and they have lifestyle including goats and cheap and cattle
which graze sort of in the outskirts of the empire.
So it's quite lush and it's quite cool, and it
gets like a fair amount of rainfall. So that's kind
(07:37):
of a little bit of the history of society what
it would feel like a little bit to be there,
and then also the makeup of its population and sort
of how it operates. And it is quite a hierarchical
society as well, so you know the serfs world ordinarily
there's not the same kind of feudal relationship as you
see in Western European kingdoms. So if they're where it's
land owned by particular noble who have you know, their
(07:58):
retainers who work at all them. There is tribute, but
it's not based on land ownership. It's basically just based
on the surfs. They keep the majority of foosels for themselves,
but they have to send a certain amount of tribute
to members of their ability, including the manser as well.
So that's how the empire looks and that's how it operates.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I mean, it would have been incredible, especially if you're
traveling from a long distance to arrive in this city
with all of these people, all of this wealth and sophistication.
It must have just been an amazing end point to
your journey. If you're traveling along the trade road, just
be like, I've never seen anything like this before, because
if you're traveling from Europe, you wouldn't have seen a
(08:36):
city this big most of the time, this would have
been just mind blowing to see such a beautiful and
rich city.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
I'm so glad that you painted that picture for me.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yes, and you mentioned the wealth, and that's one of
the things that really attracts a lot of foreign visitors
and merchants, Tomiley. I mean, the empire does have a
strong agricultural foundation. Most people derive their livelihood from working
the land. But one of the big commodities and one
of the big exports of Mali is gold. The Malei
emperors themselves don't own the necessarily huge reserves of gold.
(09:06):
But essentially in what's now Ghana, there are different you know,
gold fields, and there are groups or casts of gold
miners and gold traders who export gold from where they
are and you know, from the minds that belong to
them or that are local to them. They export them
up to Mali. So traders will come down from Mali
and then they will exchange whatever they have for the gold.
(09:28):
And then as it's coming into the empire, basically the
oh you know, as those traders take it back through
the empire and usually send it further afield to North
Africa or to the Mediterranean. The Mali emperor basically is
taxing and the merchants who are bringing the gold through
their empire, he'll take a little bit of the gold
they bring in. So that's how he kind of and
masses as wealth. Because he has close relations usually with
(09:48):
the merchants themselves, but also actually directly with the gold
miners and you know, the gold dealers, he has access
to extraordinary wealth. But you know, coppers also a big commodity,
so as a huge commodity as well. There's one town
called Tagaza which has these nearish the capital, but it
has huge amounts of salt reserves as well, and that's
(10:09):
essential for when you're crossing the Sahara too. So because
of its natural resources and the emperor's access to natural resources,
Male becomes extraordinarily wealthy, and a lot of that wealth
is invested in architecture as well, especially they're building with
a mud brick, sometimes in stone, usually of my brick,
but you know, the center of Niani is very built
(10:30):
up and it's very urbanized. And then also in clothing,
the elite or the nobility wear silk or sometimes actually
European fabrics and then are decked out and jewelry usually gold, silver.
You know, they have gold and silver maces, swords, scabbards, necklaces, circlets.
They also wear a lot of jewelry too, and so
(10:51):
that's all, you know, part of the demonstration of the
king as well. So I think as a traveler, this
is something and you know, we have accounts of travelers
where this is something that's obviously very parent to people
who are coming from different places. That actually just the
amount of wealth on display, and that's also just a
sketch of how will where the Mali elite and the
Mali emperor himself from where he drives his wealth.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
I think this is so interesting in that there is
so much gold there, there's so much richness there that
when the people from Mali are speaking to other traders,
they'll have a sense of how much the other traders
will value the gold. But I wanted to ask you,
do you feel like within the Empire of Mali itself
that people are like it's just gold whatever, it's not
as big a deal for them, or you feel like
(11:33):
it's still as valuable for them and they just have
a higher standard of living when it comes to making
themselves look good.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
That's a great question. I think there's something inherently alluring
about gold itself. You know that it's you know, it's sparkly,
it's heavy, and it's like and it's relatively rare that
you know, there is a sense of wanting to use
it esthetically basically, so you want to use it in art,
you want to use it in jewelry, and you want
to use it in fashion. But actually, for the most part,
the Malians themselves view gold as a valuable commodity really
(12:04):
only because other people find it so extremely valuable, and
because it's so abundant in the kingdom that it's not
seen in the kingdom itself as having as much intrinsic
value because of its abundance, but it's seen as a
very valuable export essentially, and also in order to demonstrate
to other people coming, whether that's rulers or traders or
(12:26):
merchants or diplomats, that Mali is rich, they will display
that gold because they know that it is something that
other people look on as valuable.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, I wanted to ask that question because often you'll
find when cultures mixed, where the culture made the home
culture that is having on contact from outside is like, oh,
I didn't realize that people thought this was so important.
So I was wondering, when you have an empire that
is so rich in gold, which is thought of outside
of it as being such a valuable commodity, if people
(12:54):
were just kind of more blasee within the empire itself.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Yes, the emperors, theselves are definitely also really well educated
in the value of their gold. I mean the minerals
as well, but especially gold, copper, and then to a
lesser extent soul to something that you know used and
you know it is seen as even in the medieval era,
this kind of international currency that is valued and accepting everywhere.
(13:18):
And the Marlins and especially the Marley and Lita really
profoundly aware of that and trade off on that in
order to highlight the impressiveness of themselves and of their kingdom.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Right exactly, if you've got it flanted directly, exactly. Okay,
So when we think about Mali, when we think about gold,
we have to be thinking about Manti Usa. And I
don't think we've spent much time on this podcast talking
about him. I think he's come up a few times,
but we haven't spent much time. So this is the
moment to talk about Mantimus, so tell us a little
bit about who this guy is when he first comes
(13:53):
on the scene.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
So Manta Musa is the emperor of Mali in the
early fourteenth century, rules from about thirteen twelve to thirteen
thirty seven. And Mansa itself means emperor, so he's called
Mansa Musa, which translates in the Malinke language, the language
of the Mandinga people who are indigenous to Mali, as
(14:16):
Emperor Musa. But his full name is Kanka Musa Kita.
And he comes to the throne in quite an extraordinary way.
And when he's young, when he's about a teenager. So
we don't exactly when he's born, but it's probably around
the twelve eighties, some maybe between twelve eighteen twelve ninety,
so when he's quite young, you know, a teenage, or
(14:37):
perhaps even just before thirteen hundreds, I say, thirteen oh
eight or something. His father Abubaka. The Second Launch is
an expedition of ships to sail across the Atlantic. He
wants to know what's across the Atlantic a century. After
a few years, only one captain of one of the
boats comes back, and he basically says that there was
a huge whirlpool, you know, as we tried to sail across,
and everybody else drowned, and I was the only one
(14:58):
who made it back. And Musa is actually in the
audience with his father Abubaka, when the captain tells his story,
and Abubaka not believing the captain, and commissions then over
a few years, then three thousand boats. Initially the initial
expedition was three hundred, a few hundred, and now he
commissions to three thousand boats filled with gold and food
and water and sailors to go across the Atlantic and
to see if there's land beyond that huge body of water.
(15:21):
And Abubaka decides that he will lead it himself, so
he makes Musa regent and set sail, but then is
never seen again. So he disappears from Musa ends up
becoming emperor at quite a young age, and he develops
this aversion to the sea into the ocean, and yeah,
but he inherits his father's adventurousness. But also there's this desire,
(15:42):
this provandas are to make your name at something, you know,
of having accomplished something, there's a desire for glory that
Musa I think also also inherits, and you know, his
chance comes in the thirteen twenties. By this time, he's
maybe late teens, early twenties, whatever it is, and he
accidentally bills mother, probably during a ceremony. Now, the noble,
(16:03):
the nobility of Mali, one of their prerogatives. One of
the things they're allowed to do was walk around the
empire and also the capital wearing both quivers and arrows,
and quivers especially were seen as a symbol of nobility.
You know, there's some evidence for the Malians having either
during ceremonies for loosing bows and now you know, shooting
shooting arrows, you know, from their bows, or maybe potentially
(16:25):
having archery competitions. We know that the founder of the
Mali Empire, who's who's incidentally Musa's great uncle, Sundhiarta Keita.
One of the stories about how he dies is that
during one of these ceremonies, he's fatally struck by an
arrow that an archer or you know, someone engaged in
the ceremony has fired. And potentially the same thing might
have happened with with Musa and his mother. So we
(16:45):
know that she dies during a ceremony. It's potentially muse
himself who kills her. That's the story that comes down.
It's muse himself who kills her, but that it's a
complete accident. And he asks, you know, after having committed
what bo he sees is this incredibly tragic sin, He
asks his priests and arms as Muslim priests, basically, what
can I do in order to atone for this crime?
(17:05):
And the priest says that you have to go to
the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad and Medina and what's
now Saudi Arabia and pray there for Alice forgiveness. So
that becomes the call for action for Musa's life, is
to go to Medina. In a tone now as a
Muslim himself, he also knows that, you know, one of
the things that he has to be one of his
duties or obligations as a Muslim is to complete the
(17:25):
pilgrimage to Mecca, which is in the same country as
we know today, but it's very close to Medina. So
he decides that he'll go to Medina and then he
will also complete the pilgrimage to Mecca and ineffect killing
two birds with one stone, and also because he has
that desire for glory, he's not going to make it
an ordinary pilgrimage. He's going to make it an incredibly
spectacular pilgrimage in order to demonstrate his and Mali's wealth
(17:47):
and prestige. So he engages in this huge project, it's
a nationwide project of preparing for the pilgrimage. It involves
getting together sixty thousand of his subjects, all of whom
decked in silk can carrying gold bars, and some of
whom are carrying gold scepters, as well as one hundred camels,
each of which is loaded with one hundred kilograms of
gold dust. And this is in thirteen twenty three that
(18:10):
he sets off from his capital, Niani in order to
make the pilgrimage to Medina and then and then it's
on to Mecca. He goes across the Sahara, and he
passes through Gadamus town in Libya, and then he also
passes through Cairo as well. Just before he gets to Cairo,
he's camped outside, initially the Pyramids of Gizer and then
at the time the Mamluk Egyptians who are ruling Cairo
(18:32):
at that time, they hear and you know, some of
them even see this massive camp camped outside the pyramids.
Here this huge, massive people, and they think it's potentially
an invading army. So the Mamluk Sultan al Nazia Muhammad
sends an expeditionary force to find out what's going on.
And the leader or one of the advisors who's part
of that force can hardly believe his eyes. He basically
(18:53):
looks on the camp and says, you know, in all
my life, I've never seen anything like this. It competes
in glittering glory with the Acts and sun itself. This
is what he's recorded as having said. But you know,
with Musa and all those Malians of sixty thousand and
all their gods and their huge tents capped outside. You know,
as Musa's even been passing through on his journey, every
time the train, his train or his pilgrimage stops on
(19:14):
a Friday, he commissions a mosque to be built, or
at least one to be erected, either a simple one
or even just leave some people behind to build a
stone mosk in commemoration of his journey. When the expeditionary
forced the Mamlik expedition foresees the pilgrims in Gizo. They
you know that the leader invites them to come to Cairo,
to stay in Cairo where he has to meet Muhammad.
(19:35):
And there's this interesting diplomatic incident in Cairo because as
part of Mamluk court protocol, Musa is supposed to bow
and kiss the ground before alan As Mohammad, and he
doesn't want to do this because part of the reason
for his pilgrimage is demonstrating his wealth and his prestige
and his power, so he doesn't want to subjugate himself
in this way. In fact, initially, when the commander is saying,
(19:56):
we have to go see my mpraise, he's refusing him.
He's basically saying, no, I came from the pilgrimage. I
don't want to see anybody else. I don't want to
be engaged with anything else. But the commander actually even
even says this is recorded as him saying, basically, just
I just kept pestering him until he came. He's like,
I kept on at him until he came. So Musa
eventually relent and says, Okay, we'll go see an Isaya Mhammad.
But when he's in the Sultan's audience chamber, he refuses
(20:19):
to bow before him, and Alannazia Muhammad is not you know,
it's a ruthless monarch. He's a tough cookie. He's not
someone you want to mess around with. The Mamluk court
in Mamuk politics is exceedingly brutal. In fact, Annazia's brother,
older brother, had been killed by his father's counselors. Very
few Mamuick princes who lasted who survived beyond a few
years when they ascended the throne, but Alnazia has managed
(20:40):
to stay on the throne for fifteen years. So he's
an exceedingly impressive king generally, but especially amongst the Mamluks.
And Musa right in front of him just refuses to
bow down. Or the mamluks are you know, shouting at
him to kiss the ground before Alanzier Mussa saying no, no,
I refuse, you know, I'm just here for Pilgridge, et cetera.
And then his main advisor, for Seke, whisper something in
his ear. The Musa walks forward, says, I prostrate myself
(21:04):
in honor of Allah and goes down on the ground,
you know, and bows. That's what his advisor told him
to do. He said, if he bowed and submission to
Allah instead of submission to alan Asir. This is something
Alanasera is a past Buslim himself, wouldn't dispute. So it
gets him out of having to bow to Alanazer himself,
but then also disgracing the Mamluk sultan in his own court.
And after that there's you know, sort of celebration. There's
(21:27):
gift giving between alana Zer and Musa, and Musa gives
to every Mamluk official tons of just raw gold. It
is literally documented as unworked a native goal, so he's
literally just giving them raw like just unprocessed gold or
that he's brought along with him. And you know the
Malians themselves, you know the sixty thousand, they come into
(21:47):
Cairo and basically start souvenir shopping, and the Kyrine merchants,
who see how rich they are, increase their prices. So
suddenly these these Marlians are buying you know, things for
five times the price then you know, five times what
they're at worth. And Musa himself is also buying, you know,
at a time. He can sometimes tip up to twenty
thousand gold pieces. But it comes back to bite the merchants,
(22:08):
because basically the Marlians spends so much they flood the
Egyptian economy with gold, which reduces its price, and it
leads to just mass inflation of everything else. It causes chaos,
a complete economic of chaos, and the officials basically have
to beg Musifer his help, and Musa decides to borrow
back all the gold that he's spent before he carries
(22:28):
on to Medina and then to Mecca where he executes
his objectives as well. But you know, that gives a
sense of the kind of person Musiris and the kind
of impact actually that and African civilization, African societies and
an African monarch can have on other places and on
the world, because you know, the Malian spending in Egypt
doesn't just affect the gold markets of Kyrin, affects the
(22:50):
gold marker of Egypt more generally, and it affects the
gold markets of Africa, Asia and Europe to an extent,
so definitely the Mediterranean and probably as far as Western Europe.
And you know, Mussa is quite extraordinary, I think in
a lot of ways in African history and history more
generally then we know a lot more about him than
some other monarchs because of this extraordinary pilgrimage that he undertakes.
(23:12):
But you know, then he doesn't stop when he goes back.
As he'd been in Medina and Mecca, he had recruited
some of the best and brightest in the Islamic world scholars, lawyers,
you know, astronomers, poets, et cetera, architects, because he wanted
to develop Mali and that was part again of doing
his duty is the emperor, but then also part of
forming his legacy. And so when he goes to Mali,
(23:33):
you know, he passes through a town that was recently
conquered by his general whire he'd been away, called timbuck To,
and that's where he found one of the first universities
in the world, the Timbucto, you know, by his death
in the thirteen thirteen thirties, mid thirteen thirties. It has
twenty five thousand students and as a library of a
million manuscripts and has exchange programs with universities across the
(23:54):
you know, across the Islamic world, and it's turning out
world class engineers and poets and architects and lawyers and
It's one of the reasons the name Timbuktu has passed
into legend, you know, is because of Musa's investment in
that place and an investment his investment to Marley. So
that's sort of a sketch of Moosa's life and especially
(24:14):
the main part of his life, which is this pilgrimage,
and also the way in which he develops Marley. But
he definitely looms large in Mali and and I think
in African issue because of his I mean, his wealth
as a Malei emperor was a nesser extraordinary, but the
way in which he utilized it was something few, if
any other Maley emperor's copied or engaged with.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Well, I think that it illustrates so many of your points, dispautifully,
the story and the way that you've pulled out certain
details from it. Because for Musa to bring such gifts,
as you say, he was already aware of what an
impact this was going to have.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
So this is a very smart play on his part.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
He knows that this is going to really have an
impact on that marketplaces of Cairo. Maybe he didn't have
an idea of how deep and in fact it was
going to be. Because this is all based on like
the greed perhaps of the merchants who are inflating their
prices and things like that. But he knows what an
impressive figure he is, and he's coming with this self confidence.
And I think this is so important, especially to your
(25:16):
broader narrative of like we can't talk about people from
Africa as just being victims of a slave trade. You know,
when you look at Musa and his own self confidence,
he doesn't need to bow to anyone because he knows
how much he's worth. And then the other thing that
I think is really important that comes out of this story,
like famously I'm not very good at geography. I like
(25:37):
maps on the wall because I'm terrible at it. So
I looked at the distance that they would have been
traveling on this pilgrimage, and it is immense. So when
you're talking about the wealth of Malia at this time,
being not to school, but being food, like the amount
of food and resources it takes to make that journey
like that really speaks to the wealth of the Empire
of Mali. And then of course Timbukdu having this amazing university.
(26:02):
I think this is something that is missing from a
lot of history books.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yes, yes, and actually it's a five thousand mile journey.
You know, it's a long journey. It's interesting to also
think quite pragmatically about how a journey like that would
have been executed, because it's not just the carrying of
the gold itself or being decked out and silk. You
also have you know, food and water to feed the
camels and to feed the people as well, and also
you need guards to It's well known that the journey
(26:28):
is hazardous, not just because of the dangers of the desert,
but you know there are bandits, you know, indigenous saharan
or in other words, Amazeigue bandits who you know, who
look for caravans in order to rob But it's you know,
it takes Moosa eight months to get from you know,
Niani to Cairo, just Cairo itself, and probably about a
year to actually make it to Medina and then onto Mecca.
(26:50):
And it's a five thousand mile five thousand mile journey.
So the amount of planning coordination as well that goes
into it is also a testamer to Moosa's wealth. He
is very it's a very confident thing. And I think
there are so many leaders and rulers of African nations
and civilizations who have that feeling. And I think that's
the important thing as well, about not concentrating so much
(27:11):
on the last three hundred years, because you know, immediately
when you look just a little bit farther back, and
even sometimes during the later periods themselves, and when you
consider African agency, which I think is really the big
thing in my book, because the book Motherland, I don't
just you know, look at ancient and medieval afterc although
those feature quite heavily and I'm generally quite interested in those,
but even when I'm talking about, you know, some of
the later periods and some of that history encompassing the
(27:34):
Transatlantic stape, training colonalism, my focus really is on African
agency as well. What were you know, African people thinking,
feeling and doing and actually there was there was activity
on their part in shaping global affairs like there was
in the past too. And I should also say, for
anyone who's interested, it's like, you know, you did your
wonderful spinoff series for Dan James's This Is History, The
(27:56):
Iron King, and I'm doing one on Mansa musa actually
honest pilgrimage and on his life called This Is history
Empire of God. So if people are interested in learning
a little bit more about the detail of Musa's pilgrimage
and about his life and how he goes about things,
and also some twists in the tail that I neglect
to mention in my little sketch, and then that would
(28:18):
definitely be placed to check it out and for them
to check out your some spin off two.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Oh, thank you, thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Well, this is the reason I wanted to have you
on the podcast now. It's because I want people to
learn more about your work, but also about Manson Musa,
and this is the perfect opportunity to do that. You
brought this all together on This is History, which, yeah,
it was such a fun project for me to do,
and it sounds like it was fun for you to do.
I'm very glad that we both had the experience to
talk about individuals who shaped history, yes.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
And to also just consider them almost as almost as living,
breathing people as well, when you're ringing out the drama
of their lives, you know, not as dusty historical figures,
but the people who actually will you know, actually lived,
you know, living and breathing, and they had impact on
the well around them in action on our world too.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yes, and the decisions that they make, they're based on
those small moments or those big moments like accidentally killing
your mother that is going to set you want a
new trajectory. But those moments I think are so important,
which brings me to one of the questions I wanted
to ask you about your work specifically, and that one
of the things that you mentioned in your book Motherland
is that it can be challenging to talk about African
(29:25):
history broadly and then even in specifics because for a
lot of people who are living in Africa now, a
lot of people who are from Africa somewhere in the past,
thinking about the past is not something that is over,
It is something that is continuous, right, So can you
tell us a little bit about how this works into
your thinking when you're looking at the historical past as
(29:47):
somebody who is imagined in cultures, don't necessarily think of
it as like a temporal past, but as a continual present.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
Yes, I think Africans generally more considered the plast as
being more fluid. There's not as clear distinction as there
is in for example, although you know, not exclusively, but
for example, European cultures, there's clear distinction between past, present,
and even future. Everything kind of flows into one or
the other. So some practices and sometimes even artifacts, just
(30:17):
because they're made in a certain time in a different time,
doesn't mean they belong to that time. They still belong
to the people who are of today. I mean, there
are festivals, for example in Ghana where I'm from, where
people will be firing guns that are two hundred years old,
you know, as they have done for the past two
hundred years, almost as if they were created yesterday or
bought yesterday. They aren't kept, for instance, behind glass and
(30:40):
museum and considered an artifact of a particular time, representing
a particular time and distinct from our time. But actually
they'll be looked after and considered and kept as you know,
as an object that still has relevance, because it does
still have relevance. So that was something that I think,
being African, I kind of felt, you know, I considered.
I mean, you will see it a little bit. I
saw it a little bit when I was doing my
(31:01):
research and you know, when I was looking a little
bit more on the academic literature, but also if you're
looking at history written by historians who've studied traditional history,
they will still create that distinction just in order to
make it more intelligible. But if at least if you're
looking more at and andropology, or at least for me
as I was writing it, I said, you know, it
doesn't really feel right to create those clear distinctions. I
know that there are some rituals, there are some practices,
(31:22):
there are some artifacts that don't belong to the past,
but they belong very much to the present, and they
are considered present day objects, not historical objects. But it's
almost like present day objects that we used by your ancestors.
Whether that ancestor was you know, someone who lived five
hundred years ago, or was your grandfather or father, you
think of it still as having that present day resonance
(31:42):
and that present day importance. So I think that's something
that does distinguish or something that's a little bit distinct
in African cultures, and it's something that I felt that
I had to explore or at least interrogate in a discussion,
which you know, the book is in a discussion of
the African past. I hope I've explained it sort of
in a way that kind of makes sense it's a
little bit intelligible.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yes, well, I mean it's something that is also found
in lots of indigenous cultures across the world. I was
speaking with James Flexner, who works on Oceania, and he
was talking about these oral tales which we can't really
talk about as being in the past. And here in
North America there's lots of indigenous cultures where it's weird
to talk about the past as being something that is over.
And so, you know, as somebody who's working on writing
(32:26):
history within a context of perhaps the English speaking tradition
of maybe European publishing, thinking about how to get this
across this is something that I'm sure that you had
to wrestle with quite a lot, like how do I
express this in a way that translates as you were saying,
that resonates today. And so when I'm thinking about the
(32:46):
sources that you were using for this book, how did
you approach this? So again we're talking about like there's
oral traditions, there was objects, how did you approach this
when you're coming at this book?
Speaker 3 (32:56):
In particular, I relied a lot on not just rip documentation,
but actually as well on some oral histories, stories and mythology,
and also on archaeologian anthropology in order to build up
a full picture of an event, a person, and most
especially a place or a society or a civilization. For
the places where some of the wild religions penetrated, for
(33:18):
instance Ethiopia, which I don't talk about a lot on
the book, but definitely for example the Swahili Coast, and
also Mali, that's when you have a more written documentation,
because Muslim traders and travelers were extremely mobile, went to
different places and recorded what they saw. One of the
great resources for actually both of those, at least as
far as the fourteenth century, in particular in the medieval
world more generally is concerned is the traveler ib In Batuta,
(33:40):
you know, the North African traveler ib In Petuta, who
visits Mali actually during the reign of Musa's brother, younger brother, Suliman.
He also goes to the Swahili coast and he records
what he sees there. And then later on as well,
you have some European accounts, like Portuguese accounts, but you
also have even slightly earlier than the two ten the
ninth and ten centry, for instance, as far as the
(34:01):
Sweeli Coast is concerned. You have Chinese accounts, for example,
with Chinese traders and travelers who actually did travel to
the Sweli Coast itself. I think one of the things
I would say that probably differentiates the book as a
history book as a popular history book, and differentiates me
as a historian a writer, or a popular story and
a writer, is that I gave as much weight to
(34:22):
archaeological and oral evidence as I did to written documentation.
For me, they're all just part of the same picture.
One isn't more credible or less credible than the other.
It all comes down in the interpretation. When you're looking
at oral history, you have to read between the lines
a little bit more. But actually they are much more
useful at giving you a psychology of a people and
actually just helping you to understand the values of those people,
(34:44):
what they are now, what they were before, and actually
how those have changed. For example, archaeology can be a
lot more empirical, and in fact sometimes it can help
to either support or even just give you a truth
that written documentation you know, wouldn't necessarily give you, but
more often than not is it's upplementary. So for example,
I mentioned the Chinese merchants or traders, but they maybe
(35:04):
wouldn't always necessarily write about what it was they were trading.
But then you would find, you know, Chinese stoneware or
Ming dynasty porcelain for example, across East Africa. So then
that also helps you build up a picture. You said, Okay,
not only was their direct contact, but these were the
kinds of things that were being brought. So I think
it's imported to consider all this and holistically, and I
think you're seeing it more in historical practice, especially when
people are exploring all the eras historians would look at
(35:27):
a lot more at archaeology. I also use things like
linguistics and genetics when looking at prehistory, and you know
human origins as well, And that's all just to build
up a picture of what I call the past. And
that's why sometimes in the book I will not just
talk about African history. I'll talk about the African past,
because it's just everything that you know has gone before
and what we use in order to build up that picture.
Whereas when we think of is, we think of it more.
(35:49):
There are certain connotations I think that come along with it,
usually derived from writing documentation and usually formed or shaped
into some kind of narrative rather than painting a picture.
For me, it was a little but it was a
little bit more like doing a painting than writing like
a novel, for example, in the way that I built
up the past, well.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I think this is an important discussion that we need
to keep having as historians, like how do we build
this picture of what things were like in the past,
because there are all sorts of world traditions, there's archaeology,
there's anthropology, and all of these things need to come
together if we're going to have a complete picture. And
so I always like to ask people whenever possible, how
(36:27):
are you putting together this picture? What are you involving,
and how are you weighing the evidence? Because I do
feel like there is a change in how we're doing
this as historians where we're not centering the text as
much when it's not as relevant. And so I found
this was a strength of your book in the way
that you are discussing, like being very transparent about like
here's how I'm looking at this, and here's the evidence,
(36:49):
and here's what I see within it. So one of
the things that you talk about within the book is
that part of your interest in studying the history broadly
of Africa, but especially of Ghana where you're from, is
that you didn't find very much of it at the
beginning of your journey.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
So how is it looking today?
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Can you tell us a little bit about what this
field looks like, maybe African studies more broadly, or what
you've seen in the history of Ghana as you're looking
at it from this point in your career.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
It's definitely a lot more expansive, it's definitely a lot
more involved. That's been more funding, and there's been more
genuine interest in trying to understand I think across African
I know, in Ghana, understanding our own history, cultures and
traditions and also respecting those rather than necessarily framing everything
with Europe in the background. Essentially, I tell the story
at the beginning of my book of going to the
(37:40):
National Museum of Ghana, which is just you know, and
mainly seeing their clearlier artifacts, and that's kind of what
started me on this journey to want to explore but
more parts to share stories from the deeper African past.
And you know, I think one of the big things
has been wanting to engage young people, especially in learning
about their own history and engage with it. So, for example,
(38:00):
I think Continental that's African Continental archaeology programs histories are important,
but you know, the departments, I think the professors s
have been really engaged in bringing up the next generation
and also in sharing those stories, you know, more widely.
One of the reasons I came into the space when
I did was that that was just a greater appetite
for wanting to know, you know, generally and cross culture,
(38:22):
but in African amongst Africans and other places, to learn
about our own history and to write it in a
way that was a little bit more natural to us.
But I think the field itself Africa has made, you know,
great strides and I think more important, there's much more
cognizance of wanting and you know, I think people are
generally more engaged, which allows Africans themselves to meet that
(38:43):
demand of wanting to tell stories of the deeper African past,
and not just after the last three hundred years, but
there has been a transformation, and I think as economic
and political confidence in certain parts of Africa hopefully increases
and improves, that will also lead to greater interest in
wanting to understand history and also in creating art which
reflects that history.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
I'm very glad to hear you say this. I'm starting
to notice that as well.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
On the field of medieval studies, we're starting to notice
more stories that are based on the African medieval pass
and centered around Ethiopia, especially with Rena Kreb's work, and
that's starting to spread and I'm hoping that people will
read your book and listen to your podcast series on
This Is History and become interested in more places within
(39:28):
this massive and rich continent. So thank you so much,
Luke for coming on and telling us all about Motherland
and especially Mons of Musa.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Thank you so much for having me. I had a
lot of fun. Thank you, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
To find out more about Luke's work, you can follow
him on Instagram at Luke Pepperah that's Luke pep Er.
You can also catch him in his mini series Empire
of Gold, which you can find directly in the podcast
stream for Dan Jones's This Is History. His new book
is Motherland, a Journey through five hundred thousand years of
(40:01):
African culture and identity. This is usually the part where
Peter Kanechni, the editor of Medievalist dot net comes on
to tell us what's new on his website, but Peter
is under the weather this week, so instead let's send
him our good wishes and check out his new article
on ten famous forgeries from the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Thank you to all of you.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Who support my work by letting the ads play through,
sharing your favorite episodes on social media, reading, borrowing and
lending my books, and becoming patrons on patreon dot com,
patrons can access all sorts of goodies like medievalist dot
net's book club, extensive lists of open access articles, and
access to this podcast at free. To find out more
(40:46):
or to become a patron, please visit patreon dot com
slash Medievalists for everything from Mali to Bali. Follow Medievalist
dot net on Instagram at medievalistnet or blue Sky at Medievalists.
You can find me Danielle Zibowski across social media at
five I n Medievalist or five minute Medievalist, and you
(41:06):
can find my books at all your favorite bookstores. Our
music is Beyond the Warriors by gee Frog. Thanks for
listening and have yourself an awesome day.
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