February is Black History Month and this year marks the 400th anniversary that blacks were brought to Bermuda as indentured servants. Throughout this month, The Royal Gazette will feature people, events, places and institutions that have contributed to the shaping of African history.Mansa Musa, 14th-century emperor of the Mali Empire, is the medieval African ruler most known to the world outside Africa. His elaborate pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca in 1324 introduced him to rulers in the Middle East and in Europe. His leadership of Mali, a state that stretched across 2,000 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Chad and which included all or parts of the modern nations of Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Chad, ensured decades of peace and prosperity in West Africa. In 1312, Musa became emperor after the death of his predecessor, Abu-Bakr II. When he was crowned, he was given the name Mansa, meaning “king”. Mansa Musa was knowledgeable in Arabic and was described as a Muslim traditionalist. He became the first Muslim ruler in West Africa to make the nearly 4,000-mile journey to Mecca. Preparing for the expedition took years and involved the work of artisans in numerous towns and cities across Mali. In 1324, Musa began his pilgrimage with an entourage of thousands of escorts. He also brought considerable amounts of gold, some of which was distributed along the journey. Accompanied by thousands of richly dressed servants and supporters, Musa made generous donations to the poor and to charitable organisations as well as to the rulers of the lands that his entourage crossed. On his stop in Cairo, Egypt, the emperor gave out so much gold that he generated a brief decline in its value. Cairo’s gold market recovered more than a decade later. Upon his return from Mecca, Musa brought Arab scholars, government bureaucrats and architects. Among those who returned with him was the architect Ishaq El Teudjin, who introduced advanced building techniques to Mali. He designed numerous buildings for the emperor, including a new palace named Madagou, the mosque at Gao, the second largest city in Mali, and the still-standing great mosque at Timbuktu, the largest city in the empire. That mosque was named the Djinguereber. El Teudjin’s most famous design was the emperor’s chamber at the Malian capital of Niani.Musa’s pilgrimage boosted Islamic education in Mali by adding mosques, libraries and universities. The awareness of Musa by other Islamic leaders brought increased commerce and scholars, poets and artisans, making Timbuktu one of the leading cities in the Islamic world during the time when the most advanced nations from Spain to central India were Muslim. Timbuktu was clearly the centre of Islamic sub-Saharan Africa.Musa’s pilgrimage to Mecca brought Mali to the attention of Europe. For the next two centuries, Italian, German and Spanish cartographers produced maps of the world, which showed Mali and which often referenced Mansa Musa. The first of these maps appeared in Italy in 1339 with Mansa Musa’s name and likeness. Mansa Musa died in 1337 after a 25-year reign. He was succeeded by his son, Maghan I. • Sources: Djibril Tamsir Niane, “Mansa Musa” in New Encyclopaedia of Africa, John Middleton and Joseph C. Miller, eds. (New York: Scribner’s, 2008); Djibril Tamsir Niane, Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century (London: Heinemann, 1984): David C. Conrad and Djanka Tassey Conde, Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004)