Lesson video

Hi, and welcome to our final lesson about Mansa Musa.

So we are working up to answering the question.

What does the life of Mansa Musa reveal about mediaeval Mali? So thank you very much for joining me again.

I'm Miss Cusworth.

We're going to be looking at Mansa Musa's legacy.

Now, here we have Mansa Musa, and today we are going to be actually talking about where this image comes from and what it reveals to us really about mediaeval Mali? But before we do that, let's just recap on what our question is.

So what does the life of Mansa Musa reveal/show us about mediaeval Mali? And that's what we're going to be answering in today's lesson.

For us to do that, let's have a practise at writing a paragraph that maybe helps us answer that question.

So this paragraph is focused on one thing that the life of Mansa Musa reveals to us about mediaeval Mali.

Studying Mansa Musa life allows us to "something?" behind the curtain.

Think about what I've been saying to you for the last few lessons.

And it's something, several things about a particular place.

Firstly, it reveals that mediaeval Mali was? And then look down here and find the word that you think kind of best suits that sentence.

You've got a choice either to copy and complete this out or to write out the words in order.

And I would like you to pause the video to fill out the, fill in the gaps, sorry.

And then once you finished, you can resume, and the next slide we'll go through the answers.

So I'll go back to the page, I'll give you a moment to fill in the blanks, and then we'll go through the answers together in a second.

Okay, so what I'm forgetting that done, this paragraph really is one that you could use in an essay.

If you wanted to write the essay to answer the overall inquiry questions.

So I'm trying to like get you ready to do a little bit of writing, okay? Let's go through the answers.

So studying Mansa Musa's life allows us to peek behind the curtain and it reveals several things about mediaeval Mali, the society we've been studying.

Firstly, it reveals that mediaeval Mali was wealthy, had gold, had money.

And we see this on a number of occasions.

Where Mansa Musa described how he became emperor he mentioned that of ships, you remember that from less than one, had been filled with, of course, it's gold as part of the previous emperors doomed voyage.

Well, we don't necessarily know for certain, what doomed? But what we do know is that he never came back.

Later, in Cairo, so this is thinking about a later lesson that we did, lesson two, later, in Cairo, Mansa Musa gave out so much gold, but it made the price drop suggesting how, just how wealthy mediaeval Mali was.

So you can use that paragraph later on.

But I said today that we were going to be talking about Mansa Musa's legacy.

And what I mean by that is this is that we think around 1337, Mansa Musa was no longer emperor, his reign had come to an end.

And this word legacy is all about what was sort of left behind after Mansa Musa stopped being emperor.

So we think that he started his reign in about 1312.

this year 1324 was a really important one, you remember that's the year when he went on Hajj, when he travelled to Mecca via Cairo, giving out all that gold on the way.

And Mansa Musa has stopped being emperor in 1337.

And he'd left a lot of things behind.

He created a lot of things during his rule.

The state and his legacy is something we are going to be looking at today.

Now part of that legacy is this map.

And we're going to be talking more about that later, but the map or the Atlas is where this image comes from.

Now, Mansa Musa didn't make this, right? Somebody else made this and put him on the map.

But it reveals something to us about his legacy, which is important and we'll come back to later.

So a legacy is something that remains from an earlier time.

And we're going to look at four aspects today of Mansa Musa's legacy.

So we're going to look at his wealth, that's what we did at the beginning of the lesson with that paragraph, a fill-in the blank paragraph that you did.

So Mansa Musa left behind a lot of wealth.

Part of that was from the goldfields, part of that was trading through the cities of Gao and Timbuktu, a place called Tadmekka.

He left behind an empire in West Africa.

We know that he'd added those extra cities.

And by the time that Mansa Musa stopped being emperor, he had grown the size of the Mali empire, he had expanded it and made it bigger, then he left that to the next ruler.

He also something that remains, we know time.

It is the fact that like he's renowned, his reputation, he was so well known.

He had such a big reputation, partly from going on that journey to Cairo and giving out all that gold.

It's such a big reputation that he ended up on that Atlas, on that map that we're going to talk about later.

So picture of a map, a little drawing of a map there.

And you also left behind learning and university, sorry, universities that supported learning, that generated learning.

So these four things, Mansa Musa left behind.

Wealth, empire, renown or reputation and learning.

So what I want you to just be really clear about is what does legacy mean? Is it something that remains from an earlier time? Is it something that you get after someone in your family dies? Is it someone's reputation or is it someone's money that they have built up during their life? Could you write down one option, one option this time, write down which option you think it is? What does legacy mean? Okay, so in this context for today's lesson, I want you to be thinking about legacy as something that remains from an earlier time.

Sometimes people talk about something that gets left after someone in your family dies.

Most people talk about that as a legacy or like money could be legacy because it's something that's built up in a lifetime and then left behind.

But as we go through this lesson, I want you to be thinking about legacy as something that remains from an earlier time, something anything, it doesn't have to be specific to money.

So one part of Mansa Musa's legacy was this empire that he built up, and we actually looked at this map in lesson one.

And you can see that by the end of his reign, in about 1937, the borders of his empire were quite significant, you can see it included Gao and Timbuktu that we looked at last lesson as being two cities that he added to the Mali empire.

You can see the gold fields, and you can see the important trading centres and the size of the empire stretching from, really the Saharan desert, right down into the sort of rainforest and up to the Atlantic ocean.

It was a really big empire with huge numbers of people from different groups, all ruled by Mansa Musa.

So he, the empire was of his legacy, something he left behind.

So we're going to be looking at four different categories today.

And what does Mansa Musa's creation of a powerful empire, remember we said an empire, it's like a group of different kind of states or bits of land, the rule by one person.

What is it that he built up that powerful empire reveal about mediaeval Mali? It reveals that he, you know, had taken over important cities, gives a sense he was ambitious.

In order to create this powerful empire, he stretch, sorry, it was shows he's powerful and the empire stretched over thousands of miles.

The creation of a powerful empire reveals to us that that mediaeval Mali was Muslim because Islam was the religion of the empire.

And the creation of a powerful empire also reveals that mediaeval Mali was connected because inside the empire, there were lots of strong trade routes that went within the empire, but also outside of it to North Africa and beyond.

You might also have some other ideas that I haven't come up with.

You might have come up with some on your own.

And you might want to write them down under here, so as well as ambitious, powerful, Muslim and connected, you might have other ideas.

About what Mansa Musa's creation of a powerful empire reveals to us about mediaeval Mali.

So what I'm going to say that you should do now is to pause the video and make a copy of this table with those examples and then the others, you might have come up with some others, right? Any others that you have got examples to pop in your table, the title for your table is what does Mansa Musa's legacy reveal about mediaeval Mali? Pause the video, copy out the table and then click play once you're finished and you're ready to move on.

Okay, so hopefully you've got your table ready.

You're good to go.

Now, Mansa Musa's legacy.

Another really important part of his legacy.

Another really important thing that Mansa Musa left behind was the Sankore University in Timbuktu.

And it flourished during the time of Mansa Musa, grew really strong and was really well known.

In fact, it was one of the best universities like centres of learning, in the Islamic world at the time.

And by the end of Mansa Musa's reign, it had one of the largest collections of books in Africa.

And that like collection of books or that sort of size of library, it was really unseen since the destruction of the Ancient Library in Alexandria, which is in Egypt.

So a huge collection of books that hadn't really existed in this way in Africa since the ancient Egyptian times.

And here's an image of the university, this beautiful architecture.

Here we have some more of Mansa Musa's legacy.

Now this was a manuscript page from Timbuktu.

And I think I'm right in saying that this comes from after Mansa Musa's time.

But it might not really have existed unless Mansa Musa had kind of encouraged Timbuktu to flourish and grow, supported it.

So these kinds of manuscripts, you could say is, is kind of a legacy of Mansa Musa, he'd set up this university that then went on to do really great things.

And lots of these manuscripts, these pieces of paper with these kind of important writings on, they are slowly being digitised.

So, academic scholars, remember that word from last lesion, scholars are sort of start taking them, scanning them in and making them available online, Which is what this scholar is doing here.

And they're doing that in Timbuktu, taking those ancient manuscripts and making them available for us and for future generations.

All, really a legacy you could argue of Mansa Musa.

So what does Mansa Musa's support of Timbuktu to reveal about mediaeval Mali? You seem to have a little part of our table missing, ambitious.

So you could say that because he supported Timbuktu, it could reveal that mediaeval Mali was ambitious, he supported learning, he wanted Mali to succeed.

If you've got a good strong university, your country is maybe more likely to succeed, to do well.

I couldn't think of anything for powerful, you might have thought of something how him supporting Timbuktu showed that mediaeval Mali was powerful.

Maybe it's powerful enough to attract scholars to come and work at Timbuktu.

I'll leave that one up to you.

Muslim, so Timbuktu and it's university was really led by people who followed Islam.

And a lot of the learning that went on was related to Islam.

And so I think Timbuktu reveals to us that mediaeval Mali was Muslim and Islam was really important there.

It also reveals to us the support of Timbuktu, that mediaeval Mali was connected because Timbuktu was a really, important centre of learning and have that really important university, but it was also a really important trade hub.

And so came back to have really strong trade routes, we looked at that last lesson, within the empire, but also outside of it, going to other parts of the world.

So I would suggest that you pause the video now, you put those things into your table and anything else that you've thought about, Mansa Musa's support of Timbuktu reveals to us about mediaeval Mali.

I'm going to ask you to pause the video at the end, and then press play when you are done.

Okay, so we'll move on to one of my favourite things about Mansa Musa.

So I've been showing you this image, every lesson, right? You've seen it a lot of times, and that is partly because I just think it is so engaging and such a beautiful image.

And I think it's really what got me interested in Mansa Musa, I wanted to know who was this guy? And how did he kind of get a crown, why was he presented in this way, holding this gigantic piece of gold? Now, like I said, Mansa Musa didn't make this nor nor was it made in Africa.

In fact, it was made on an Island called Majorca.

And it was part of a much bigger thing called the Catalan Atlas.

And this a little bit here says, "This black Lord is called Musse Melly and is the sovereign ruler of the land of the black people and Gineva, which I think is that kind of way of saying Guinea, which is sometimes what people called the Empire of Mali.

So what they're talking about here is Mansa Mussa, and they're really talking about sort of the kingdom of Mali.

This king, Mansa Musa, is the richest and noblest of all of these lands due to the abundance of gold that is extracted , taken out, from his lands.

So, and you can see that's what it says up here, this translation.

And this gives us a really interesting insight, in my opinion, into what people later on knew about Mali and thought about Mali.

And he talks, the map-maker, about one thing in particular, gold.

And that is really revealing to us.

Because it seems like that's what people knew about Mali.

They knew that it had a lot of gold.

Now you can see Mansa Musa down here on this part of the outlets, and I've only really shown you that little bit there of Mansa Musa but you can see it was much, much, much bigger than that.

It included Europe, Asia, and North, and then sort of I suppose, West Africa.

And here, this might look familiar to you, here is Britain on the Atlas.

And you can see it, it's pretty accurate in terms of the shape of Britain and then Ireland.

And here is Mansa Musa from that part of the Atlas.

And you can see there's someone here dressed maybe as a trader travelling across, may from from Mali to another part of Africa, and you can see the tents that people often lived in, or at least stayed in as they were trading up and through the Sahara desert.

And then this bit here is Spain, North Africa.

And then the Island of Marjoca where we think the map-maker was living, where they came from.

And you can see it here on the map that I drew and shared with you before, the capital city of that Island of Majorca is Palmer.

And it's now part of Spain.

I remember in the previous lesson, I talked about how Spain was part of the Islamic world at this time.

And Palmer was a centre, special kind of centre of map-making.

So the Catalan Atlas, this here, this sort of map with Mansa Musa on it is often described as one of the finest mediaeval maps, the sort of most beautiful, the most decorated, the most kind of impressive mediaeval maps.

It was made by Jewish, Marjoca map-makers.

And we think this beautiful map was made by a man called Cresques Abraham.

Jewish people at this time where, or maps were often made by Jewish people.

Part of the reason we think that might have been was because Jews at this time did a lots of trading.

They were merchants, they were traders, they helped goods get from one part of the world to another part of the world and that gave them information about trade routes, about the world, what it looked like, who lived in different parts of the world.

And this map we think was made by a Jewish, Marjocan map-maker called Cresques Abraham.

Now we'll pause for a second, we'll go back to Mansa Musa, I think, okay.

So this map-maker living on an island, in the Mediterranean Sea, Majorca, was there.

He was making a map of the sort of known world or the kind of path wealth, at that time people thought were really important.

And he included Mansa Musa on his map.

What does that suggest to us about Mansa Musa? Because this map was made several years after Mansa Musa died.

So Mansa Musa wasn't alive when this map was made, what does that tell us about Mansa Musa? That he was well known, that people thought he was important, that they thought that Mali was important, they thought that Mali was a real centre of wealth and produced a lot of gold.

So I feel like the Catalan Atlas is part of sort of in a way Mansa Musa's legacy because what Mansa Musa left behind was a reputation, a reputation for wealth.

And that reputation kind of reveals to us that many will mediaeval Mali was well known about, it was thought of as being wealthy, it was thought of as being important enough to put on a map.

So for powerful, Mansa Musa being on that Atlas made by a Jewish map-maker in Majorca, several decades after Mansa Musa died, the fact he's on that map, I think it reveals to us something about mediaeval Mali.

That maybe mediaeval Mali was powerful because he's pictured wearing a crown and lots of gold.

He looks powerful in that image, he looks regal.

I think it also, the fact that he's on that map, also maybe reveal to us about, mediaeval Mali was connected.

It was known about outside of the empire, mediaeval Mali was known about in Europe, outside of Africa.

You might have some other brilliant ideas.

And if you do, pop them down.

I'm going to say that you should pause the video, add those two points down, add any other good points that you've got and then press play when you have finished.

Okay, so we've come to the end of learning about Mansa Musa.

Now we're going to wrap up with answering some questions.

So question number one is, what does legacy mean? What does legacy mean? Question number two, what sort of city did Timbuktu become under Mansa Musa? Number three, what's the name of the map that features Mansa Musa? Number four, who do we think made that map? And number five, the fact that Mansa Musa is on that map, decades after the he died, what does that reveal, what does that maybe tell us about mediaeval Mali? So as usual, you should pause the video to complete the questions, and then when you're done press play, we will go through the answers together.

Okay, so great job getting those questions done.

Let's maybe look through the answers.

So, what does legacy mean? Something that remains from an earlier time.

Yeah, that's a fine answer.

A better answer would be to put it in a full sentence.

Legacy means something that remains from an earlier time.

What sort of city to Timbuktu become? Timbuktu became a very important city or maybe Timbuktu became a city with an important university.

Either of those are fine.

A good answer would be, Timbuktu was already an important city, that's maybe part of the reason why Mansa Musa wants to add it to his empire, remember when he came back from Mecca, especially in times of trade.

but under Mansa Musa, it flourished, it kind of grew and developed into a centre of learning.

It was home to a university, which was one of the best in the Islamic world with a huge collection of books.

What is the name of the map that features Mansa Musa? It's called the Catalan Atlas.

Catalan is a language that's spoken in that part of the world, still spoken today.

A good answer would be, Mansa Musa features on the Catalan Atlas, let's just putting it into a full sentence.

Who do we think created the map? An acceptable answer would be a Jewish map-maker, or you hopefully you've been a little bit more detailed, and you said, we think the Catalan Atlas was created by a Jewish Marjorcan master mapmaker, named Cresques Abraham.

And then the last one is what does Mansa Musa being on that beautiful map made by Cresques Abraham up in Majorca part of Spain decades after Mansa Musa stopped being emperor, what does that reveal about mediaeval Mali? An acceptable answer is that well, mediaeval mediaeval Mali was known about by people in Europe, or people outside of Africa.

A good answer might be, that Mansa Musa features so prominently on the Catalan Atlas, reveals that mediaeval Mali was well known by people, quite some distance from the empire.

It is seen as important enough to be put on the map.

Mansa Musa is shown with a gold crown and holding a large piece of gold, which suggests both that mediaeval Mali was wealthy and that it was known to be so.

You might put something there about Mali being connected.

You might have put something there about mediaeval Mali being powerful.

All of that would be a good answer.

So what open getting those done? There is an extension activity.

And that extension activity is writing an essay, that answers are inquiry question.

What does the life of Mansa Musa reveal about mediaeval Mali? Now you've actually written the first paragraph because you did that earlier, when you did the fill-in the gaps at the beginning of the lesson.

And I'm going to give you a sort of sentence starts to get you going.

The life of Mansa Musa reveals that mediaeval Mali was wealthy.

Maybe if you've written it down from early, you can check back, you can use that as your first paragraph.

Paragraph two might be the life of Mansa Musa reveals that many mediaeval Mali was ambitious.

Think about what have we looked at together, which reveals mediaeval Mali is ambitious, What did Mansa Musa do which reveals to us that mediaeval Mali was ambitious? Mediaeval Mali was Muslim.

That could be paragraph three.

And final paragraph could be about how many evil mediaeval Mali was connected.

You might want to write a different paragraph about how mediaeval Mali was powerful.

That would be absolutely fine.

In fact, that would be a good thing to do.

So possible examples that you can add in, or you can use to support your ideas about what mediaeval Mali was.

Maybe Mansa Musa's account of how he became emperor.

Suggests he's wealthy, they put all that gold on the ships.

It shows us that many were mediaeval Mali was ambitious.

The previous emperor wanted to see if he could find the end of the ocean.

That kind of shows that he's quite ambitious, he's determined.

Mansa Musa's time in Cairo, where he gave out all that gold.

That's a good example, maybe for wealthy.

Mansa Musa's Hajj, it shows that mediaeval Mali, or at least its rulers were Muslim.

The fact that they went on this religious pilgrimage to the really Holy city of Mecca.

And mediaeval, sorry, Mansa Musa's legacy, what he left behind in the Catalan Atlas.

Shows us that mediaeval Mali was connected, that mediaeval Mali was wealthy.

So those are some possible examples for you.

So this is the end of the lesson and the end of the inquiry.

Go back and do the essay.

I think you'll really, really well prepared.

So I'd love if you could give that a go.

And even if you don't do the essay, made sure you complete the end of lesson quiz to kind of check understanding.

Now, if you do the essay or any of the work that you would like to share, please ask your parent or carer, whoever is at home with you, to share your work.

So get them to post it rather than you posting it yourself.

And you can ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, on Facebook or Twitter by tagging "@OakNational" , hashtag "#LearnWithOak." And then hopefully I'll get to see some examples of essays or other things that you've done about Mansa Musa.

Thank you so much for doing these four lessons for being with me and letting me teach you a little bit about Mansa Musa, one of my favourite historical figures and mediaeval Mali, which is a society that I find just absolutely fascinating.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

Well done for all your hard work, and thanks again.

See you later, bye.