A Day In The Life Of Mansa Musa, The Richest Person That Ever Lived

Some people believe it's the root of all evil, whilst others say it makes the world go round. There are those that say it brings happiness, and others who blame all the world’s problems on it. But no matter what you think about it, we all want be rich enough like Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. So, that begs the question, how do we become as rich as the richest people in the world?

Think Like A Billionaire

To join the ranks of the super-rich, it’s obvious you need a good routine that will allow you to work hard, and at the peak of your physical and mental capabilities. Let’s take a look at Microsoft founder Bill Gates, a man who’s made around $100 billion from his of well-known businesses.

He starts the day with breakfast and exercise, and manages his time meticulously: breaking the entire day up into 5 minute chunks. It’s this organization and preparation that allows him to maximize his productivity and keep on top of his workload, and as a result he now lives an extremely lavish lifestyle. Bill Gates is so rich he actually admits he wouldn't be able to spend it all, even if he tried.

But while Gates might be unimaginably rich, he doesn't come close to being the richest person ever. That title is reserved for a relatively unknown person, coming up soon. In fact, Gates isn't even the richest man alive today. The richest man alive is no longer Bill Gates but the founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. The tweet below shows Jeff in 1999 in his very first office, starting out at Amazon using a door propped up with 2 by 4’s as a desk.

From his humble beginnings, Jeff now runs a gigantic company that is worth over $800 billion and sells pretty much everything under the sun, from streaming TV services to space travel. So, how did Bezos do it? One crucial reason is his military discipline and highly organized daily routine. Bezos starts each day early. This is actually pretty common among successful people, Apple CEO Tim Cook even gets up at 3.45 am.

But Bezos wakes up naturally, with no alarm clock. He spends the first couple of hours of his day pottering around, he has a coffee and reads the newspaper. He has breakfast with his kids, and has been known to eat some extravagant meals. Bezos likes to try new things, like eating octopus for breakfast. He’s even been known to like eating iguana, he says it’s good for the brain. But he also enjoys a greasy burger from a food truck, or at least he does when he wants to make himself look like a human.

As his morning moves on, he has his first important meetings of the day. His hardest decisions are always made first, at 10am, when his brain is most alert and proactive. As the day wears on he takes on easier and easier tasks, that are more fitting to the way the human brain naturally gets tired and affected by decision fatigue.

Bezos keeps his afternoons free from high-intensity appointments, and if an emergency pops up in the evening, he’ll put it off until 10am the next day, when his brain is firing on all cylinders again. By 5pm he clocks off, and spends the rest of the day unwinding, making sure he does the dishes after dinner. He reserves some time for hobbies too, and has made a cameo appearance in Star Trek, as well as totally normal hobbies like piloting submarines.

When Bezos’ day is over, he goes to bed, making sure he has enough time to get a full 8 hours of sleep before he does the whole thing all over again. So it’s likely his razor-shape routine and commitment to a small number of high-quality decisions each day has helped him amass his personal fortune. Of course, paying his employees very low wages and dodging millions in tax might have helped a little, too.

But despite how insanely wealthy he is, Jeff Bezos is far from being the richest person in history. That title goes to a man who had the equivalent of $400 billion dollars relative to today's prices, 4 times as much as Bill Gates and over 2 and a half times as much as Jeff Bezos.

Mansa Musa: The Richest Man Who Ever Lived

The richest man ever was wealthy beyond your wildest dreams, and you’ve probably never heard his name. This man was the 10th ruler of the Mali Empire, and His name was Kankan Musa, better known as Mansa Musa, the richest man in human history. The image below shows what we think he looked like.

So, what would a day in his life have been like? He never kept a diary, or if he did, we haven’t found it, so his day to day life was never officially recorded. But that doesn't mean we can't take an educated guess based on the evidence uncovered by historians and archaeologists.

The first thing Mansa Musa would have likely done is look out of his window to survey his vast empire. At its peak this empire spanned 439,400 square miles and stretched across land occupied by 10 of the 54 countries in Africa today. That's almost 5 times bigger than the United Kingdom and had a population of over 20 million, no small feat in those days.

The Mali empire lasted from 1235 to 1600, so it's fair to say it had a decent run. Across the empire, the majority of people spoke a similar language and had a similar culture, and its cultural legacy can still be seen today. As he would have lived in a palace, his morning routine probably involved looking out the window and surveying his royal complex.

Most of the wealth was in the form of salt, a very valuable commodity back then, and gold, and so he probably saw plenty of shining monuments and heaps of salt being carried by donkeys. The palace he woke up in was undoubtedly the height of luxury. As a lover of gold, it's fair to assume he owned a few pieces himself. In fact, the evidence suggests this guy would've put the Donald and his little hotel chain to shame.

Getting ready would have been easy, as he had a small army of slaves working for him. Slaves who would've dressed him in his royal robes and prepared him a luxury breakfast. No records of his diet have been kept, but it would likely have involved local staples like onions, tomatoes, eggplant, yams, mangoes, bananas, or watermelon. Fit for a king.

After breakfast, he would probably have read a book, this was a king with a reputation for wisdom. He was extremely dedicated to education and learning, and the morning would have been the ideal time to relax with a good book. But Mansa Musa wasn’t just concerned with learning about the world, he put his ideas into practice and was committed to helping the lives of his subjects. Like Bill Gates, Mansa Musa was also an extremely charitable man who would give to the poor at every opportunity he could.

He dramatically improved the education standards of the people in his empire by building schools, universities, and libraries where people could learn about science, philosophy, poetry, mathematics, and the most cutting-edge knowledge of the day. He might not have been an angel, and he did own slaves, but he was certainly not selfish, and he wasn't one of those rulers who's only out for himself.

So, what would the rest of the day have in store for Mansa Musa, the richest person in history? Well, as with most politicians, he would have had regular meetings with his advisors, who would give him advice on running his vast empire. Many of his policies would have been influenced by his personal beliefs, and unlike most of the richest people alive today, this guy way extremely religious.

Mansa Musa lived his life as a devout Muslim and used his immense wealth to spread Islam. Some modern scholars think he could be at least partially responsible for the global size and spread of Islam today. In the evening, it's quite likely Musa would have gone for a visit to his local mosque, or perhaps even his personal mosque, to pray. As an incredibly devout Muslim, it would be amazing if he didn't visit his mosque on at least a weekly basis.

When he went on his Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, he spread the Muslim religion to wherever he visited, and brought with him a gigantic procession of servants, bodyguards and assistants on a journey that would have taken months. His pilgrimage was the stuff of legend, and his entourage numbered many thousands of people.

Everywhere he went he took gold and handed it out to crowds he met. In fact, during his Hajj, he gave so much out in Cairo that the value of gold plummeted, and the Egyptian economy tanked. On his way home, he had to buy back some of his gold and take out loans with a huge interest rate to help stabilize their economy.

Some say Mansa Musa even built a brand new mosque on his journey every Friday, the Muslim Holy Day. As he wanted to spread his religion to as many people as he possibly could, this was a pretty smart idea. Give people a load of gold to get them to like you, then build a mosque so that they'll all think "hey, this guy seems cool, I'll give his religion a try".

And his message certainly had appeal, 14th century Islam was actually way ahead of 14th century Christianity. In Europe, Christianity was busy hating science, and accusing everyone of sorcery or witchcraft. While Europe was burning people at the stake and trying to cure the plague by reading the Bible, Islam was encouraging free thinking, science and mathematics.

After visiting the Mosque, Mansa Musa would probably have gone home to have dinner with his family. It's not known exactly how many wives he had, but his favorite was a woman called Inari Kunate, who accompanied Musa on his Hajj, along with 500 maids in waiting.

When you've had the life that Musa had, I'm sure it's something you would mention at the dinner table. Musa would probably take great pleasure in boring his children with stories about the charity he provided, the gold he gave away, and all the spectacular buildings he erected. His kids were probably sick and tired of hearing that story of how he built the University of Sankore.

Mansa Musa’s kids eventually took over from him when he died sometime in the late 1340s. Nobody knows exactly what he died from, but it was probably natural causes. His son succeeded him, but his reign lasted only 4 years. Mansa Musa’s family ended up squabbling over the inheritance, and the Empire fell into disrepair. Finally, his life’s work fell apart, but the Mali Empire left an important mark on world history in the 750 years that followed.

Mansa Musa’s personal wealth was valued $400 billion dollars in today’s money. Meaning that even now the richest man ever was not the CEO of big tech company, or a banker born into the right family, he was an African emperor you’ve probably only just heard of. Who knows if the world will ever see a man like him again?

I hope you were amazed at the story of Mansa Musa, the richest man in History. Thanks for reading.