MUSA

mother and wife of Phraates V (q.v.), king of Parthia. died 1332/37? also spelled Mousa, also called Kankan Musa mansa (emperor) of the West African empire of Mali from 1307 (or 1312). Mansa Musa left a realm notable for its extent and riches (he built the Great Mosque at Timbuktu), but he is best remembered in the Middle East and Europe for the splendour of his pilgrimage to Mecca (1324). Additional reading Abderrahman es-Sa'di, Tarikhe es-Soudan, trans. into French by Octave Houdas, 2 vol. (18981900, reprinted 1964), written by a 17th-century Sudanese, gives a useful account of the origin of the Ghana Empire and subsequent Sudanese history based on data now lost; The Golden Trade of the Moors, 2nd ed. rev. (1968), contains a chapter on Mansa Musa; J.C. de Graft-Johnson, African Glory: The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations (1954), gives a vivid account of the great empires flourishing in the Western Sudan, including the Mali and Songhai empires; al-Omari, Masalik el-Absar (1927), French translation of a work by a contemporary Arab scholar containing most of what is known about Mansa Musa's memorable pilgrimage to Mecca.