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“The king who was my predecessor did not believe that it was impossible to discover the furthest limit of the Atlantic Ocean and wished vehemently to do so.”

As reported by al-Umari · Masalik al-absar (c. 1337), trans. Levtzion & Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (1981), pp. 268–269

Context Told by Musa to an Egyptian official in Cairo in 1324, during his pilgrimage to Mecca, explaining how he became king after his predecessor sailed into the Atlantic.

Portrait of Mansa Musa
Mansa MusaMali · c. 1280–1337
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