Mansa Abubakari II

Emperor of the Wealthiest Empire on Earth

Mansa Abubakari II — also known as Abu Bakr II — was the ninth Mansa (Emperor) of the Mali Empire, one of the largest and wealthiest states in the medieval world. He came to power around 1310 CE, inheriting an empire that stretched from the Atlantic coast of West Africa to the great bend of the Niger River — encompassing the gold fields of Bambuk and Bure, the salt mines of Taghaza, and the legendary trading cities of Timbuktu, Djenné, and Niani.

The Mali Empire at this time was the dominant power in West Africa and one of the most powerful states on earth. It controlled the trans-Saharan gold trade that supplied the entire medieval world — Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa — with the gold that underpinned their economies. The Mansa of Mali was among the wealthiest and most powerful rulers alive. To voluntarily abdicate such a throne was extraordinary. To abdicate it in pursuit of a voyage into the unknown Atlantic Ocean was unprecedented.

Abubakari II was the uncle of Mansa Musa — the man who would succeed him and become history's most famous African ruler. But before Musa took the throne, Abubakari II made a decision that has fascinated historians, archaeologists, and explorers ever since: he gave up everything to find out what lay beyond the horizon of the Atlantic.

Did He Reach the Americas? The Evidence and the Debate

The question of whether Abubakari II's fleet reached the Americas — more than 180 years before Columbus — is one of the most contested and fascinating debates in pre-Columbian history. The evidence is circumstantial but substantial, and it comes from multiple independent directions.

The oceanographic evidence is compelling. The North Equatorial Current flows directly from the West African coast to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. A fleet of boats caught in this current would be carried westward across the Atlantic in approximately 50–60 days — well within the range of the provisions Abubakari II reportedly loaded. Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated in 1969 with his Ra II expedition that reed boats built to ancient African designs could successfully cross the Atlantic using this current.

The linguistic and cultural evidence is more controversial but intriguing. The scholar Ivan Van Sertima documented in his 1976 book "They Came Before Columbus" a range of similarities between West African and Mesoamerican cultures — including the Olmec colossal heads, which bear features Van Sertima argued were distinctly West African; linguistic parallels between Mandinka (the language of the Mali Empire) and certain indigenous American languages; and accounts in indigenous oral traditions of "black men" arriving by sea before the Spanish. These claims remain debated among scholars, but they have never been definitively refuted.

The botanical evidence is perhaps the most concrete. Cotton of African origin (Gossypium herbaceum) was found in pre-Columbian American contexts. Certain food crops — including the bottle gourd and the peanut — appear in both West African and pre-Columbian American archaeological records in ways that suggest contact rather than independent development. None of this proves Abubakari II's fleet reached the Americas. But it establishes that trans-Atlantic contact before Columbus was oceanographically possible and perhaps culturally real.