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Although figures such as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are (9) .......... modern nor historical paragons of supreme wealth — their considerable fortunes are comprehensively eclipsed by those of earlier rulers. Chief among them is Mansa Musa, the fourteenth-century West African emperor whose riches remain, by most estimates, without parallel in recorded history.
Born in Mali in 1280, Musa entered (10) .......... a dynasty of rulers by birth. When his predecessor abdicated the throne in 1312 — reportedly setting sail with a vast fleet to discover what lay beyond the Atlantic — Musa ascended to power and proceeded to amass a fortune from the extraordinary mineral wealth of his territories, above all gold and salt. His accumulation of riches was, however, (11) .......... one facet of his remarkable legacy. A devout Muslim, he undertook his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 (12) .......... befitting his faith, leading a caravan of reported 60,000 soldiers, servants and enslaved individuals. He distributed gold so lavishly (13) .......... the cities he visited that he is said to have destabilised their economies for years afterwards.
By the time he returned to Mali, his reputation had (14) .......... to every corner of the known world. The Catalan Atlas of 1375 depicted him in regal splendour, sceptre in hand, a gleaming gold nugget before him. (15) .......... today, the mosques, mausoleums and libraries he commissioned endure as monuments to the man who may be the wealthiest individual who has (16) .......... lived.