Description
What our Biographies: Mansa Musa lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Biographies: Mansa Musa is a high-interest reading comprehension lesson plan. As such, students will practice various close reading and comprehension skills. In addition, they will learn about one of the most significant figures in African and world history: Mansa Musa. This lesson is for students in 5th grade and 6th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page provides an extra paragraph of information to help guide the lesson. It explains that you can teach this lesson in a whole-class setting or as an independent, small-group activity. You can use the blank lines to write down any other ideas or thoughts you have about the topic as you prepare.
BIOGRAPHIES: MANSA MUSA LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
The Biographies: Mansa Musa lesson plan contains three pages of content. Modern Africa is one of the world’s poorest continents. Despite the continent’s vast natural resources and youthful population, African countries suffer from political instability, climate change, inadequate education, and extreme poverty. Though today’s Africa is in dire straits, it wasn’t always so in history. Historically, Africa was one of the wealthiest continents in the world. And one man, measured in today’s economy, would be the wealthiest person in the world, or at least in the top 20! His name was Mansa Musa, and today we are going to learn about him.
Mansa Musa of West Africa
His story begins in West Africa between the 13th and 15th centuries. The Mali Empire spanned much of West Africa, extending from the southern edge of the Sahara Desert in the north to the forested regions of present-day southern Mali, Guinea, and northern Côte d’Ivoire in the south. Its geographic location is closely linked to the empire’s vast wealth. It sat between West African gold mines and the fertile agricultural area of the Niger River floodplain. The Mali Empire was the main trade route for commodities like salt. Controlling this territory would be like controlling all the access routes leading into New York City!
As you might imagine, a rich area like this would be nearly impossible to maintain control over without strong leadership. This is where Mansa Musa enters into the historical picture. Mansa Musa was either the grandson or nephew of Sundiata, the founder of the empire. Sundiata was a gifted military leader and a creative thinker. He saw the opportunity for wealth that could be realized if the region were consolidated into a single ruling empire. Using his military might, Sundiata accomplished what he set out to do: consolidate the main trade routes, gold mines, and agricultural areas into one kingdom—Mali. Maintaining control over such a vast region would not have been possible without Sundiata’s wise decision to create councils composed of local people to help manage the territory. Sundiata was also the first ruler to use the term Mansa in his name. Mansa translates to king or emperor.
Journey to Mecca
Mansa Musa was mentored by the wise Sundiata and benefited from the organization he had established to manage the Mali Empire. Around 1307, Mansa Musa came to the throne and followed the plan originated by his predecessor. Seventeen years later, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest city of the Islamic faith. He was a devout and deeply religious leader, and the purpose of his trip was to worship and practice his faith. His trip became renowned for its ostentatious display of wealth. Few leaders in the world at that time knew about Mali and, more importantly, how prosperous the empire was.
Arab historians recorded Mansa Musa’s arrival. Musa did not take a small army with him on this trip. His caravan included 60,000 men, 12,000 of which were slaves! All were dressed in shirts made of Persian silk, at that time possibly the most expensive and finest material in the world. The shirts were not ordinary. They were made in a style known as brocade. Brocade is an intricately woven fabric with great detail, giving the appearance that the design pattern floats from the cloth.
The Crash of Cairo
The grandiose entrance into the city was led by 500 enslaved persons. Each one carried a staff intricately decorated with gold. Mansa Musa followed next on horseback. He wore gold-adorned regalia, or clothing that signaled royalty. Arab historians said the caravan included 80 camels that carried his luggage. But this was not ordinary luggage you would take on vacation. Each camel carried 300 pounds of gold, which is about $20 million in today’s currency.
On his way to Mecca, however, Mansa Musa traveled through Cairo. The leader of the city of Cairo, Al-Malik al-Nāṣir, is considered one of the greatest sultans of the time. A sultan is a religious and political leader of a Muslim state. Mansa Musa was so focused on reaching Mecca to worship that he unintentionally ignored Al-Malik al-Nāṣir, sparking a diplomatic uproar. However, Mansa Musa smoothed over the insult with his generosity, and what could have been a serious incident was forgiven. Arab historians wrote that if you visited the city 12 years after Mansa Musa had left, local people still talked about how generous he had been! And according to them, Mansa Musa flooded Cairo’s economy with so much gold that the value of gold declined for several years.
Taking and Losing Songhai
Not all of the journey was pomp and party. During the pilgrimage, a general took note of the territory of the Songhai kingdom. The capital city of Gao was a thriving, wealthy city, not even comparable to Mansa Musa’s home. But it was enticing nonetheless. The Songhai kingdom stretched for hundreds of miles, and the general decided to conquer it. General Sagmandia overwhelmed the city militarily and enlarged Mansa Musa’s and the Mali Empire’s geographic grip by several hundred miles. Once under Mali’s control, Mansa Musa authorized the construction of several mosques in the city. They built the structures using a new construction material, burnt brick. Burnt brick was a substantial technological improvement over other building materials.
While Mansa Musa lived, the Mali Empire continued to expand and prosper. He died somewhere around 1332. His legacy included the construction of several mosques, the development of Timbuktu into a central trade hub, several innovations in construction, and the rise of the Mali Empire as a center of education and learning. Unfortunately, following his death and the loss of his charismatic leadership, the empire began to decline, eventually falling to the Songhai kingdom. Later, the arrival of the Portuguese marked the end of the great African empires, such as Mali and Songhai.
The Value of Good Leadership
Mansa Musa’s legacy as a gifted leader, a devout Muslim, and a benefactor remains intact even today. Modern historians marvel at his enormous wealth and visionary leadership. One lesson of history is that many great empires have prospered under visionary leadership and faltered when infighting and poor leadership assume control. The Mali Empire and other African kingdoms suffered the same fate as many European and Asian empires. Enormous wealth cannot forever sustain the prosperity and stability of an empire in the absence of responsible leaders. Wealth is not a substitute for leadership!
BIOGRAPHIES: MANSA MUSA LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Biographies: Ruby Bridges lesson plan includes two worksheets: an activity worksheet and a practice worksheet. Each one will help students solidify their grasp of the material they learned throughout the lesson. You can refer to the classroom procedure guidelines to know when to hand out each worksheet.
RISE AND FALL OF EMPIRES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity, students will research an empire and describe its rise and fall. They will first choose one of the empires on the list. Then they will write one paragraph that describes the empire when it was at its peak. After that, they will write one paragraph explaining the reasons for its decline. Finally, they will answer the question at the bottom of the page.
BIOGRAPHIES: MANSA MUSA REVIEW PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet requires students to answer a series of 10 questions. These questions all relate to the content pages, so students will need to refer to them often for the answers. In addition, each question provides which reading tool the question corresponds to, such as text feature, vocabulary, or comprehension.
Worksheet Answer Keys
At the end of the lesson plan document is an answer key for the practice worksheet. The correct answers are all in red to make it easier for you to compare them with students’ responses. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
