On his pilgrimage to Mecca, Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire, stopped in Cairo with a caravan so rich that people talked about it for generations. The scholar al-Umari, who arrived a few years later, wrote that Musa gave away so much gold that its price in Cairo was still depressed twelve years on. Protocol required visitors to kiss the ground before the Sultan. Musa did not want to. The words are imagined.