Getty Images The trip to Mecca helped put Mali and Mansa Musa on the map - a photocopy of the Catalan Atlas map from 1375 The king reportedly left Mali with a caravan of 60,000 men. He took his ...

The empire was central to several key trading routes ... Mansa Musa had visited and wrote down what he had heard about the ruler. Between 1324 – 1325, Mansa Musa embarked on his pilgrimage to Mecca.

During his reign, he embarked on a fabled gold-laden pilgrimage to Mecca ... to produce early maps of the world. Famously, the Catalan Atlas, produced in 1375, depicts Mansa Musa sitting on ...