One Man’s Gifts & Spending Wrecked an Entire Country’s Economy for 10 years

TLDR

Mansa Musa's 14th-century pilgrimage caused inflation by distributing gold, illustrating monetary theories like the Quantity Theory of Money and Monetarist Theory of Inflation.

Along the journey, Mansa Musa gave 20,000 ounce gold for free– as if it’s a small fraction of his wealth– to the people in Mecca, Cairo, and Medina. The overly generous gifts and trading caused inflation. Goodwin (1957) said, “..price rocketed as everyone tried to pay in depreciated gold.” Gonnay (2019) also said there was so much gold, it devalued the price of gold for over a decade.