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=Mali, Africa-Past and Present=

This is a close up view of a famous map drawn by Abraham Cresques in 1375 in Europe, which depicts [|Emperor Mansa Musa]
===in the lower right corner seated on his throne holding a large gold nugget and royal scepter, as a visiting merchant approaches on a camel. Before the reign of Mansa Musa (1312-1337), Europeans and the rest of the world did not even know that the Empire of Mali existed in West Africa; no explorers had sailed that far south along the African Atlantic Coast and nobody knew what was beyond the vast continental Sahara Desert... But after the Reign of Mansa Musa, European leaders sent explorers to visit this Empire of Gold...===