And this tells us that Africa, or at least Western Africa, was much more connected to the parts of the world we've been talking about than we generally are led to believe. Mansa Musa knew all about the places he was going before he got there, and after his visits, the rest of the Mediterranean world was sure interested in finding out more about his homeland. Mansa Musa's pilgrimage also brings up a lot of questions about West Africa, namely, what did his kingdom look like and how did he come to convert to Islam? The first question's a little easier, so we'll start with that one. The Empire of Mali, which Mansa Musa ruled until the extremely elite year of 1337, was a large swath of West Africa running from the coast hundreds of miles into the interior, and including many significant cities, the largest and best known of which was Timbuktu. The story of the Islamization of the empire, however, is a bit more complicated. Okay, so pastoral North Africans called Berbers had long traded with West Africans, with the Berbers offering salt in exchange for West African gold.