So there was this king, Mansa Musa, who ruled the West African empire of Mali, and in 1324-ish, he left his home and made the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. He brought with him an entourage of over a thousand people, some sources say 60,000, and most importantly, 100 camel loads of gold. I wish it had been donkeys so I could say he had 100 assloads of gold, but no, camels. Right. So along the way, Mansa Musa spent freely and gave away lots of his riches. Most famously, when he reached Alexandria, at the time one of the most cultured cities in the world, he spent so much gold that he caused runaway inflation throughout the city that took years to recover from. He built houses in Cairo and in Mecca to house his attendants, and as he traveled through the world, a lot of people, notably the merchants of Venice, no Thought Bubble, like actual merchants of Venice, right.