Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire, undertook a famous pilgrimage to Mecca displaying enormous wealth from gold and salt trade, while his administration maintained sophisticated systems of local governance and taxation across West Africa. The empire's prosperity depended on controlling trans-Saharan trade routes and extracting tribute from subordinate regions, funding monumental architecture and Islamic scholarship.

Mansa Musa's patronage supported Islamic learning centers like Timbuktu, where Arabic poetry and scholarship flourished alongside indigenous oral traditions. West African griot traditions preserved historical narratives in poetic form, creating rich literary cultures that documented empire-building, taxation disputes, and local governance challenges, though much remains understudied in Western literary canons.