Just wanted to share a sincere "Thank you" to the whole production team! I'm training to become a middle grades social studies teacher, and it's clear that the way I was taught history could have done a better job grappling with the humanity of many different people. This series is especially helpful as I consider how I might restructure a US history class in a way that works against telling a singular story about our past.
It's interesting that they start this video with the Mansa Musa myth about his wealth. Obviously calculating historical wealth is difficult but even then the statements in this video about crashing the Egyptian gold market are false. See page 437 of History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East. Of course, we have no evidence that any claims about man's wealth are true. Our earliest written source describing the hajj of Kankan Musa is by Shihab al-Umari who is relying on interviews from multiple sources to describe events he was not present for. The other source commonly cited Ibn Battuta who heard an at best second-hand account about it 30 years after the fact. This video has all the fact checking of your average Saturday morning cartoon without any of the fun narrative.
White supremacy. Mansa Musa existed and had wealth in solid gold, and that journey happened. In fact written coz we know you disrespect oral history. Hater.
