
Deep within the protective canopy of the West African rainforest, a society took root by exploiting a dense landscape that was as much a natural fortress as it was a treasury of resources.
A child crippled from birth, mocked alongside his hunchbacked mother in the royal court, seemed an unlikely candidate to forge one of history’s greatest empires.

Before it was an empire, Mali was a modest Mandinka kingdom huddled along the upper reaches of the Niger River, waiting for history to shift.

To understand the Asante Empire, one must understand that its very name, derived from the Twi words for war and because of, translates to because of war.

To strip a child of his name is to attempt to erase his past, and by the time he was purchased by a Royal Navy lieutenant, the boy from West Africa had already been called Michael and Jacob.

When the ninth ruler of the Mali Empire embarked on his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 CE, he carried with him a fortune so vast that it permanently altered the economies of the lands he crossed.