Historical financial estimates and modern economic evaluations consistently place Mansa Musa—the 14th-century ruler of the Mali Empire—significantly ahead of Elon Musk in terms of wealth relative to contemporary global economic output. While Elon Musk's net worth regularly fluctuates around hundreds of billions of dollars in modern fiat currency, historians and economists often describe Mansa Musa's wealth as effectively "unquantifiable" because his empire produced nearly half of the world's supply of salt and gold during an era when gold served as the primary measure of global economic power.