The Atlantic voyage of Mansa Abu Bakr II or Mansa Abubakari II
Abu Bakr II or Abubakari II was the eighth mansa (king or sultan) of the Mali Empire, the largest and most powerful empire in West Africa. However, according to Ibn Khaldun (Arab historian), who was quoted several decades later, Musa's predecessor as Mansa was Muhammad Ibn Qu, who died around 1312. Muhammad's reign would have been between 1305, when he succeeded his father, Mansa Qu, and his death.
The story of Abubakari II was told by Mansa Musa (King Musa and the most famous ruler of Mali, ca. 1312-1337) in 1324, when he was in Cairo and was asked by the Emir Abu al-Hasan Ibn Amir Hajib and governor of the district of Cairo how he had become king. Musa replied:
*
"We belong to a house which hands on the kingship by inheritance. The king who was my predecessor did not believe that it was impossible to discover the furthest limit of the Atlantic Ocean and wished vehemently to do so. So he equipped 200 ships filled with men and the same number equipped with gold, water, and provisions enough to last them for years, and said to the man deputed to lead them: "Do not return until you reach the end of it or your provisions and water give out."
They departed and a long time passed before anyone came back. Then one ship returned and we asked the captain what news they brought. He said: "Yes, O Sultan, we traveled for a long time until there appeared in the open sea [as it were] a river with a powerful current. Mine was the last of those ships. The [other] ships went on ahead but when they reached that place they did not return and no more was seen of them and we do not know what became of them. As for me, I went about at once and did not enter that river."
But the sultan disbelieved him. Then that sultan got ready 2,000 ships, 1,000 for himself and the men whom he took with him and 1,000 for water and provisions. He left me to deputize for him and embarked on the Atlantic Ocean with his men. That was the last we saw of him and all those who were with him, and so I became king in my own right."
*
Musa told al-Umary about his conversations with Musa. Shihab al-Din Abu al-Abbas Ahmad Ibn Fadlallah al-Umari (1301-1349), known as Inb Fadlallah al-Umari or Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-'Umārī, Arab historian, born in Damascus.
*
Apart from al-Umari's account, there are no other records of this journey by other Arab historians or West African oral traditions. Nevertheless, in the late 20th century, historians such as J. Labib Devisse (Africa in inter-continental relations), John K. Thornton (A cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820) and Nehemia Levtzion (The western Mahrib and Sudan) who considered this possible voyage to be probable.
Regardless of whether any Malian ships ever reached the Americas, they never returned to Africa. The river on the sea described by the survivor of the first expedition is presumably the Canary Current. This fact in Musa's account indicates that Musa was aware of the oceanographic conditions of the open Atlantic. The Canary Current flows from West Africa to the Americas, which would have facilitated travel from Africa to the Americas but prevented it in the opposite direction.
Most archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians, linguists, and other modern pre-Columbian scholars say that there is no evidence of any such voyage reaching the Americas. No genuine African artifact has ever been found in a controlled archaeological excavation and ther is no material evidence of any pre-Hispanic contact between the Old World and Mesoamerica before the arrival of the Spanish in the New World.
