>>17924572
>He built centers of learning
Ah yes, the famed "university of Timbuktu"
Nothing was invented or discovered there. This place consisted entirely in buying and stacking arab books and studying the quran.

>wasn’t seen as backwards by contemporaries
Wasn't seen at all.
Until the Mansa Musa's hajj, Mali was virtually unknown even in the arab world.
And after the hajj, it became some kind of myth. The knowledge about Mali in the medieval arab world consisted entirely in the oral testimonies of some Egyptians dudes who had talked with Musa's crew during the hajj, collected a decade later by Al-Umari.