In 1324, Mansa Musa crossed the Sahara with a caravan so vast it disrupted Cairo's economy for years. At the same time, Ibn Battuta was documenting a world already linked by trade, law, and shared knowledge across three continents. Europe had not yet arrived.

Before Europe traces the centuries that came before - the trade networks, the scholars, the empires, and the innovations that connected the world long before European expansion began. From Baghdad to Timbuktu, from Calicut to Chang'an, it recovers a past that was never empty.

Only forgotten