Sassouma is thrilled about the boy’s incapacity. She gives birth to a boy, whom the king names Mari Djata.īy the age of three, Mari Djata still doesn't walk, but he habitually hits his playmates with his strong arms. Sorcerers refuse to kill Sogolon, and Sogolon goes into labor. Sogolon, now pregnant, moves freely through the king's enclosure, but Maghan's first wife, Sassouma, is jealous and tries to kill Sogolon. A week later, Maghan tricks Sogolon and impregnates her while she has fainted.

On their wedding night, Sogolon refuses her husband's sexual advances. Maghan agrees to marry the woman, Sogolon. They offer her to Maghan as a gift, and tell the tale of how they won her hand by killing the Buffalo of Do. The brothers Oulamba and Oulani arrive at Niani with a woman between them.

He says that if Maghan marries the ugly woman currently heading for Niani, she will bear his successor and this successor will be greater than Alexander the Great. The hunter is a soothsayer, and as he jumbles his cowrie shells, he tells Maghan that the silk-cotton tree grows from a tiny seed. Maghan's griot, Gnankouman Doua, invites the hunter to sit with them. One day, a hunter approaches Niani with an offering for the king. Maghan Kon Fatta spends his time sitting under the great silk-cotton tree in Niani, and his first son, Dankaran Touman, sits with him. At first, Mali was ruled by Bambara kings, and Mamoudou Kouyaté lists the lineage of these kings down to Sundiata's father, Maghan Kon Fatta. Mamoudou Kouyaté asks the reader to listen to the history of Mali and of Sundiata. Mamoudou Kouyaté, a griot and the narrator, says that griots are the vessels of speech and the keepers of history who teach kings their history so they can predict the future.

Sundiata by Djibril Tamsir Niane