Epic of Sundiata

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The "Sundiata Keita" or "Epic of Sundiata" (also referred to as the Sundiata Epic) is an epic poem of the Malinke people and tells the story of the hero Sundiata Keita (died 1255), the founder of the Mali Empire. The epic is an instance of oral history, going back to the 14th century and narrated by generations of griot poets or jeliw (djeli). There is no single or authoritative version. Material pertaining to the epic first began to be collected during the early 20th century in French Sudan, notably by the French elite school École William Ponty, resulting in the "modern" version of the tale as considered standard today, as published in "novelistic" form in French translation by Djibril Tamsir Niane in 1960 (English translation 1965).

Contents

Historical context and significance [edit]

The amount of historicity of the events portrayed in the epic is open to debate. There are some limited 14th-century Arabic historiographic sources available on the early history of the Mali Empire, notably the records of Ibn Khaldun. Therefore, the evidence of oral tradition may be critical in reconstructing the historical events of the period. Oral tradition necessarily undergoes significant changes over the course of several centuries, but scholars have nevertheless attempted to pinpoint elements in the epic that might reflect historical events.[1]

The epic "reflects the early stages in West African traditions when different cultural influences were still coming together"[clarification needed].[2]

Written summaries of the epic existed in Arabic before 1890. During the 1890s, versions of the epic were collected by French officials and published in French and German translation beginning in 1898. Western-educated West Africans began to produce literary versions of the tale beginning in the 1930s. This was notably the case at the French elite school École William Ponty. The school staged a drama based on the story in 1937. This period represents the first interaction of the oral tradition with literacy and modernity, and the transformations undergone by the narrative in the context of the 1937 presentation ... eventually resulted in the form of the epic which became most influential in the 1940s and 1950s, before the first "novelistic" treatment by Niane (1960). The first line-by-line transcription of the epic as told by a griot was made in 1967.[3]

The epic of Sundiata is still an integral part of Mande traditional culture and the story continues to be retold by griots and through masked ritual performances. Today the epic of Sundiata has also become part of the official national mythology of the republics of Mali, Gambia, Senegal and Guinea and are treated in history lessons in primary school curricula.[4]

Plot [edit]

In the "Epic of Sundiata" (also spelled Son-Jara or Sundjata) Naré Maghann Konaté (also called Maghan Kon Fatta or Maghan the Handsome) was a Mandinka king who one day received a divine hunter at his court. The hunter predicted that if Konaté married an ugly woman, she would give him a son who would one day be a mighty king. Naré Maghann Konaté was already married to Sassouma Bereté and had a son by her, Dankaran Toumani Keïta. However, when two Traoré hunters from the Do kingdom presented him an ugly, hunchbacked woman named Sogolon, he remembered the prophecy and married her. She soon gave birth to a son, Sundiata Keita, who was unable to walk throughout his childhood. Despite his physical weakness, the king still granted Sundiata his own griot at young age; this was in order to have them grow together and provide constant consultation as was custom.[5] With the death of Naré Maghann Konaté (c. 1224), his first son, Dankaran Tuman, assumed the throne despite Konaté's wishes that the prophecy be respected. Sundiata and his mother, who now had given birth to two daughters and adopted a second son from Konaté's third wife Namandjé, suffered the scorn of the new king and his mother. After an insult against Sogolon, Sundiata requested an iron rod from the blacksmith Nounfari, which broke when he tried to use it in order to pull himself upright and walk. Only when he used a branch of S'ra (African baobab or Adansonian tree) was he able to walk. Nonetheless, the hatred of Sassouma Bereté and Dankaran Toumani Keita soon drove Sundiata, his mother, and his two sisters into exile in the Mema kingdom.

Meanwhile, Soumaoro Kanté, cruel sorcerer king of Sosso, attacked the Mandinka kingdom, causing Dankaran Toumani Keita to take flight in fear. The oppressed Mandinka people then sent for the exiled Sundiata. Forging a coalition of neighboring small kingdoms, Sundiata waged a war against the Sosso, finally Sundiata was later crowned with the title "Mansa," or "king of kings", as the first ruler of the Mali Empire. He soon set about organizing the nucleus of the empire, presenting the Gbara of nobles and notables at his coronation with an oral constitution known as the Kouroukan Fouga. His model for government would guide the empire into greatness. His exploits have even been compared to those of Alexander the Great by some griots.[6]

References [edit]

  1. ^ Conrad, David C. (1992), "Searching for History in the Sunjata Epic: The Case of Fakoli", History in Africa 19: 147–200, JSTOR 3171998 
  2. ^ Gilbert, E.; Reynolds, J. T. (2004), Africa in World History: from prehistory to the present, Pearson Education, ISBN 0-13-092907-7 .
  3. ^ Bulman, Stephen (2004), "A school for epic? The école William Ponty and the evolution of the Sunjata epic, 1913-c. 1960", in Jansen, Jan; Mair, Henk M. J., Epic Adventures: Heroic Narrative in the Oral Performance Traditions of Four Continents, Münster: Lit Verlag, pp. 34–45, ISBN 3-8258-6758-7 .
  4. ^ Jansen, Jan (2001), "The Sunjata Epic: The Ultimate Version", Research in African Literatures 32 (1): 14–46, JSTOR 3820580 .
  5. ^ Niane 1965, p. 18.
  6. ^ Niane 1965, p. 1.
  • Djibril Tamsir Niane, Soundjata ou l'Epopée Mandingue, Paris 1960 (trans. Sundiata: an epic of old Mali, London: Longmans, 1965 ).
  • Fa-Digi Sisoko, Son-Jara : The Mande Epic (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2003)
  • Issiaka Diakite-Kaba's Soundjata, Le Leon/Sunjata, The Lion, Denver: Outskirts Press and Paris: Les Editions l'Harmattan, (2010 French-English diglot dramatized version)

Further reading [edit]

  • Biebuyck, Daniel P. (1976), "The African Heroic Epic", Journal of Folklore Institute 13 (1): 5–36, JSTOR 3813812 .
  • Conrad, David C. (1984), "Oral sources on links between great states: Sumanguru, Servile Lineage, the Jariso, and Kaniaga", History in Africa 11: 35–55, JSTOR 3171626 .
  • Davidson, Basil (1995), Africa in History: Themes and Outlines, New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-684-82667-4 .
  • Janson, Marloes (2004), "The narration of the Sunjata epic as gendered activity", in Jansen, Jan; Mair, Henk M. J., Epic Adventures: Heroic Narrative in the Oral Performance Traditions of Four Continents, Münster: Lit Verlag, pp. 81–88, ISBN 3-8258-6758-7 .
  • McKissack, Patricia; McKissack, Fredrick (1995), The Royal Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhay: Life in Medieval Africa, Sagebrush, ISBN 0-8050-4259-8 .
  • Quiquandon, F. (1892), "Histoire de la puissance mandinque d' après la légende et la tradition", Bulletin de la Société de géographie commerciale de Bordeaux (in French) 15: 305–318 . One of first publications presenting a version of the Sundiata Epic.
  • Tsaaior, James Tar (2010), "Webbed words: masked meanings: proverbiality and narrative/discursive startegies in D. T. Niane's Sundiata: An Epic of Mali", Proverbium 27: 339–362 .
  • Waliński, Grzegorz (1991), "The image of the ruler as presented in the tradition about Sunjata", in Piłaszewicz, S.; Rzewuski, E., Unwritten Testimonies of the African Past. Proceedings of the International Symposium held in Ojrzanów n. Warsaw on 07-08 November 1989, Orientalia Varsoviensia 2, Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego .

External links [edit]

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