The Lion of Mali at KirinaKirina, on the Mandé plains · c. 1235“Listen! Before the gold of Mansa Musa, there was a boy who could not walk.”They say Sundiata Keita crawled where other children ran, and the court of the Sosso laughed. But the iron rod he pulled himself up on bent like a bow — and the laughing stopped.The lesson the elders kept: An empire can be founded by the one everybody underestimated — and a constitution does not need paper to outlive empires.