Soumaoro Kanté, also called Sumanguru, is the sorcerer-king of Sosso and the great antagonist of the Sunjata epic. A blacksmith by caste and a master of dalilu, the accumulated occult power of the Mande world, he is styled the untouchable king, invulnerable to common weapons and dwelling amid a chamber of human-skin hangings, severed heads, and sacred owls that embody his strength. His most celebrated possession is the Sosso-bala, a sacred balafon later taken to be the origin of the Manding xylophone tradition. Soumaoro's overreach, above all the seizure of the wife of his nephew and chief general Fakoli, turns his own kin against him, and Balla Fasséké, held captive at his court, learns the songs that will one day praise his conqueror. At the battle of Kirina Sunjata strikes him with an arrow armed against his magic, breaking his power; in the epic he vanishes into a mountain cave. A historical ruler of the early thirteenth century underlies the figure, but tradition remembers him above all as the archetype of the malevolent sorcerer overthrown.