CHAPTER XIX RISE OF THE SONGHAY EMPIRE When, on his return from his great pilgrimage in 1326, Mansa Musa stopped at Gago and ordered the construction of a cathedral mosque, he took away with him, according to the custom of the kings of Melle in deaHng with the children of vassal potentates, the two young sons of Za Yasiboi, the conquered sovereign, to finish their education at his court. These boys, of whom the elder was called AH Kolon, were the sons of two sisters, wives of Za Yasiboi, and were both, as it happened, born in the same hour on the same night. But being both of them in the darkness laid side by side, and not washed until the morning, it was never certain which of the two came actually first into the world. AH Kolon was, however, the first washed, and therefore it was determined that he should have the honours of the firstborn. By all he was accepted as the elder, and by none with more faithful devotion than by his younger brother Selman, or Suleiman.

These brothers, inspired, perhaps, by the legend of the two other brothers to whom their dynasty owed its foundation, resolved in their state of honourable captivity at Melle that they would some day return and free Songhay from the yoke of the conqueror. AH Kolon as he grew up showed himself to be a man of sense and intelligence, and was trusted by Mansa Musa and his successor with the conduct of occasional raids, presumably against the cannibals of the pagan belt, which gave him cause for traversing the empire in various directions. He profited by the opportunity to make himself acquainted with all 163