Djenné and its great mud mosque 🇲🇱 Mali

Mali is a storied land of rivers and deserts, sitting astride one of the world's most historic trading routes. This is a place of unique material and cultural riches, watered by one of the world's truly great rivers, the Niger. From the great mud mosque at Jen, to the teeming port town of Mopti, to the legendary vastness of Timbuktu, Mali is a place whose history defies the imagination. The county of Jen covers 4,500 square kilometers in the heart of the central delta and at the confluence of the Barney and Niger rivers. Its population is around 145,000, organized in 187 villages. Ever since remotest times, about 80% of this country has been inundated from July to March, thanks to the annual flood crests of the Barney and Niger rivers. The Barney river is navigable during the whole year, and during several months the town of Jen becomes an island surrounded by water. Jen is away from the main river routes, but when the Barney river is high enough, it's possible to arrive by public pinas, motorized canoe, from Mopti. Although Mali is now one of the poorest countries in the world, one can still see why the first European explorers were so impressed by the richness and diversity of these cities. Up to today, a mixture of populations from all over the region inhabit these towns and they practice traditional works. It seems that about 3,000 years ago, the part of the middle Niger in which Jenjeno is situated was so often covered by river flood water that it was not regularly occupied. In recent years, periodic droughts have caused the emigration of significant numbers of farmers and fishermen. The city of Jen is located at the hinge between the nomad world and the sedentary world. Constructed on a small defensive island in the Niger basin, it's 500 kilometers by river from the caravan city of Timbuktu, with which it was linked for trade. The streets of sand, narrow or wide, wind their way towards the two major squares. Eleven neighborhoods make up the spontaneous plan, which covers 20 hectares and is enclosed by fortification walls. Jen prides itself on its fine past. The original emplacement of Jen was founded on the site of Zoboro. Its removal to the present site was accompanied by the sacrifice of atonement of a young girl, Tempana Jenepo, whose tomb is today among the oldest monuments of the city. Jen fell under the influence of Islam toward the end of the 13th century. The Sultan Kumboro was converted in 1300 and transformed his palace, which is the site of the present mosque, into a place of worship. Rural buildings in the city are usually one-story structures with flat roofs. However, two-story houses are the most common. Roof terraces are actively used and may occasionally have a thatch-covered area to provide shade. Ancillary buildings may be covered with thatch. Dwellings made entirely of thatch appear mostly by the riverbanks, as temporary shelter for communities of fishermen during the fishing season. Wood is necessary for the structure of floors and roofs, doors and windows, and toron. The bundles of palm tree trunks serve simultaneously as decoration and scaffolding for the required periodical rendering of the walls. Otherwise, the unique quality of the city and of its buildings results from the plaster quality of mud, allying structural components such as pillars and pilasters with the decorative opportunities they offer, so that pinnacles, parapets and toron appear as natural detail consequences. In the middle of a plain without a village, the hillock on which Djenn is situated was at the limit of the inundation zone during the Niger River's flooding season. Thermally ideal mud bricks, mortar and plaster are made from local deposits of mineral-rich silts after annual flooding. Mud, either as brick or as pies, is associated with the greatest examples of West Africa's monumental architecture, such as the Mosque of Djenn or the Minaret of Agadez. The area most suited to mud brick architecture is the savannah region, where there's enough water to make bricks, plaster and pies, yet not too much rain to dissolve the dried mud walls. In the architecture of Djenn today, old styles coexist with new ones. The organisation, materials and techniques of new buildings are all based on western examples, but the various traditional styles are still clearly visible. Centuries ago, traditional African architecture met at Djenn with Muslim architecture from the north and their synthesis shaped the city as it was before colonial times. In the change and development of the city of Djenn, the mason or holds a central position. He's both a designer and a builder. By long tradition, still in force today, there's a mutual bond between a mason's family and other families in the town for whom he works. Most of the masons in Djenn are members of the Bareton or Mason's Guild, which maintains professional standards and regulations, fixes building prices and wages, and organises the annual maintenance of the mosque. The training of a mason in the specific Djennan Masonic skills takes place through a master-apprentice system, but that too has changed over the years. Under the old system, a boy called Mael Benia, literally the slave of the master, was apprenticed at a very young age, and the master mason had full paternal authority over him. Djenn represents exceptional testimonies to the pre-Islamic civilisations of the interior delta of the Niger. Of all Djenn's buildings, the Great Mosque is the most important and dominates the landscape. Since it's built of mud, good maintenance is essential, and the whole town comes together every year to re-plaster the rain-eroded, sun-cracked walls, the occasion for a true festival, called the Krepisage, for the community. The repair of the Great Mosque is supervised by a guild of 80 senior masons, who also coordinate the annual spring re-plastering. The main entrances of the mosque are on its south and north sides. Mud, either as brick or as pice, is associated with the greatest examples of West Africa's monumental architecture, such as the Mosque of Djenn. Mud architecture lends itself to the creation of plaster-sculptural forms on fairly simple structures. Thus, a simple rectangular façade can seem livened by the addition of crenellations, engaged pillars, and decorative panels. The mosque expresses the crystallisation in three dimensions of the unique synthesis between Islamic cultural features and cultures of indigenous West African societies. The importance is both as an art form, and as evidence of the synthesis which results when man seeks to achieve monumentality as a testimony of his faith. The symmetry of its façade, composed of three major minarets, rhythmically interspersed with absolutely vertical buttresses, competes with the best traditions of the Beaux-Arts. Above all, it achieves a sense of verticality, one of those canons of architecture unrivalled in this part of the world. The minarets aren't built up of a mass of solid material, but rather enclose an ample set of spiral mud stairs which lead upwards to the roof, from where the Mwetsin calls the faithful to prayer. The minarets are thus an expression of their true function. The incorporation of the minaret as an integral element of the façade itself marks an innovation in mosque design. Towers are often topped with a spire capped by an ostrich egg, symbolising fertility and purity. The traditional methods of mud architecture vary from one town to another. The Western style, often referred to as the Sudan style, can trace its origins to the city of Djen. Mosques are distinguished by large minaret-like towers above the mihrab and tapering buttresses terminating in cone-shaped pinnacles. The mihrab towers are usually covered with projecting wooden stakes known as tauron. These stakes were often found all around the walls of a mosque and functioned as scaffolding, although they may also have some ritual significance. The Great Mosque was built in 1909 on the ruins of the previous mosque. It was meant to be a replica but differed considerably from the ruined original which had been recorded before its destruction. The mosque interior, with its rhythmic definition of space, might with a bit of imagination easily satisfy the criterion of loftiness with which Gothic architecture endows the cathedral. Its setting, conforming to the classic tenets of urban design, provides a formal approach which permits the viewer to marvel at the magnitude of its scale and structure. Inside, a forest of 90 massive columns forms an arcade-like structure which carries the mud-covered wooden roof. From the inside, the hall's true dimensions are hard to judge. On the north and sides, dim light enters through high, narrow windows. The Great Mosque also has roof vents with ceramic caps. This helps the interior of the mosque stay cool all day long. These caps, made by the town's women, can be removed at night to ventilate the interior spaces. The mosque's prayer hall, with 90 wooden pillars supporting its ceiling, can contain as many as 3,000 people. This interior massiveness contrasts with the impression of elegance created by the exterior facades and their vertical elements. As a city-state, Djen was supported in its hinterland by a strong agricultural foundation, and its position on the Barney River protected it with an admirable network of waterways. As a consequence, it wasn't subject to the same ravages which beleaguered Timbuktu. Djen marks a second phase in Islamic history, a phase in which Negro-Islamic culture flourished over a number of centuries. With the growth of a stable urban milieu, there developed the skilled craftsmanship so essential for the growth of an articulate architecture. Djen is an outstanding example of an architectural group of buildings, illustrating a significant historic period, and bears exceptional witness to the pre-Islamic civilizations on the inland of the Niger.