Great Mosque of Agadez

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Minaret and enclosure wall of the Great Mosque of Agadez (1997)

The Great Mosque of Agadez is a Friday mosque in the city of Agadez , Niger . The mosque, which was largely built in the 16th century, is an adobe building and is best known for its unusual 27-meter-high minaret . It is considered a symbol of Niger.

history

The history of the Great Mosque is closely linked to that of the city of Agadez, which became the capital of the Sultanate of Aïr under the rule of Sultan Ilisawan from 1430 to 1449 . The Sultan's Palace of Agadez , which was built under Sultan Ilisawan, is probably slightly older than the sacred building. A previous mosque may have been built around 1450. The traveler Leo Africanus , who visited the city at the end of the 15th century, did not mention it in his travel reports.

Most traditions attribute the construction of today's sacred building to a holy man named Zakariyā ', who settled in Agadez in the first half of the 16th century. Depending on the tradition, Zakariyā 'came from Baghdad , from Ghadames or was a companion of the ruler Askia Mohammad from the Songhaire empire . The mosque is said to have already received its minaret through Zakariyā ' .

In 1740, the Tuareg group Kel Away besieged the mosque and the sultan's palace. The German explorer Heinrich Barth reached Agadez in the middle of the 19th century and wrote a description of the building. The current minaret was either reconstructed or rebuilt in 1844 or 1847. Extensions to the mosque prior to this time cannot be precisely dated. The south hall and the west hall were built from 1977 to 1978. The most recent structural expansion took place in 1999 with a new women's hall in the south. For Niger, which has been independent since 1960, the Great Mosque of Agadez became a landmark with great symbolic significance.

Location and architecture

Overall system

On the flat roof of the Great Mosque of Agadez (2018)

The Great Mosque of Agadez is located in the district of Katanga in the west of the UNESCO World Heritage counting historic center of Agadez . To the north of the mosque, separated by a narrow alley, is the Sultan's Palace. There is a greater distance to the buildings in the east, south and west. These include the Hôtel de l'Aïr in the south-east, built in 1917, whose hotel terrace faces the sacred building. With its minaret that can be seen from afar, the Great Mosque is a defining feature of the cityscape. Modern buildings such as a cell phone tower in the old town and a water tower on the outskirts have recently restricted their original urban dominance.

The area surrounding the mosque, which is surrounded by a wall, extends over an area approximately 80 meters long by 70 meters wide. The entire system without open areas is around 1500 square meters, around 58 meters long in north-south direction and 35 meters wide in east-west direction. The area consists of the prayer room building with several halls, the central minaret and an adjoining inner courtyard as well as surrounding open courtyards with walled enclosures. The main entrances are on the southwest corner of the facility. The sultan has his own entrance gate in the north, which is flanked by pillars. In the western courtyard are the ruins of a tower and a cemetery for relatives of the sultans, in the eastern courtyard there is a children's cemetery and the tombs of the sultan's twins from the 16th century.

The predominant building material of the Great Mosque are rounded mud bricks, which were made using animal dung, grass and straw. They are connected to each other by clay mortar. The thickness of the walls varies between three and five mud bricks. Wood was used for window and door lintels , support beams and rafters and as protruding bars on the minaret. The foundations of the mosque are usually made of stone, as is the core of the minaret. The plaster consists of a mixture of clay, straw and various types of waste, mainly ceramic chips. Since it is a sacred building, animal dung was not used at least on the facades. The flat roofs are plastered with a layer of clay about ten centimeters thick. There are cement frames at the entrances to the mosque area.

Prayer room building

The prayer room building consists of the main room with an adjoining hall as well as the younger extensions to the west hall, the south hall and the small women's hall adjoining it to the south. Flat roofs without parapets are located above the system.

The main room is 425 m². The room height is a maximum of two and a half meters. A mihrāb indicating the direction of prayer with a height of one meter has a semicircular base and is closed to the outside by a low, conical tower. In the northwest there is a maqsūra , a separate area for the sultan. There is a second, smaller mihrāb there . In the main room there is also a wooden minbar base. The retaining walls have low passages. The beams on the ceiling are made of doum palm wood . The rafters were made of both doum palm and oscher wood.

The adjoining secondary hall is structured similar to the main room with supporting walls. Here is the entrance to the minaret. In the west and south halls, several T-shaped entrances ensure good illumination with daylight. There are additional external doors for all components. The interiors of the prayer room building are painted white with a yellow base strip. They are furnished with carpets and wicker mats as well as electric lighting, fans and a sound system.

minaret

View from the minaret of the Great Mosque of Agadez to the old town (1997)

The 27 meter high single minaret is the highest mud tower south of the Sahara . It stands in the middle of the complex and connects to the prayer room building and the central courtyard. With a rectangular floor plan, it has the shape of an unequal-sided truncated pyramid. On all sides of the tower, wooden sticks protrude from the facade. There are seven small windows on each side.

The spiral staircase inside the minaret consists of 99 steps. It is supported by smaller, inwardly protruding wooden sticks. Via it you can reach the tower terrace, which offers a panoramic view of the city. The terrace has a high parapet with one meter high corner battlements. There are square wall openings on the parapets in the south and west.

The shape of the tower is based on Arabic - Berber models in the M'zab valley in central Algeria . There are comparable minarets in the cities of Beni Isguen and Ghardaia . The wooden rods protruding from the facade, on the other hand, come from the Sudanese architectural style, where they are used to statically secure buildings. As in the case of the unique clay mosques of Timbuktu , the Great Mosque of Agadez found no imitators leading to its own style. The design of the minaret was not cited in other mosques in Niger until the 1960s. These include the small Hassina mosque in Agadez, the tower of which was built in 1960, and the Ousman-dan-Fodio mosque, built in 1964. In southwest Niger, the Dosso Great Mosque from 1979 has a similar single minaret.

Use and maintenance

The old sacred building is still the main mosque of the city, which is predominantly inhabited by Muslims. Prayers take place here every day, with the number of visitors especially high during Friday prayers . After Friday prayers, the sultan, the imam , the marabouts and other members of the court gather in the west courtyard to pray for peace and well-being in the city. During the great Islamic festivals Eid al-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha , however, the public celebrations are shifted to other locations in the old town according to a fixed schedule.

The Agadez Great Mosque is owned by the Sultanate. The imam in charge of the prayers is responsible for the administration of the mosque. The muezzin arranges for the mosque to be cleaned regularly and prevents children and animals from entering. Like other mosques in Agadez, the Great Mosque is also a place of education where the imam offers the believers various training courses, including in Islamic law , norms and exegesis of the Koran .

The sultan is responsible for the structural maintenance of the mosque. The corresponding work takes place every five to eight years and each takes about a month. They are relatively easy to do on the prayer room building and the surrounding walls, while more complex technology and organization are used to maintain the minaret. The wooden rods protruding from the minaret are used to assemble horizontal planks from which the scaffolding is made. Depending on the weather conditions, several layers of mortar are applied. Subordinate to the Sultan is the Serki Guina , the leader of the builders who lead the work, which is supported by volunteers and students from the city's Koran schools. Since the sultan's resources were restricted in the colonial era of the 20th century, the municipality of Agadez has financially supported the transport of the building materials.

literature

  • Patrice Cressier, Suzanne Bernus: La grande mosquée d'Agadez. Architecture et histoire . In: Journal des Africanistes . t. 54-1, 1984, pp. 5-40 ( persee.fr ).
  • Dorothee Gruner: The clay mosque on the Niger. Documentation of a traditional building type . Steiner, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-515-05357-3 , pp. 365-367 .

Web links

Commons : Great Mosque of Agadez  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Patrice Cressier, Suzanne Bernus: La grande mosquée d'Agadez. Architecture et histoire . In: Journal des Africanistes . t. 54-1, 1984, pp. 6–8 ( persee.fr [accessed August 31, 2018]).
  2. Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, p. 47 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).
  3. Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, p. 31 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).
  4. a b c d e Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, p. 28 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).
  5. Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, pp. 17–18 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).
  6. a b c d e f Dorothee Gruner: The clay mosque on the Niger. Documentation of a traditional building type . Steiner, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-515-05357-3 , pp. 365 .
  7. Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, p. 36 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).
  8. a b Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, pp. 68 and 75 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).
  9. Jolijn Geels: Niger . Bradt, Chalfont St Peter 2006, ISBN 1-84162-152-8 , p. 159 .
  10. Patrice Cressier, Suzanne Bernus: La grande mosquée d'Agadez. Architecture et histoire . In: Journal des Africanistes . t. 54-1, 1984, pp. 14 and 17 ( persee.fr [accessed August 31, 2018]).
  11. a b c d e Dorothee Gruner: The clay mosque on the Niger. Documentation of a traditional building type . Steiner, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-515-05357-3 , pp. 366 .
  12. a b Patrice Cressier, Suzanne Bernus: La grande mosquée d'Agadez. Architecture et histoire . In: Journal des Africanistes . t. 54-1, 1984, pp. 9-10 ( persee.fr [accessed 31 August 2018]).
  13. a b Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, pp. 80–81 , accessed on January 30, 2018 (French).
  14. ^ Alison Behnke: Niger in Pictures . Twenty-First Century Books, Minneapolis 2008, ISBN 0-8225-7147-1 , pp. 54 .
  15. ^ Dorothee Gruner: The clay mosque on the Niger. Documentation of a traditional building type . Steiner, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-515-05357-3 , pp. 367 .
  16. a b Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, pp. 61 and 64 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).
  17. Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, p. 26 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).
  18. Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, pp. 40–41 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).
  19. Aboubacar Adamou: Agadez et sa Région. Contribution à l'étude du Sahel et du Sahara nigériens (=  Études Nigériennes . No. 44 ). Pr. De Copédith, Paris 1979, p. 135-136 .
  20. Agadez. Plan de Gestion du center historique, 2012–2018. (PDF) Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Sports et de la Culture, January 2012, p. 44 , accessed on August 31, 2018 (French).

Coordinates: 16 ° 58 ′ 27 ″  N , 7 ° 59 ′ 18.4 ″  E