Great Mosque of Djenné

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North wall of the mosque with the main entrance

The Great Mosque of Djenné is the largest sacred clay building and is considered a highlight of the Sudanese - Sahelian architecture in Mali . The mosque is the center of the city of Djenné , in the inland delta of the Niger . The mosque is one of the most famous buildings in Africa and was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988, together with the old town of Djenné and some of the surrounding archaeological sites .

history

Ruins of the Djenné mosque, photo from the early 20th century

The construction of the first mosque in Djenné can be narrowed down to the period between 1180 and 1330. The Imam of the Es-Sa'di mosque wrote in 1620 that in 1180 the Sultan Koi Kunboro publicly converted to Islam before 4200 ulama . He then made his palace available to the faithful and had it converted into the first Great Mosque of Djenné. His two successors are said to have added the towers and the wall, so that today the founding date is 1240.

Amadu Hammadi Bubu (also: Sékou Amadou or Seku Amadu), the founder of the Massina Empire , had the building destroyed in 1834 and then fell into disrepair. The decay was accelerated by the clay building method, which requires constant inspection and maintenance. The conqueror considered the mosque, since it was built from a palace, to be too lush and luxurious. The only part that remains of the original building is the enclosure containing the graves of local guides. The second mosque was rebuilt based on the old plans by 1896, but was more modestly built. However, it was torn down again for today's mosque, which is based on the first in size and appearance. At the time, Djenné was part of French West Africa and the French initiated the construction of the mosque and the nearby madrasa , as well as providing political and financial support. Construction of the current Great Mosque began in 1906 and was likely completed in 1907 or 1909. Ismaila Traoré, the chairman of the masons' guild , directed and supervised the construction. To what extent French engineers influenced the appearance of the mosque is debatable.

Many mosques in Mali have now been fitted with electrical wiring and sanitary facilities. In some cases, the surfaces of the mosques were tiled for this purpose. The historical appearance and structural integrity of the buildings were destroyed. The "Great Mosque of Djenné" was equipped with a loudspeaker system, but the citizens of Djenné successfully opposed the external modernization of the building. Since 1996 fashion photos were taken on the roof and in the prayer room for the French edition of the American magazine Vogue , non-Muslims are no longer allowed to enter the mosque.

In early November 2009, the southern tower of the east facade collapsed after it had rained 75 mm within 24 hours. The tower is being rebuilt as part of restoration work since January 2009, funded by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture .

building

Palm trunks stabilize the walls of the mosque and serve as scaffolding for repairs

The walls of the Great Mosque are made of sun-dried mud bricks , called ferey , of a mud-based mortar and mud plaster , to which the building owes its regular surface. Depending on the height of the wall, the walls are between 41 and 61 cm thick. Palmyra palm trunks (see illustration) inserted into the walls should help to avoid cracks in the wall due to the frequent, very large fluctuations in humidity and temperature . The palm trunks protrude from the wall and serve as a framework for repairs.

The mud walls insulate the building from the heat of the day, but heat up during the day in such a way that they keep it warm during the night. Ceramic pipes protruding over the walls ensure that rainwater does not run down the walls, which would be fatal for an earthen building. The prayer wall ( qibla ) of the Great Mosque faces east towards Mecca . In front of her lies the town's market square. The qibla is surmounted by three large minarets and eighteen small domes. In each minaret, a spiral staircase leads to the roof, on which sits a conical top that ends with an ostrich egg .

On the roof of the great mosque of Djenné

A roof covers the actual mosque building, the other half of the complex serves as an open prayer hall. Ninety wooden pillars in the inner prayer hall support the roof of the mosque. When the heat builds up in the prayer hall, the vents (more than 100) in the roof, covered with ceramic tiles, are opened. The second, open prayer hall is in the courtyard behind the covered part of the mosque. It is surrounded by walls in the north, south and west, the eastern part is closed off by the roofed part of the mosque. Arcades are embedded in the walls that surround the inner courtyard. It has space for more than 2000 people.

Water damage, especially flooding, was the main concern of the builder Traoré when he was building the mosque. The annual flood of the Bani River turns Djenné into an island, and parts of the city are also flooded. Traoré therefore had the mosque built on an elevation of 5,625 square meters. So far, the mosque has been spared from severe flooding.

The entire facility covers an area of ​​3200 square meters. The prayer room building takes up almost exactly half of the area. The Friday mosque of Djenné is a courtyard mosque with a gallery in the style of early Islam . The courtyard measures 864 square meters, including its gallery, 1144 square meters. The mihrāb tower rises over 18.5 meters. The staircase and side tower are lower with a height of 13 and 17.5 meters respectively. To compensate for the unevenness of the ground, the mosque stands on a podium with a height of 1.5 to 2 meters.

Cultural meaning

Djenné mosque

In an annual festival, the "crepissage" , which usually takes place in April , the residents of Djenné work together to repair the damage that the rainy season has caused the mosque. With music and good food, they mend the cracks in the wall parts that have arisen due to fluctuations in humidity and temperature. In the days before the festival, the clay plaster required for the repair is prepared in pits. It has to be stirred several times over several days. This task usually falls to the boys, who play in the prepared clay plaster and stir it. The women and girls carry the water to the pits and supply it to the men who work on the scaffolding.

The festival begins with a race among the men who bring the clay plaster from the pits to the mosque. There they climb onto the scaffolding made from the palm trunks that is embedded in the walls and smear the plaster onto the surface of the mosque. Members of the masons' guild lead the work.

Missiri mosque in Frejus , France, 1930

The Great Mosque of Djenné was one of the most important Islamic centers in the Middle Ages. Thousands of students came here to study the Koran. Even if there are numerous mosques that are older than the current Djenné mosque, this mosque is one of the most important symbols of both the city of Djenné and the state of Mali . Its status as a landmark is also reflected in the stylistic influence on the mosque of Mopti (1933), a scaled-down imitation in France (1930), or the Museum of African Art (2005) in South Korea .

See also

literature

  • Raoul Snelder: The Great Mosque at Djenne ; in: MIMAR. Architecture in Development 12 (1984), pp. 66-74. (PDF, 22.3 MB)
  • Dorothee Gruner, The Lehmmoschee am Niger, documentation of a traditional building type, Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1990, ISBN 3-515-05357-3

Web links

Commons : Great Mosque of Djenné  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry on the website of the UNESCO World Heritage Center ( English and French ).
  2. ↑ The French writer Michel Leiris, who visited Djenne on an ethnological expedition in 1931, reports: The inside of the building is contaminated by bats ... Towards evening we hear from a French elementary school teacher that the mosque is the work of a European, the former head of administration . In order to carry out his plans, he had the old mosque demolished. The natives hate the new building so much that they have to impose prison sentences before they can comfortably sweep it up. At certain festivals, prayers are said on the spot where the old building stood. The school, the old home of the administrator and some other buildings were built in an analogous way in the Sudanese style. What a sense of art! (Michel Leiris: Phantom Africa. Diary of an expedition from Dakar to Djibouti 1931-1933 (German by R. Wintermeyer). Frankfurt 1980. Vol. I., pp. 123-124, September 21, 1931).
  3. ↑ Mali: The Bradt Travel Guide By Ross Velton, Bradt 2000, ISBN 1-898323-93-3 , page 122
  4. ↑ Heimfried Mittendorfer: Mask dance in the land of the Dogon, in: Extra (weekend supplement to the Wiener Zeitung), 25./26. October 2002, page 6
  5. ↑ 25 Simply Amazing Mosques on International Listings (English)
  6. ↑ "Djenné: Une tour de la Mosquée s'effondre" 10/11/2009, Restoration works continue despite violent storms at the Great Mosque of Djenné , Maliweb ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was used automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.maliweb.net
  7. ↑ Photo of the Great Mosque with a tower collapsed by Takeo Kamiya
  8. ↑ Restoration works continue despite violent storms at the Great Mosque of Djenné UNESCO News, December 15, 2009
  9. ↑ Dorothee Gruner, Die Lehmmoschee am Niger , p. 152 (see lit.)
  10. ↑ From franz. "crépi" = wall plastering. Mali: The Bradt Travel Guide By Ross Velton 2004, ISBN 1-84162-077-7 , page 89
  11. ^ Building of the African Art Museum , Jeju-do , South Korea

Coordinates: 13 ° 54'18.7 "  N , 4 ° 33'19.1"  W.