Great Mosque of Zinder

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Great Mosque of Zinder

The Great Mosque of Zinder is a Friday mosque in the city of Zinder , Niger .

Overall system

The Great Mosque of Zinder is located in the center of Birni , the historic city center of Zinder. Together with the neighboring Sultan's Palace in Zinder, it shapes the image of the district.

The building complex, surrounded by an outer wall about two meters high, consists of an old prayer room building with a minaret , the original Friday mosque, and a much larger prayer room building, which is more recent and has four minarets and several domes. Both differ slightly in their alignment.

Old prayer room building

There are different details about the construction time of the old Friday mosque, which is also known as the Sultan's mosque. It was built either in the years from 1812 or between 1850 and 1855 or around 1870. It is architecturally in the tradition of the clay mosques of Timbuktu .

The six-meter-high prayer building is made of mud bricks and partly of cement stones. The outside is plastered with cement and painted yellow. It comprises an approximately square ground plan and a semi-circular mihrab on -Vorbau. On the roof terrace there is a parapet with stair-shaped attachments.

The prayer room building can be entered through four entrances on the west side facing the courtyard, one entrance on the south side and one entrance on the east side. The prayer room is 265 square meters inside. It has four by three columns with a cross-section in the shape of a cross. There is a separate box for the sultan. The walls of the prayer room are plastered white. It is closed by a wooden coffered ceiling .

Old minaret

The old minaret (center) and one of the new minarets (left)

The old minaret is located on the south wall of the mosque complex and is 13 meters high. Access is through the inner courtyard on the north side. It has the shape of a truncated pyramid . Cornices divide the tower into three segments. The roof terrace, which is accessible through the staircase inside, has a parapet with stair-shaped attachments in each corner, similar to the old prayer room building.

The minaret collapsed in 1950 and was then restored.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jolijn Geels: Niger . Bradt, Chalfont St Peter 2006, ISBN 1-84162-152-8 , p. 221 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Dorothee Gruner: The clay mosque on the Niger. Documentation of a traditional building type . Steiner, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-515-05357-3 , pp. 358 .
  3. ↑ a b La vieille ville de Zinder, quartier de Birni et le Sultanat. UNESCO Center du patrimoine mondial, accessed on February 13, 2018 (French).

Coordinates: 13 ° 47 '38.7 "  N , 9 ° 0' 4.5"  E