Model of Djenné’s Great Mosque, National Museum in Bamako

BY TAKEO KAMIYA

REPUBLIC OF MALI in WEST AFRICA

The African Continent is divided into two parts in respect of architecture; the ‘Arab Africa’ in the north facing the Mediterranean Sea and ‘Black Africa,’ which lies south of the Sahara Desert. Arab Africa contains five countries, in order from east to west, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Arabians migrated here accompanied by Arab-Islamic culture, mixing with native Berbers, and made Arabic the main language.
Apart from the ancient Egyptian civilization, this is the main area that has developed in Africa an authentic Islamic architecture derived from the Umayyad stone architecture and the Abbasid brick architecture. It was by no means inferior to the Islamic architecture in West Asia; especially Cairo has long been one of the ganglia of Islamic civilization.

As opposed to it, Black Africa is the area of native Africans’ countries, many of which still suffer from poverty and political instability in spite of the hopeful independence from European countries in the latter half of the 20th century. Although Islamic permeation commenced in the Middle Ages, it was not by military conquests but by contact through international trade and commerce, therefore it was loose and gradual. Huge Islamization has progressed since the 19th century.
In current Africa, about 40% of population is Muslims, but regarding Black Africa the percentage of Muslims would be reduced to the half of it. There are almost the same ratio of Christians and other people retaining traditional tribal religions (animism). However rapid Islamization is progressing still now, I suppose the greater part will become Muslims by the end of the 21st century.

As far as the cultural areas are concerned it is divided into two; ‘West Africa’ having historically the Mali Empire and the Songai Empire, and ‘East Africa’ holding the Swahili culture mainly. As the geographical nomenclature, the ‘Sudan’ derived from an Arabic ‘Bilâd as-sudan’ (land of the Blacks) has been used to indicate the vast area south of the Sahara stretching in a band from west to east of Africa including Mali.
Though the current ‘Republic of the Sudan’ as a country is located in East Africa, the former French colony zone ‘French West Africa’ (Afrique Occidentale Française) was also referred to as the ‘French Sudan’ (Soudan français). It is the Republic of Mali that became independent from that West Sudan in 1960.

The northern half of Mali is part of the Sahara Desert, where there are hardly inhabitants except for the nomadic Tuareg. The southern half is the steppes where the Niger, the third longest river in Africa, flows eastward from the capital Bamako to the former capital Gao. It is here that three great empires, Ghana and Mali and Songai, arose and their civilizations flourished. Recent Islamization has been so fast that 90% of the present population is Muslims, most of which are Sunnis.

CULTURE OF EARTH

Black Africa is in the ‘culture of earth’ sphere, different from the culture of wood and that of stone. From ancient times almost all buildings have been built of earth or ‘sun-dried bricks.’ It is not only in Africa, but nearly 40% of buildings in the world are constructed of earth even now and it is said that 3 to 3.5 billion people, half of current world population of 6.8 billion, inhabit earthen houses. Earth is the cheapest material and obtainable anywhere humans live, in addition to that it is efficient in keeping warmth, it is an excellent construction material as long as there is little precipitation in the region.

Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy i1900-89jwho was a leader in the architectural society in the Third World thought that sun-dried brick buildings were the most suitable to Egypt, considering the economical state at that time, and practiced it in designing earthen modern architecture throughout his life. His book written based on his experience in New Gourna “Architecture for the Poor” (1973) was a bible for young architects in the Middle East and Africa.

Nevertheless the earth is an ephemeral material, weak in rain and flood, cracking and falling down when abandoned, and returning back to the ground rather than remaining as ruins. Even the city of Bagdad that thrived in splendor as the capital of the Abbasid Empire faded away without leaving any trace after abandonment.

Books on architectural history are composed about stone architecture and wooden architecture, so it is rare to take up earthen architecture. Actually even in Mali best known architecturally in Black Africa there remains nothing from ancient architecture before the 18th century. Then what is Malian architecture, which represents the earthen architecture in Africa, like?

Trational houses in Djenné and Kamaragar Village

It is the town of Djenné that retains old style houses in greatest numbers and best conditions. Since it is a town that flourished as the trade center connecting North Africa and sout Sudan, its houses are quite decorative in spite of being earthen buildings.

There are pilasters on the facade, horn like projections standing at the corners of building and the upper part of entrance, and often embellished wooden frames on windows. However, it is rare to paint or tile the walls, so it is simply finished with mud plaster (adobe).
Their plastic work just resembles sand castles or sand palaces made by children on the beach. And like sand castles, which easily fall down when assailed by a wave, there is frailty in those earthen houses. Without periodical replastering their surfaces would be swiftly cracked and peeled.
When leaving this wealthy town, for the villages you will see houses half returned to the ground.

Model of Djenné’s Great Mosque, National Museum in Bamako

Though its composition < worship room + courtyard > is the same as that in village mosques, the gap between their scales has brought various differences. First of all the enclosure of the courtyard at the Great Mosque is not simple walls but cloisters, the west part of which is applied to women’s worship space. As the direction of Macca (Mecca) is east of Mali, three Mihrabs are settled on Qibla wall (nevertheless they are not large enough to form independent rooms as in Spain).

The erection of a tower over each Mihrab by a successor of Koy Konboro thus engendered ‘Three-tower type’ mosque, quintessential in Malian mosques, like ‘Three-dome type’ in India. The east side of the Great Mosque is an extensive square, where a huge renowned market is traditionally held every Monday. That location gave a front character to the mosque’s east side that is originally a backside. The mosque flaunts its decorative ‘Three-tower type’ appearance to the crowd in the market.

The decorations are horn like protrusions that are set not only on each corner but also on top of the outer walls continuously, three towers divided in three tiers having a horn protruding on each corner as well, and palm wood sticks (Toron) half embedded and rhythmically arranged on the wall surfaces.
These sticks are needed on higher positions for the function of scaffolding on occasion of replastering the whole surface of the Great Mosque once a year. Therefore it was not necessarily required at lower positions, but gradually these sticks have come to be used as decorative elements even for low-rise mosques. Apart from them strangely there is no calligraphy, Muqarnas, floral or vegetal ornaments, nor geometric embellishments, which are standard decorations for Islamic architecture in the world.

Towers, Collapse, and Interior of the Great Mosque in Djenné

Djenné’s oblong worship room of 50m x 26m approximately in area is the exact opposite of Turkish type mosque, a worship room of which looks like a cosmic space covered by an enormous dome. Djenné’s mosque is just an extreme sample of Arabian type hypostyle mosque in contrast, making as many as ninety thick pillars of earth stand densely, causing impossibility to get even a penetrating view of the interior space.
Standing up many columns together is a fate for the erection of a grand hall with a flat roof without using a dome structure. Since Djenné’s mosque is made of earth, the pillars had to be much bulkier than stone columns.

Even if this worship hall sounds quite strange for people who are used to seeing spacious worship halls, from a pracdtical standpoint it is possible to function as a mosque. As Muslims worship God standing side by side in lines parallel to the Qibla wall even at congregational prayers on Friday, there is no hindrance as far as the arcades stand parallel to the Qibla wall at regular intervals affording the followers space to prostrate themselves in lines (never in columns), although it is a defect that attendants cannot look at the Imam (worship leader) and it is a little hard to hear his preach.

In contrast to those grand mosques of ancient origin, modern grand mosques tend to imitate the Djenné’s Great Mosque to flaunt its exterior view, lifting its height and adopting the ‘three-tower type’ facade.
Mopti located at the confluence of the Niger and the Bani rivers is the second largest city in Mali. It is a thriving commercial city as the center of transportation both by land and water between the capital Bamako and Timbuktu or easternmost Gao. In accordance with this town’s development, Djenné’ lost its gravity in trade and became a local historical city.

READ MORE HERE:

http://www.kamit.jp/27_mali/mal_eng.htm

NOTE BY THE EDITOR: Let’s hope and pray that not too much of the rich cultural heritage of Mali gets destroyed in the current civil war.