How it began
The first mosque on the site in Djenne was built around the 13th century; dates as early as 1200 and as late as 1330 have been suggested. According to tradition recorded in the Tarikh al-Sudan, a ruler named Koi Konboro converted to Islam and turned his palace into a mosque. The present building is the third on the site and was completed in 1907. Ismaila Traore, head of the Djenne guild of masons, directed the rebuilding, which used forced labor.
How it works
The mosque is built of sun-dried mud bricks made from mud, sand, rice husks and water, and coated with mud plaster. In the Sahel, earthen buildings need periodic and often annual replastering; without it the exteriors melt in the rainy season. Each year the community of Djenne replasters the building during a festival called the Crepissage de la Grande Mosquee. The 1907 design introduced a symmetric arrangement of three large towers in the qibla wall.
Who pushed back
The rebuilt mosque was controversial. The French journalist Felix Dubois, returning in 1910, was shocked by it, blamed the French colonial administration for the design and mocked its appearance. Michel Leiris reported in 1931 that the new mosque was the work of Europeans and that local people were unhappy with it. Jean-Louis Bourgeois has argued that French influence was slight and that the design is basically African, and no colonial documents support French authorship.
What changed first
The earlier mosque had fallen into ruin in the 19th century. When the French explorer Rene Caillie saw it in 1827, the building was already in bad repair from lack of upkeep. The 1907 reconstruction gave Djenne back a monumental congregational mosque on the footprint of the original, built by local masons with local materials.
Where it stands today
The mosque is the center of religious and community life in Djenne and one of the best-known landmarks in Africa. Together with the Old Towns of Djenne, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Art historians describe it as the largest mud-built structure in the world and the greatest achievement of Sudano-Sahelian architecture.
