Djenné

Where it is

Djenné stands on an island in the Bani river, a tributary of the Niger, in the Inland Niger Delta of central Mali. Each year the rivers flood an area the size of a small country, and the town sits above the water on ground that becomes an island for months. Everything is built of earth: sun-dried mud brick rendered in mud plaster, with bundles of palm timber projecting from the walls.

The land and water around it

• The Inland Niger Deltadelta

  Not a coastal delta but an inland floodplain where the Niger spreads out and loses much of its water to evaporation before rejoining a single channel. The flood is annual, enormous and the basis of the region's fishing, herding and farming calendar.

• The Baniriver

  The tributary that encircles the town. Its rise makes Djenné an island each year and its fall reconnects it, which historically set the trading season.

• The toguere moundsbasin

  Occupation mounds raised above flood level over centuries of building on the ruins of earlier building. Djenné-Djenno is one; the region holds many.

Its history, in short

Djenné-Djenno, a mound a couple of kilometres from the present town, was occupied from around the third century BCE and shows urban settlement in West Africa long before trans-Saharan trade — which mattered, because it undercut the assumption that African cities must have been prompted from outside. The later town became a commercial partner of Timbuktu, handling the river end of the gold, salt and slave trades and becoming a centre of Islamic learning. It came under successive states, then French rule, and its Great Mosque was rebuilt in 1907 in a form that is itself now the emblem of the architecture. Since 2016 Mali's security situation has kept researchers and visitors away and left the buildings dependent on a maintenance tradition under strain.

Timeline

Dates are shown on a timeline rather than as changing shapes on the map. The globe draws modern boundaries only, and tinting a modern outline to stand for a historical one would state something we cannot source.

Places that carry meaning

• The Great Mosque1907, on a much older site

  Rendered mud brick with projecting palm timbers that serve as permanent scaffolding for the annual re-plastering. The building is maintained by the town rather than preserved by a conservator.

• Djenné-Djennoc. 250 BCE – c. 1400 CE

  The mound whose excavation showed West African urbanism developing before trans-Saharan trade. Looting of terracotta figures for the art market has damaged its archaeology badly.

• The masons' guildContinuing

  The barey ton, the corporation of masons, holds the knowledge of building and rendering in earth and leads the annual re-plastering of the mosque. The building survives because a trade does.

  The guild's structure, ranks and the practices around the re-plastering are held and transmitted by the masons of Djenné themselves rather than from a written archive.

Learn the language here

1. 1Understand which languages are spoken hereDjenné is multilingual. Start with which languages are used, by whom, and for what — the phrase list only covers one of them.Written by Globe Quest
2. 2Practise with people: Arabic practice · DohaAn in-person practice circle. It is a prepared plan and needs a host before it runs.Run by members

Check yourself

• What did the excavation of Djenné-Djenno establish?

  That urban settlement here predates trans-Saharan caravan trade

  The city developed before the caravan trade arrived, which undercut the assumption that West African urbanism needed an external prompt.

• What are the timbers projecting from the mosque's walls for?

  Permanent scaffolding for the annual re-plastering

  The building is re-rendered every year by the town, and the toron are what people stand on to do it.

Worth arguing about

• A building maintained annually by its community, rather than conserved by specialists. Which approach keeps more of a place?
• The mound proved a city existed before the trade that was supposed to have caused it. What other origins are we assuming came from outside?

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