bourgeois mosque djenne

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The History of the Great Mosques of DjennéAuthor(s): Jean-Louis BourgeoisSource: African Arts, Vol. 20, No. 3, (May, 1987), pp. 54-92Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3336477Accessed: 14/08/2008 12:27

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The History of the Great Mosques of Djenne

JEAN-LOUIS BOURGEOIS

Mud at its most majestic, the Great Mosque of Djenn&e in Mali (Fig. 1)

is one of the wonders of Africa. Its im- posing facade symbolizes the Sahel, West Africa's dry savanna just south of the Sahara. Djenne's first Great, or Friday, Mosque was built about the thirteenth century.2 Intense political drama marked the construction of each of its two suc- cessors: the second mosque, built between 1834/35 and 1835/36, and the third, present one, built in 1906-7. Feelings ran so high that official cover-stories were manufactured to justify both construction campaigns. These have become standard histories: in the case of the second mosque, the story has been awarded as much authority as the account of what

actually happened; in the case of the third, it has been regarded unquestion- ingly as the truth. Actually they are fab- rications designed - until now suc- cessfully- to obscure the roles of pow- erful political forces. The result has

proved the same: to rob Djenn - and Africa - of credit for two major monuments.

Djenne is the oldest known city in sub-Saharan Africa. Djenne-djenno ("old Djenne") was established by the third century B.C. and became a major urban center by about A.D. 850 (McIn- tosh & McIntosh 1981:1). The present city3 was founded at a nearby site between 800 and 1250.4 Now it is a rela-

tively isolated town of a few thousand. But from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries, with its mix of many ethnic

groups, it was a great center of com- merce, Islam, and learning. Timbuktu, the first "port" south of the Sahara, is much better known than its "mother," Djenne, 400 kilometers upstream (Dubois 1896:234). Legend covered the roofs of Timbuktu with gold. Yet cara- vans traveled there from far and wide because of Djenne (Sadi 1964:23), which was blessed, unlike its fabled daughter, with a river that provided both a natural defense and a fertile surrounding flood

plain. The first figure in Djenne's history to

emerge as more than a name is Koi Kon- boro, who probably lived during the thirteenth century. Konboro was the city's twenty-sixth king and its first to become a Muslim (Sadi 1964:24-25; Mon-

teil 1932:38-39, 78, 149, 195). So little is known about him that the following legend describing his conversion to Islam becomes important.5 When a Mus- lim sage or marabout named Ismaila6 settled in Djenne, Koi Konboro, angry and suspicious, sought an excuse to kill him. A counselor hit on a scheme. Lend Is- maila gold, he suggested. I will find and steal it. You ask for it back. When Ismaila cannot produce it, you can execute him as a thief. Konboro agreed. He lent Is- maila a tobacco box filled with gold dust, which the marabout buried for safekeep- ing. The counselor, posing as a convert, grew friendly with Ismaila, who at last revealed where the gold was hidden. The counselor secretly dug it up and bore it to the king. Konboro had it thrown in the Bani River.

Next day at market, Ismaila's wife

bought a large fish. Cutting it open she found the gold. When Konboro sum- moned him, Ismaila was able to produce the treasure, declaring, "My God sent the fish to protect me."7 Konboro, deeply impressed, became a Muslim. He asked the marabout, "How may I please God?" Ismaila replied, "Plant a tree, and for years the people who enjoy its shade will bless you. Dig a well, and long after your death people who draw water will bless you. And build a mosque. The people who pray in it will bless your name for centuries." Konboro did all three things. He turned his palace into a

large adobe mosque. There is no known drawing of Kon-

boro's mosque, and its appearance remains largely a tantalizing mystery. As it was built before the king's pilgrimage to Mecca (Anonymous 1972:184),8 we can assume it was a completely local construction uninfluenced by any person or ideas he might have brought back. Kon- boro's successor added towers to the mosque, and his, in turn, surrounded it with a wall (Sadi 1964:25-26). Its "gal- leries and colonnades" are reported to have been large enough to hold, in the sixteenth century, at least half- possibly all - of the city's population.9

The three sources of information on the mosque that have come down to us are all for various reasons unsatisfactory. In 1828 the French traveler Rene Caillie was the only European to see the

monument before it fell into ruin. His description is not just disappointingly terse, but probably misleading as well. Unimpressed, he called the "very large" structure "crudely built." But adobe buildings in the Sahel require periodic - often annual - replastering with mud, or the region's brief but sometimes vio- lent seasonal rain (Denyer 1978:3) will make them start to melt. When Caillie saw the Great Mosque it is likely, for political reasons discussed below, that the monument had not been replastered since perhaps 1818. Probably as many as ten rainy seasons had washed away all the plaster and worn the mud-brick. This would also explain the two "massive" towers' being "low" (Caillie 1830, vol. 2:206): a decade's neglect could have eaten away the upper sections of tall towers, which would have been particularly vulnerable to weathering.

A second source of information is seven photographs and engravings (taken from photographs) made between 1895 and 190610 - mostly during the seventh decade of the structure's decay (Figs. 2-4). They show what remained of the mosque - sections of the east and north walls. One or two towers stood on the east wall. On the north wall, two rows of windows alternated between tall, applied pylons that rose freestand- ing, like those on the present mosque, to points above the roof-line.

A third source provides more detail but is not necessarily more reliable. French journalist Felix Dubois, who visited Djenne about 1895, collected an oral history of the mosque, examined its ruins, and suggested what the monument might have looked like (Dubois 1896:154-57). Dubois's proposal is hard to evaluate. Although we should bear in mind that he had access to oral traditions - a fact in his favor - his description is inconsistent: his hypothetical bird's- eye-view drawing shows huge buttresses at the corners; his architectural plan shows none. More important, Dubois, probably misled by Caillie's account, portrays the mosque's towers as low. In addition, photographic views by Bastard (Fig. 2), and particularly Fortier (Fig. 3), seem to show a tower (its ruins bearing a "notch" to the left near its summit) at the center of the east facade. If so, another

54

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tower stood to its left (see Fig. 4, cap- tion), replacing one of Dubois's hypothetical groups of monumental pylons, as well as challenging his placement of a tower overlooking the courtyard. (Dubois obeyed Caillie's claim that there were only two.) Finally, Dubois indicates no toron - the short, protruding sticks that are apparently only structural but in fact are partly decorative and partly functional, used as perches for replastering. Their absence would be highly unlikely on any tall Sahelian mosque. Again, contradicting Dubois, Figure 3- the Fortier postcard - shows both short black diagonals suggesting the shadows of small single-stick toron still in place, and holes along the central axes of all the pylons, indicating where bundles of toron have fallen away.

The appearance of the first Great Mos- que, then, remains to a large extent un- known, or at least a matter of con- troversy. What is clear is that in its day it was said to be lovelier than the Kaaba, 1 Islam's holiest shrine in Mecca itself. Re- plastered every year, it was the pride of Djenne until the nineteenth century, when it met a formidable adversary in Sekou Amadou, founder of the Peuli2 Empire of Masina (r. 1818-43). The Great Mosque challenged his political ambition and his fundamentalist Muslim beliefs.

Amadou13 preached a spare, extremely rigorous Islam. He grew increas- ingly disgusted with the easy-going practices of Djenne, which was as famous for its wealth and sophistication as for its piety. He considered its scholars lax and frivolous (Azarya 1980:443-44). They found him presumptuous and ignorant. Officially barred from the mosque, he retreated to a hamlet about one and a half kilometers from Djenne, where he continued to preach and to gather followers.

In 1818, Sekou Amadou rallied the Peuls and launched a jihad,14 or Muslim holy war. A great victory at Noukhouma established his political authority in the area and marked the founding of the theocratic Empire of Masina. Djenne, re- sistant, succumbed only after a nine- month siege. Once conquered, the town rebelled, and two years later Amadou subdued it again, this time more harshly (Ba & Daget 1984:151-52; Brown 1969:129). In the meantime, he built his new capital, Hamdallahi (meaning "Praise to God"), where the single mosque was distinctly larger, lower, and simpler than Djenn&'s Great Mosque.15 In both Djenne and Timbuktu, Sekou Amadou required all men to attend Friday ser- vices in the main mosque, each at an assigned place, so that absences could be

easily noted and punished (Barth 1859, vol. 3:394; see Cisse 1982:21). Ostensibly, he imposed this rule to conform to Koranic law. In fact it was, as the German traveler Barth observed of Timbuktu, "one of the means by which the conquering tribe" endeavored "to subdue the national spirit of the native population" (Barth 1859, vol. 3:394).

Amadou closed all the neighborhood mosques of Djenne and Timbuktu, fear- ing they would prove rallying points for anti-Peul resistance (Ba & Daget 1984:212; Monteil 1932:151).16 But since Is- lamic law prohibited a Muslim from de- stroying a mosque (Y. Toure, N. Cisse, interviews; Sow 1978:47; Ba & Daget 1984:155), Amadou resorted, in Djenne, to casuistry: he blocked the mosques' gutters (N. Cisse, Diete, interviews) and assigned demolition to adobe's natural enemy, water. Thus he could make the claim, however tenuous, that the rain had destroyed the structures.

Nevertheless, the suppression of Djenne's neighborhood mosques remains a touchy issue. Because their dis- appearance during Amadou's reign im- plied that he violated an Islamic prohibition, tradition favorable to Amadou deals with the problem in two ways. One is to bypass it altogether by simply as- serting that Amadou found only one

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mosque in Djenne, the main one (Bari, Bela, Bia Bia, Samounou, M.A. Sidibe, Tientao, B. Yarro, interviews). The other is to acknowledge the mosques' suppression but assert that it was justified. This tradition claims that the local mosques were no more than monuments to the vanity of individual marabouts, and that their proliferation led to irresponsi- ble divergent Islamic practices (Monteil 1932:150-51).17

Before Amadou built his own mosque in Djenne, it is likely that he refused to allow proper maintenance of the old one, just as he had done for a time with the Sankore mosque in Timbuktu (Barth 1859, vol. 3:395). This would account for Caillie's poor impression of the mosque, which as he noted was abandoned to "thousands of swallows." Its interior was not in use during his 1828 visit, probably on orders from Amadou. Prayers were held in a small exterior court (Caillie 1830, vol. 2:206).

Amadou allowed Djenne's Great

Mosque to survive, if precariously, for a number of years. Between 1829 and 1831 the Peuls' governing council decided that the mosque should be abandoned entirely, claiming that the Moroccans who conquered Djenne in 1591 had cor-

rupted the monument "by practices con- trary to tradition and religion." But

Djenne notables formally tendered a unanimous request that the structure be spared, offering to pay the Peuls addi- tional taxes if necessary. Negotiations were stalemated ostensibly while the

grand council considered "how to sup- press the mosque... without hurting the sensibility of the locals nor violating the text of the law" (Ba & Daget 1984:155). Then in 1834/35, Amadou felt strong enough, probably because of his success in suppressing a revolt in Timbuktu (Saad 1983:216), to move definitively against the ancient building. Using the same subterfuge he had applied to the

neighborhood mosques, he plugged the Great Mosque's gutters (Diete, Maigalo, N. Cisse, S. Toure, interviews) "above and below" (Y. Toure, interview). Rain

collected in a pool on the roof, which col- lapsed, exposing the mosque's massive earthen pillars.

With the help of forced labor recruited from as far away as the Dogon cliffs (Lougue, interview), Amadou built a new mosque (Fig. 5) to the east of the old one, on a site where a royal palace once had stood. The architect was Ismaila Barey Traore.18 Its style differed sharply from that of the old mosque. Reflecting both Amadou's fundamentalism and his general severity, it had no towers, for he deemed them an "innovation."19 Instead of mud columns supporting a high ceiling, it had simple wooden posts bracing one only about three meters high20 partly so that when the congregation en- tered, the flocks of bats that took advantage of the dark, cool environment would be chased outside.21 Though its height was deliberately modest, the building was large. It had ten north- south aisles (Bari, interview) and could hold more worshippers than the old mosque (Monteil 1903:105; 1932:151). Dubois, who saw it in 1895, declared it "simple, bare, banal" (Dubois 1896:160). Its simplicity was ideological.

The actual sequence of the Great Mosques of Djenne until the nineteenth century was quite straightforward. Koi Konboro built a mosque. Sekou Amadou helped it melt and built a new mosque to the east of it. But Peul tradition suggests a much more complex series of buildings, a fictional account22 carefully tai- lored to justify Amadou's destruction of the first monument (see chart, p. 56). First, Amadou claimed that Koi Konboro had built Djenne's original mosque not on the western site but on the eastern one; this major shift allowed Amadou to assert that, technically, his mosque - also on the eastern site - was not new but a reconstruction. Next, according to Amadou, Konboro's successor, a non- Muslim named Mahala Tanapo, tore down the older mosque and built a new one on the western site. This was said to have had two sections, one for Muslims, the other for traditionalists. But since a

structure built by a traditionalist partially for traditionalist use clearly could not house a proper mosque, the western site was now "impure."

Amadou's scenario then has the great Songhai emperor Askia Mohammed (r. 1493-1528) tear down Mahala Tanapo's "corrupt" mosque and rebuild Konboro's on the eastern site; because of Askia Mohammed's prestige as a Muslim ruler,23 the Islamic credentials of the eastern site were thereby redoubled. Next, the Moroccans, who conquered Djenne in 1591, are said to have razed Askia Mohammed's mosque and rebuilt Mahala Tanapo's, on the western site. Amadou charged that sinful practices occurring regularly near or in the "Moroccan" mosque corrupted it. These included slaughtering (M.A. Sidibe, D. Sidibe, interviews; blood is taboo in or near a mosque), selling fermented drink (Bocoum, Kamara, B. Nientao, Samake, interviews) and licentious (i.e. traditionalist) dancing (Dubois 1896:150; see Willis 1967:401) In addition, the mosque was accused of being "too tall," its height an "exaggeration" (S. Korobara, interview), a reflection of "pride" (O. Cisse, interview), a "distraction from prayer" (Koita, interview), and an indication that the structure "did not belong to God" (Bela, interview). The spiritual geneal- ogy of the two sites was clear. Decency "demanded" that the "new," sullied

mosque on the western site be abandoned and the "original," noble one on the eastern site be restored.24

Amadou's hopscotch scenario, though shrewd, was a fabrication, and historical evidence contradicts it. His account claimed the Moroccan mosque existed in 1655, when the important chronicle called the Tarikh as-Sudan was

completed, though the Tarikh states that the "present" mosque was built by Koi Konboro (Sadi 1964:24). The Peul version has the eastern site occupied, during the reign of Askia Mohammed (1493-1528), by the mosque he had built there; but new evidence from oral history now

helps definitely to disprove this. Inter-

GREAT MOSQUES OF DJENNE

PEUL SCENARIO TRUE SCENARIO

WESTERN SITE EASTERN SITE j WESTERN SITE EASTERN SITE

1200 .. ...MA.HALA [email protected]. KOI KONBORO MOSQUE............... KOI KONBORO MOSQUE ........................................ MAHALA TANAPO MOSQUE I V 1300 ............. ........... ..... ....... ................ ....................... ............... ... ..... ...............................................

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1700 **** **** * *00 ... .. O.. . 0.. ... ........ .... .... ... ..... . O.O..... o ........... .......... .............................

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56

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views (with Bia Bia and D. Sanfo) reveal that the eastern site is still known in Djenne as Madougou,25 which means "royal palace" in Manding. This con- firms an assertion in the Tarikh al-Fattash (another important history, published in 1665) that it was the site, in Askia Mohammed's day, of an official residence built by the Songhai emperor Sonni Ali (r. 1464-92) and later owned by Askia Mohammed (Kati 1964:97-98)- not, as the Peuls claimed, the site of Askia Mohammed's mosque.

Amadou had ample motive for con- cocting mosques out of thin air, and the evidence suggests he did so. He also had a propensity for fabrication. The Tarikh al-Fattash prophesied that during the thirteenth Islamic century (1785-1882), a great leader would emerge as the twelfth caliph who would rejuvenate Islam in West Africa (Kati 1964:xii, 17-18, 24; Willis 1967:401-2). Amadou, who was born Amad Lobo Bari, worked with an important scholar (Saad 1983:215; Brown 1969:138, 139) to interpolate the name "Amad" into the text, making it crystal clear to all that he, Amadou, was the promised deliverer. He then destroyed all unamended copies of the Tarikh. Amadou must be given credit: his forger- ies passed as plausible for a long time. Scholars did not prove he tampered with the Fattash until seventy-five years later, and his version of the mosque sequence, though questioned, was not discredited for over a century and a half.26

The second doctoring of Djenne mosque history took place early in this century. The present Great Mosque was completed in 1907. Colonial, Afri- can, and scholarly authorities have all stated that the French, who conquered Djenne in 1893,27 constructed the monument. The story has played well for eighty years, and at first seems incon- trovertible. The first to print it was the English traveler A. Henry Savage

TOP: 2. RUINS OF THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF THE FIRST GREAT MOSQUE OF DJENNE, PROBABLY BUILT DURING THE 13TH CENTURY. THE TWO FIGURES CAN- NOT BE USED AS SCALE; THEY MAY HAVE BEEN IN- SERTED LATER BY THE ENGRAVER. THE ENGRAVING WAS MADE FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY GEORGE BASTARD, DATED BY SNELDER TO EARLY 1895. CENTER: 3. THE SAME CORNER OF THE FIRST MOSQUE'S RUINS. AC- CORDING TO GEORGES MEURILLON OF THE MUSEE NA- TIONAL DU MALI, THE POSTCARD-MAKER E. FORTIER WAS PHOTOGRAPHING IN DJENNE AROUND 1906. DE- TERIORATION HAS ADVANCED DURING THE YEARS SINCE THE BASTARD PHOTO. LENS DISTORTION AP- PEARS TO FLATTEN THE MOSQUE'S CORNER. COURTESY INSTITUT CHEIKH ANTA DIOP UNIVERSITE DE DAKAR. BOTTOM: 4. EAST WALL OF THE PRESENT MOSQUE, UNDER CONSTRUCTION IN DECEMBER 1906. THE FACADE SHADOW BEHIND THE TREE TRUNK IS SIGNIFI- CANTLY WIDER THAN THOSE CAST BY THE BASES OF THE APPLIED PYLONS ALREADY IN PLACE, INDICATING THAT IT IS BEING CAST BY THE BASE OF THE NEW RIGHT TOWER. THIS SHOWS THAT IN THE OLDER MOSQUE, THE

413. Afvique Occidentale - SOUDAN - DJENNE - Rulnes de l'antcenne iMosquee

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RUINED TOWER HERE SHOWN BEING RECLAD (FAR LEFT) OCCUPIED A POSITION ON THE LEFT OF THE FACADE. FROM LANDOR, ACROSS WIDEST AFRICA, 1907.

57

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Landor. He visited Djenne in December 1906, while the mosque was under construction. "The French are to be praised," he wrote, for their considera- tion toward the native people in reconstructing this place of worship for them (Landor 1907, vol. 2:461). At the inau-

guration, the mosque's imam, or leader, thanked the French effusively for "en- dowing" Djenne with the new building (Anonymous 1907a).

The French journalist Felix Dubois was the next visitor to publish. Earlier his popular, prize-winning Timbuctoo the Mysterious had introduced Djenne to the world. An admirer of the picturesque, Dubois was fond of the old mosque's ruins. Returning to Djenne about 1910, he was horrified to find gone his cherished scene of melancholy splendor. He deplored the reconstruction as too massive. Lumping it with all the new colonial administrative structures, Dubois heaped scorn on the "vandal" French commander he assumed was entirely responsible (Dubois 1911:185-89). The French scholar Paul Marty liked the

mosque much better than Dubois did, but he, too, credited the "local [French] administrator" with building the "hand- somest structure of indigenous art" in all West Africa (Marty 1920-21, vol. 2:235). In 1931, the Surrealist author Michel Leiris accused the same administrator of hav-

ing ruthlessly destroyed Sekou Amadou's mosque in order to build "his" new one, now characterized as frankly "European."28 In 1958, Gouilly, using sarcastic metaphors pilfered from Dubois, condemned "the French admin- istration" for building the monument (Gouilly 1952:151, 180). Even the new

mosque's first imam subscribed to this version, as have other Africans. In 1954, Amadou Hampate Ba, the important Peul historian, declared that the French reconstructed the mosque (Ba & Daget 1984:156). And in 1971, in a brief history of their town, five prominent Djenne citizens agreed (Bah et al. 1971:3). Despite the unanimity of such claims, I wish to challenge them and argue that the monument is basically African.

Clues to this are to be found by exa-

mining the history of a medersa, or school, constructed in Djenne at the same time as the mosque. As one means of training young men to cooperate in their rule of West Africa, the French wanted to build a school where both Arabic and French would be taught. Adolescent students would be recruited from among the local elite to pursue a three-year course. The medersa, pat- terned on similar French ventures in

Algeria,29 was a project on which the colonial government was willing to lavish considerable effort.

French records display a consistent pattern of intense French preoccupation

with the medersa and relative indifference to the mosque. In March 1906, Ernest- Nestor Roume, Governor General of French West Africa, instructed Robert Arnaud to travel throughout French West Africa to study the status of Islam. Roume's orders indicate that Arnaud was to witness the inauguration of the Djenne medersa. Yet Roume makes no mention of the mosque (Roume 1906); nor - an even more telling omission - does Arnaud's report, though it discusses the medersa (Arnaud 1912:139).

In April 1907 when the mosque was inaugurated, no French attended the ceremony, not even Ernest Bleu, then commander of the city. In a crucial letter dated May 11, 1907, an important French official, William Ponty (1907), speaking of his March visit to Djenn&,30 discusses the medersa and its operation at some

length, yet makes no reference to the

mosque, in spite of having been sent the text of the imam's inaugural address (Bleu 1907). In 1909 the commander of Djenne mentions the French "authoriz- ing" the mosque, not building it (Felvre 1909:135). An important book on French Islamic policy published in 1910 repeats the familiar pattern: the medersa is lauded and the mosque ignored (Quellien 1910:255, 258-60).

To my knowledge, no colonial document indicates that any French en-

gineers worked on the mosque. Virtual proof that none did can be found in the mosque's plan. It is by no means an exact

rectangle. In particular the interior's southwest corner measures less than 90?, the northwest corner more (Ago 1982:42). The interior's massive mud columns range greatly in width, from about 1 to 2.5 meters.3' These departures from strict geometry suggest that survey- ing instruments, the engineer's most basic tools, were not used. Thus it is unlikely that French engineers worked on the building at all, for if they had it would certainly have been in this, the most fundamental and least time-consuming aspect of construction.

The principal contemporary evidence for direct French participation in the

mosque's construction revolves around

money. A 1909 report states that the French spent 9,679 francs on the construction of both the medersa and the

mosque, and that examination of the records could not determine what fraction of the money was spent on each (Saurin 1909:2). In any case, to the French 9,679 francs was not a large sum; it was less than half of the combined annual salaries of the medersa's four teachers (Meray 1910).32

The medersa received its first pupils in early January 1907; it was by then presumably completed. A photograph taken in the first week of December 1906 shows that construction of the mosque

was still in an early stage (Fig. 4). These dates might at first glance lead to the conclusion that money spent in 1907 -

7,060 francs - was virtually all for the mosque. But since the report specifically indicates that funds spent after March 1 included medersa money, the only thing clear is that nothing is clear. Every day most of the town's marabouts and elders made it a point to learn details about how the building was progressing (Bleu 1906:0ct.). Since it was traditional in Timbuktu for marabouts to contribute money directly toward a mosque's construction (Saad 1983:136), it seems likely that in Djenne, too, religious leaders bore some portion of their monument's cost. 33

The French records, which fail to provide a breakdown of expenses, warrant

skepticism. The funds could have ended up in a variety of pockets, including those of French officials. The dispropor- tionately large "allowances" disbursed to boys attending the medersa, totaling 6,600 francs in 1907, amounted to bribes to the students' families. Each child was listed as receiving 100 francs annually for "clothing and support" (Felvre 1909:119) - certainly excessive in a town where

good-quality shoes cost two francs (Monteil 1932:272). With bookkeeping so lax, it is even possible that some major fraction of the money listed for medersa and mosque construction actually went toward student subsidies.

To understand why African sources would award the French credit for build-

ing the mosque requires some discussion of local Djenne politics. The French wanted a medersa. But most of the city's inhabitants, including descendants of the Islamic elite harassed by Sekou Amadou and humiliated by his destruction of the old mosque, had their own city-planning agenda. The non-Peul

population of Djenne - including Mar- kas, Bozos, and the small but important group of Songhais not driven out by the Peuls- wanted to rebuild the old mos-

que, whose ruins still dominated the city (Figs. 2, 3).

Djenne was at a crossroads. The issue, crucial to the city's identity, was to choose between versions of its past. The

imposed Peul version of the mosque se-

quence had been in force for over

seventy-five years. Should it remain in

place? The alternative was to re-establish the legitimacy of the actual series by re- building the original mosque. Amadou's sabotaging the structure had been a

symbolic and crucial part of his occupa- tion. Reconstructing the monument would declare that Djenne was reassert- ing its psychological and spiritual inde-

pendence. The issue, whose outcome would af-

fect the very soul of the city, became where to put the medersa. There were

58

VlU INTEIfIEftRE I DI 1)f- ET DE LA NOtUVI\li,LX t^-.i i:.

5. IN THE LEFT BACKGROUND IS SEKOU AMADOU'S GREAT MOSQUE, DJENNE'S SECOND, BUILT BETWEEN 1834 AND 1836, VIEWED FROM THE WEST. OVER THE COURTYARD WALL THE TOP OF AN ARCADE, PROBABLY FORMED BY THE ENDS OF TWELVE OR THIRTEEN AISLES, IS VISIBLE. AT RIGHT CAN BE SEEN THE EDGE OF A POND LATER DRAINED BY THE FRENCH TO FORM THE LARGE SQUARE IN FRONT OF THE PRESENT MOSQUE. ENGRAVING FROM A PHOTO, IN DUBOIS, TIMBUCTOO THE MYSTERIOUS, 1896.

three options. The first option, most pleasing to the Peuls - building on the site of the ruined mosque - would have completed the process of demolition that Sekou Amadou himself had dared only to initiate. The second option - building on open land (Felvre 1909:133) - would have allowed reconstruction of the ancient mosque, a prospect less pleasing to the Peuls. But the third alternative -

building on the site of Amadou's mosque - was the worst for them. After the destruction of Hamdallahi in 1864, Amadou's Djenne mosque was the only Peul monument of any stature still stand- ing in Masina. It was this third option that prevailed.

Three men figured prominently in the drama of the destruction of Amadou's mosque. The first was Aguibou Tall, a Tukulor and tenth son of El Haj Omar, who had conquered Hamdallahi in 1862. Less than a month after participating in the French taking of Djenne, Aguibou was installed by the invaders as titular king of Masina.34 Aguibou had good reason to resent the Peuls: in 1864 they and their allies had forced his father to aban- don Hamdallahi and commit suicide. According to local historians in Bandiag- ara, it is likely that he threw his influence behind the scheme to destroy Djenne's Peul mosque (A. Kansaye, M. Kansaye, interviews). In 1908 he sent four members of his family to study at the medersa, a definite sign of his strong support of the school project (Felvre 1909:121).

A second key figure was William Ponty, personal secretary to Commander Louis Archinard when the French

stormed Djenne in 1893. Five years later, Ponty returned to command Djenne and its large cercle, or administrative region. He governed the city and area directly for about a year, then moved to Kayes, eventually becoming Governor of the Sudan, the colony of which Djenne was a part. It was this position that he held during the planning and construction of the medersa and mosque. Ponty was committed to an administrative tactic he later termed "la politique des races," a strategy that carefully encouraged ethnic groups to maintain their separatism, and even hostilities short of war, so that no common bonds might unite them against the French (see O'Brien 1967:314). He saw that, in Djenne, allowing the Great Mosque to be rebuilt would advance no such bond. Quite the opposite.

The third and most crucial figure was Oumar Sanfo, who in 1905, at age 65, was the most learned, the most famous, and the last of Djenne's great Muslim savants.35 Sanfo was a disciple of the important Kunta scholar-warrior, Sidi Ahmad al-Bakkai (Monteil 1932:155), who had fought hard to ease the harsh Peul domination of Timbuktu (Saad 1983:216-19, 295). As a younger man Sanfo had helped lead the Songhais of Djenne on a bitter exile forced on them by a conquering Peul, Ba Lobo. It was only after the French conquest (Felvre 1909:136-37) that they, and Oumar Sanfo, returned. Sanfo's stature in Djenne was increased by the fact that his enemies, the Peuls, were divided over the authority of their own leader. Furthermore the

city's politically shrewd titular head was extremely ill during the two years before his death in 1907, and was succeeded by a son who "lacked influence over his fellow citizens."36

The anti-Peul forces sought the destruction of Amadou's mosque. But they were faced with the same problem Amadou himself had faced three- quarters of a century earlier: how to cir- cumvent the Islamic prohibition against using force to destroy a mosque. As we have seen, Amadou dealt with the problem by tampering with accounts of the distant past. Sanfo and his allies created a cover story too. They quietly invited the French to raze Amadou's mosque. The French accepted, and chose that site for their medersa. The sin of obliterating the mosque was transferred to them.37 In return for French cooperation against the Peuls, Sanfo threw his influence behind the medersa. He enrolled his son Dieni Sanfo (Bocoum, S. Korobara, Nafogou, interviews), as well as a favor- ite student (Marty 1920-21, vol. 2:262).38 Demolition of the Peul mosque began in September 1906 (Bleu 1906:September). Soon afterward, construction of the new mosque started on the site of the ancient one.

This scenario explains why non-Peul people of Djenne kept silent about their participation in the political package allowing the new mosque's construction. But what about the Peuls? Doesn't Peul tradition protest the alliance against Amadou's mosque? No. In fact it actually goes a step further and helps hide the truth by embellishing, or at least sup-

59

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porting, a useful version of an intriguing story39 about Ponty when he was commander of Djenne. It is said that he en- joyed changing at night into local clothing and walking the streets of the city. One evening he came upon Sanfo pray- ing outside his home. Impressed by the man's piety, Ponty gave him 25 francs, then a fairly large sum, and continued walking. On two more nights the same scene took place. On the fourth evening, Sanfo asked why Ponty was giving him money. "Because I am happy to see that you love your God. For no other reason." Pleased with this response, Sanfo asked, "Do you want a promotion?" Ponty replied, "Where I am is what I de- serve." "Do you want to be Governor?" "Impossible." "Just say so, if you want it." "All right. I want to be Governor." After holding two intermediate posts, the gifted Ponty did indeed become Governor-General of all French West Af- rica, in 1908, at the comparatively young age of 42 (see Johnson 1978).

There is poignancy in this account, which transfers power from an administrator among the conquerors to a scholar among the conquered. The story per- sonalizes and mythologizes the two leaders' connection. It shifts their associ- ation from the realm of policy and politics to that of individuals. Peul historians tell a variant (Ba, O.Cisse, Landoure, interviews).40 Ponty asks Sanfo what he needs to do to become governor. Sanfo replies, build a mosque and a medersa. This version has a particularly practical advantage. By attributing to Ponty not only the mosque's construction but his motive for building it, it neatly masks the complexity of the arrangement the men were to make.

At first the agreement troubled the Peuls deeply. They let it be known they would refuse to send a single boy to the medersa (Bleu 1906:Oct.). Eventually they relented (Marty 1920-21, vol. 2:262). Fi- nally, as time went on, they too subscribed to the fiction that the French in their om- nipotence had built both medersa and mosque. They preferred not to be seen as crushed by a coalition of local forces. Exaggerating French power tempered the bitterness of Peul defeat.41 Pride demanded not voiced outrage but a stilled tongue. The alliance of local silences and French self-congratulation served all parties well. The French appeared generous, the anti-Peul forces blame- less, and the Peuls the helpless victims of an overwhelming foreign power.

By 1906 Koi Konboro's mosque had been melting for about eighty years. Though the roof had long since disappeared, and the west and south walls were gone, substantial sections of the east and north walls remained. A drawing (Dubois 1896:162) showing what had once been the interior-later used as a cemetery-indicates that none of the col-

umns had survived above what had become ground level. But some stumps may have been sheltered below the sur- face. Landor, who visited Djenne in De- cember 1906, wrote that "many of the columns had already been reconstructed" (1907, vol. 2:461). It is uncertain whether this implies that each new col- umn exactly replaced an old one.

The new mosque was built with forced labor.42 Commander Bleu ordered the chiefs of villages within his jurisdiction to provide workers. At the time the cercle of Djenne was very large, stretching from Ke Masina to the west to Lake Debo to the northeast. This meant that many laborers came, hundreds of whom would work on the mosque and medersa at any one time. They usually worked for a week, then returned home for a month (A. Diete, Tientao, interviews). At the site, to give the workers "courage," musicians played drums and flutes con- stantly (Landor 1907, vol. 2:461) except during food breaks (Kolado Sidibe, as told to Alkhouri, interview). Tons of mud, sand, rice-husks, effluent, and thousands of gallons of water were dug, lugged, mixed, molded into bricks, and set into place. The work was hard, its pace ruthlessly enforced by African guards (Landoure, interview). People died, some from overwork, others from diseases contracted when exhaustion weakened their resistance (Yonou, interview). Other local mosques, including Sekou Amadou's, had been built with similarly unwilling laborers (Tientao, interview).

Ismaila Traore, head of Djenne's guild of masons renowned throughout the Sahel, was the architect for the reconstruction (Y. Salamantao, Sao, interviews). He had to deal with a design problem that arose over the two stair- cases providing access to the roof and the towers' upper portions. The planned stair, like those of many mosques in the region (e.g., at Kauly and Dyera), would have risen in an uncovered single flight without a turn,from the courtyard to the north and south corners of the roof's west edge. The steps themselves would have formed the hypotenuses of two large triangles. Traore realized that the unusual height of the mosque's roof rendered the traditional design unwork- able for two reasons. The stairs would take up too much space in the courtyard (Kontao, interview). Also, acting to an extent like two large buttresses, they might apply too much weight against the wall of the mosque.

A young mason named Madedeo Kos- sinentao solved the dilemma. With permission from senior masons, he and a "secret team" went to the construction site at night and built two sets of stairs in the form of a spiral, which avoided both situations. The stairs were adopted, their originality appreciated. But for having

had the temerity to solve a problem that had baffled his seniors, Kossinentao was banished from the city (O. Cisse, interview). His stairs stand today. That this drama took place within the hierarchy of the masons guild tends to confirm the idea that no French engineers took part in the mosque's reconstruction.

If the French cannot be credited with primary responsibility for the mosque's actual construction, there remains another issue. To what extent did they influence its style? The doyenne of Sahe- lian architectural studies, Labelle Prus- sin, maintains that the French inspired and controlled much of its appearance. Her argument focusses on the design of the monument's eastern facade (Fig. 1), "the mosque's colonial face" (1986:184), which, being "perfectly aligned, geomet- rically ordered," and "axially symmetrical" (1986:186), reflects, in her view, the influence of "French engineers trained in the Ecole Polytechnique and coached in the rationalism of Viollet-le-Duc" (1977:73). In three different discussions Prussin uses the term "symmetry" seven times to argue a French connection in the facade's design (1974:21, 1977:73,75; 1986:185-86). She asserts, for instance (1986:185), that the arrangement of the towers - a tall one flanked by two shorter ones - is derived from the "tripartite neoclassical mode" of an 1893 French construction, the Residence of Segou.

Her argument is flawed for two reasons, I believe. First, the symmetry of the facade is not necessarily "alien" (Prussin 1977:75), the result of French influence. Even if the original mosque's facade was asymmetrical (as we have seen, one tower was probably in the center and the other to the left), there is a strong local tradition of symmetrical facades - seen in the classic Djenne house (Monteil 1932:190-92). Second, the facade in fact does not display rigorous symmetry. Applied columns rise from earth to roof- line and culminate in conical points. Their number does not balance "properly" on either side of the central axis. Between the central and right towers, there are four columns; between the central and left towers, five. Between the right tower and northeast corner there are five columns; between the left tower and southeast corner, four.

Observing that "traditionally, West Af- rican mosques" are "more often than not

TOP. 6. THE ROOF OF THE PRESENT MOSQUE. ROWS OF CERAMIC LIDS CLOSE AIR VENTS. IN EXTREMELY HOT WEATHER THE VENTS CAN BE UNCOVERED, ALLOWING THE ESCAPE OF SUPERHEATED AIR UNDER THE ROOF THIS DRAWS IN COOLER AIR BELOW, THROUGH AN AR- CADE THAT FACES THE WEST COURTYARD. SUMMITS OF THE THREE EAST-FACADE MINARETS ARE CROWNED WITH OSTRICH EGGS, SYMBOLS OF PURITY AND FERTIL- ITY. BOTTOM: 7. A WOMAN DESCENDS THE NORTH STEPS. SHE HAS JUST FILLED EARTHEN POTS WITH' WATER THAT WORSHIPPERS USE FOR RITUAL CLEANS- ING BEFORE THEY ENTER THE MOSQUE.

60

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enveloped on all sides by narrow alleys and earthen walls," Prussin (1986:185) argues that the Great Mosque's eastern or "marketplace facade and the expansive vista which the marketplace affords reflect the preference and influence of French colonial military administrators." But the "expansive vista" in question long antedates both the arrival of the French and the creation of the marketplace. It resulted from the fact that, until the French drained it, a pond lay immediately to the east of the mosque (Dubois 1896:146; Prussin 1986:185). From the neighborhood of Konofia the principal facade of the ancient mosque was highly visible across the pond, as is the present mosque across the marketplace, in a wide and dramatic view. If, as is quite possible, these views did in some way inspire the monumentality of the facade, they did so independently of the French. Perhaps the occurrence of pointed arches in the mosque's interior reflects French influence. But it is important to note that a pointed arch appeared in the minaret of Timbuktu's Sidi Yahya mosque (Landor 1907, vol. 2:opp. 406) and another apparently in a tower in the ruins of Koi Konboro's mosque itself (Fig. 4).

The mosque's design is, in my opin- ion, much less French than Sahelian. Its most prominent features reflect local political iconography. They are declara- tions of interethnic rivalry - and victory - in architectural form. Sanfo's indigenous-Djenne alliance repudiated Sekou Amadou's memory and ex- pressed its own triumph by incorporat- ing three key features. The first was the mosque's towers. As we have seen, Amadou was strongly against towers. But for centuries they had been a key fea- ture of the architectural image of Tim- buktu, a city long dominated by anti- Peul lineages of the Qadria Islamic brotherhood (see Saad 1983:219-23) and the home of Oumar Sanfo's anti-Peul mentor, Ahmad al-Bakkai. At the turn of the century, the principal towers of all three major mosques in Timbuktu were quite similar (Dubois 1896:279, 300, 311). From a rectangular ground-plan four tapering sides rose to a summit crowned by a small, central, bullet-shaped ornament. Most of the sides were studded with toron occurring in regularly spaced rows.43 The towers of the new Great Mosque of Djenne displayed all these elements.

Two other important features of the reconstruction embodied a shift in at- titude. The ceiling's height was raised from Sekou Amadou's low seven cubits to magisterial proportions - about 12 meters. And a women's gallery was included. In Amadou's mosque women, whose status was low at the time, did not pray - either in the building or in its open courtyard44 (Fofana, interview),

which was bounded on the west by a simple wall pierced by two doors (Fig. 5). In the new mosque the wall was replaced by a narrow, single-story structure reserved for women (Prussin 1974:22). Towers, high ceilings, and women's gallery - all dramatized indigenous Djenne's turning away from Peul spiritual and political leadership.45

The mosque's cover story hid complex strategies behind a simple account. As time went on, history rewritten probably shifted from conscious deception to un- conscious self-deception - from Afri- cans' saying that the French built the mosque to their believing that they did. In the process, the stereotypes of the helpless Africans and the strong, generous French have been reinforced. Better to break the covenant of silence and reveal the mosque for what it is - a basically African monument with a past marked by intrigue - than to let it remain a gratuitous gift, more a chapter in colonial than local history.

It is clear that the French played a role. Beginning in 1893 they imposed peace on an area torn for thirty years by war and mass deportations. Without this pax Gal- lica the mosque could never have been built. The French also cooperated with local requests to arrange for forced labor, and they contributed money - what fraction remains uncertain. Neverthe- less, in its politics, design, technology, and grandeur, the mosque is largely local in origin - glorious evidence of an ancient tradition vital in the modern world.

Every spring Djenne's mosque is replastered (Fig. 8). This is a festival at once awesome, messy, meticulous, and fun. For weeks beforehand, mud is cured. Low vats of the sticky mixture are periodically churned by barefoot boys. The night before the plastering, moonlit streets echo with chants, switch-pitch drums, and lilting flutes. Not far from the mosque, a crowd of boys and men huddle in a dense mass, each bearing on his head a small, shallow basket. A high whistle blows three short beats. On the fourth, perfectly cued, a hundred voices roar, and the throng sets off on a massive mud-fetch. By dawn the actual replastering has been underway for some time. Crowds of young women, heads erect under the burden of buckets brimming with water, approach at a walk. Other teams, bringing mud, charge shouting through the huge main square and swarm across the mosque's terrace, where they dump their load. Elegant in flowing robes, elders - including many marabouts - sit on the terrace wall and smile on the mayhem. Mud-stained men yell directions, warnings, and encour- agement. Mixing work and play, young boys dash everywhere, some caked with mud from head to toe. Against the mosque's facade lean twelve-meter-long ladders, so wide that two men can easily

stand on the same rung. Many pairs do, slapping on and smoothing mud with their bare hands. Above them, others perch on toron.46 Should a plasterer fall while working on high, it is said occult spells will keep him uninjured. Quick as a wink he will change into a lizard and scamper down the wall. On the ground and unharmed, he regains his human form (Gaba, Y. Nientao, interviews).

Over the years Djenne's inhabitants have resisted attempts to change the character of their extraordinary mosque. They rejected a purist's demand to sup- press the use of drums during replastering (B. Diete, interview). In the 1930s, a French administrator decided he would "improve" the mosque; he had it painted red (D. Cisse, Fofana, A.D. Yarro, interviews). The people of Djenne thought he was crazy.47 After one rainy season, the mosque resumed its normal color. When offers were made by the Saudis to rebuild the mosque in concrete and later by the Libyans to tile its sand floor, Djenne declined (Kontao, interview).48 Other mosques in the region daily use public address systems. But not Djenne. Five times a day a robed muezzin stands on the northeast corner of the mosque's terrace and calls the town to prayer. Just before dawn, two muezzins are used. Their intertwining songs flow over hundreds of hushed roof-terraces. The mosque's facade looms dark against a pale sky. At this special moment, Djenne's devotion to her heritage seems particularly sweet, haunting, and strong.

Establishing that Djenne's first Great Mosque stood for some six centuries and that the third is a genuinely African monument may help influence attitudes toward Black African civilization.49 At last the extraordinary sophistication of African artistic and oral-epic traditions is being generally recognized. Architec- tural monuments and writing are no longer needed to honor a culture as "great." But the crude equivalence of monuments with civilization has been merely shaken, not abandoned. Con- sequently both Africans and Westerners tend to celebrate with special urgency those rare African buildings whose im- pressive longevity or scale inspires awe. The corrected history of Djenne's Great Mosques helps restore to Africans not only two architectural treasures but im- pressive chapters in a proud past. OD

Notes, page 90

8. THE MOSQUE'S EAST FACADE BEING REPLASTERED. EVERY SPRING IN DJENNE, THE DATE OF THE GREAT MOSQUE'S REPLASTERING IS THE SUBJECT OF DEBATE. ELDERS FROM DIFFERENT QUARTERS DISCUSS THE MATTER WITH SENIOR MASONS WHO HAVE SUPERVISED THE CURING OF NEEDED MUD. THE DATE OF THE FESTI- VAL IS SET ONLY A FEW WEEKS BEFORE IT OCCURS. THE ACTUAL REPLASTERING TAKES PLACE IN TWO STAGES A WEEK OR SO APART, WITH EACH HALF OF THE TOWN RESPONSIBLE FOR HALF THE MOSQUE. IT IS A CONTEST; THE GROUPS ARE TIMED AND ONE WINS.

62

Smith, Fred T. 1978. "Gurensi Basketry and Pottery," African Arts 12, 1: 78-81.

Valentin, Peter. 1970. "Raffia im Kameruner Grasland," Ethnologische Zeitschrift Zirich 1:67-73.

Warnier, Jean-Pierre. 1985. Echanges, developpement et hierar- chies dans le Bamenda pre-colonial (Cameroun). Studien zur Kulturkunde 76. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesba- den.

HART, notes, from page 74

My research on Temne art has been supported by grants from the British Academy and the University of Ulster. I would also like to acknowledge the help received from curatorial staff in the various museums consulted, and in particular that of Bob Eckett in the Museum of Mankind, who drew my attention to the existence of Wellcome A54519. Lastly, my thanks to the C.M.S. archivist Rosemary Keen and to Rosemary Milligan and Mary Harding in the archives of the Wellcome Founda- tion. 1. Leon Siroto (1977) was the first to suggest that these masks

might be Temne. 2. The mask is III C 5557 in the museum catalogue. For a brief account of Vohsen's career, see Hargreaves 1958. 3. Vohsen 1883. The information about the mask came in a letter from Dr. J. Koloss, February 1986. 4. The two Vienna masks are numbered 83,766 and 83,767

respectively. Photocopies of the original documentation were

supplied me by Dr. A. Duchateau. 5. J.C. Stevens' Catalogue, Sept. 24,1918, Lot 167. It has the Wellcome accession number 54519. 6. It appears in the Museum of Mankind registers as 1952 Af.7.15. 7. Personal communication Rosemary Keen, C.M.S. Ar-

chivist, January 1986. 8. Quoted in a letter to me by Philip Lewis, Curator of

Ethnography in the Field Museum, in March 1984. The mask has the catalogue number 175955. Other items in the donation included a large black wooden mask, without brass ornamen- tation but with a prominent nose and open beak-like mouth, and a metal trident described in Hambly 1931. 9. Inv. Nr. 33.43.1. Personal communication by Dr. M. Kecskesi, March 1986. 10. Museum of Mankind reg. no. 1953 A.25.1. 11. Despite the fact that the collector of the Munich mask worked in the Gold Coast, the style of the piece makes it un-

likely that it originated in that country. It is possible that it was

bought by him in Freetown on the voyage home. 12. It was purchased by a Mr. Simpson. 13. Its Wellcome accession ("A") number is 28919; its register ("R") number is 26735. It was Lot 239 in the Stevens auction of

July 22, 1924. 14. Personal communication, Mary Harding, Asst. Archivist, Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, December 1985. 15. The second mask was Lot 240. Its Wellcome accession number was 28920 (register number not known). It is possible that one of the two Wellcome masks mentioned later in the text whose Wellcome numbers seem anomalous is the mis-

sing mask. 16. Its Museum of Mankind "R" number is 22497. 17. I owe this information to Mary Harding, Asst. Archivist in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. The recording and

registering of objects for the Wellcome Collection was chaotic, and registration often occurred twenty-five years or more after acquisition. 18. The numbers are uncertain. Figure 14 may be 22523, Fig- ure 13, 2053. 19. I understand, however, that the Museum ceased collect-

ing ethnographic material in the late 1930s. 20. It has subsequently been reattributed to the Toma, ac-

cording to information given to me by D.L. Jones of the

Ipswich Museum. For reasons which I needn't go into here, I would be sceptical of its alleged link with the Human Leopard society. It was reregistered as 1928/81.1. after having been originally registered as 1905/2. 21. For a full account of the Temne male initiation, see Lamp 1978. 22. On the basis of some remarks by Alldridge (1901) about the Yassi society being the "society of spots" and having spots on its various implements, it has been assumed that masks with spots must be Yassi masks. There is one so-called Yassi mask in Hommel 1974. In appearance it seems to me more likely to be a Bemba mask.






















































Ipswich Museum. For reasons which I needn't go into here, I would be sceptical of its alleged link with the Human Leopard society. It was reregistered as 1928/81.1. after having been originally registered as 1905/2. 21. For a full account of the Temne male initiation, see Lamp 1978. 22. On the basis of some remarks by Alldridge (1901) about the Yassi society being the "society of spots" and having spots on its various implements, it has been assumed that masks with spots must be Yassi masks. There is one so-called Yassi mask in Hommel 1974. In appearance it seems to me more likely to be a Bemba mask. 23. See my article (1986) "Aron Arabai: The Temne Mask of

Chieftaincy," African Arts, 19,2. Bibliography Alldridge, T. J. 1901. The Sherbro and its Hinterland. London.

Bastian, Adolf. 1894. Ethnologisches Notizblatt. Berlin.

Frobenius, Leo. 1898. Die Masken und Geheimbunde Afrikas.

23. See my article (1986) "Aron Arabai: The Temne Mask of












Halle. Hambly, Wilford Dyson. 1931. "A Trident from Sierra Leone in

the Collections of the Field Museum of Natural History," in Man 31.

Hargreaves, J. D. 1958. A Life of Sir Samuel Lewis. London. Hart, W.A. 1986. "Aron Arabai: The Temne Mask of Chief-

taincy," African Arts 19, 2. Hommel, William L., ed. 1974. Art of the Mende. College Park.

Lamp, Fred. 1978. "Frogs into Princes: The Temne Rabai Ini- tiation," African Arts 11, 2.

Lommel, A., ed. Afrikanische Kunst. Text by Maria Kecskesi. Munich.

Meneghini, Mario. 1972. "The Bassa Mask," African Arts 6, 1. Siroto, Leon. 1977. Review of Afrikanische Kunst, in African

Arts 10, 4. Vohsen, Ernst. 1883. "Eine Reise durch das Timmene-Land,"

in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen. von Sydow, Erich. 1930. Handbuch der Westafrikanischen Plastik.

Berlin.

DIKE, notes, from page 78 I wish to thank my friend, the Reverend Father Adrian Ed- wards, for his copious and incisive remarks on an earlier draft of this paper and for drawing my attention to a number of relevant publications. 1. Though based on a constitutional monarchy, the state is

composed of political segments based on descent, each exer-

cising defined political roles that emphasize cohesion in the

system. 2. The Achadu used to be depicted as an outsider, a former slave, though now he is said to have been a Yoruba hunter and aristocrat. 3. These incorporated chiefs were assigned responsibilities of state and acted as administrative heads in the districts where their clans were centered. They also had access to the Ata's court. The Ochalla Angwa, Olimanu Angwa, and the Olimanu Ata, who were of Hausa extraction and were versed in the Koran and Islamic law, were appointed as scribes and

judges in the Ata's court, while the chiefs Abbokko Onukwu Ata, of Igbo origin, and Agaidoko, of Igbirra origin, repre- sented him in the riverine areas around Igbo and Ibaji coun-

try. The Agaikodo, noted for his honesty, was further ele- vated in the hierarchy; he was in charge of ensuring the

peace, controlling the markets, and performing military as-

signments. 4. For detailed accounts of the Igala-Nsukka relationship see Shelton (1971). His book raises important questions but is

open to criticism. 5. Examples include the controversies between Ata Onuche and Achadu Atiko and between Ata Atabo and Achadu Anekwu Ogodo in 1922, which led to Anekwu's deposition. 6. For a concise account of indirect rule as a policy see Perham 1960. 7. Many Igala claim Yoruba origin. The historian Okowli writes that "the Igalas were a branch of the Yoruba group of

people but broke off from this group before the Yoruba found-

ing fathers settled at Ile-Ife." I have found no evidence so far to support this view. 8. To speak of court art among the Igala might seem to distin-

guish too sharply between the art of Idah (the capital) and that of the rest of Igala country. 9. My argument is drawn from my fieldwork at Arochukwu

(see Dike 1978) and Wukari. Although my family comes from

Enugwu-Ukwu, one of the towns of the precolonial Nri con-

federacy, for Nri I shall rely on Onwuejeogwu's excellent

study (1981). 10. An enormous amount of ink has been spilled by an-

thropologists on the Swazi and Zulu first fruits ceremonies.

The best discussion seems to be in Berglund 1976.

Bibliography Armstrong, Robert. 1955. "The Igala," in Peoples of the Niger-

Benue Confluence, ed. Daryll Forde. London.

Ben-Amos, Paula. 1976. "Men and Animals in Benin Art," Man (une).

Berglund, A.I. 1976. Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism. London.

Boston, J.S. 1968. The Igala Kingdom. Ibadan.

Bradbury, R.E. 1973 Benin Studies. London. Dike, PC. 1984. "Some Items of Igala Regalia," (research

note), African Arts 17,2:70-71. Dike, PC. 1978. "Arochukwu, an Ethnographic Summary,"

Nigerian Field 43,2. Dike, PC. 1977. "Symbolism and Political Authority in the










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Igala Kingdom." Ph.D. thesis, University of Nigeria. Frazer, James. 1911. The Golden Bough. London.

Laird, M. and R.A.K. Oldfield. 1837. Narrative of an Expedition into the Interior of Africa, vols. 1,2. London.

Mair, Lucy. 1977. African Kingdoms. Oxford.

Mercier, Paul. 1954. "The Fon of Dahomey," in African Worlds,













ed. Daryll Forde. London. Muller, Jean-Claude. 1981. "Divine Kingship in Chiefdoms

and States - A Single Ideological Model," in The Study of the State, eds. M.J.M. Claessen and P. Shalnik. The Hague.

Okwoli. P. 1973. A Short History of Igala. Ilorin.

Onwuejeogwu, M.N. 1981. An Igbo Civilization: Nri Kingdom and Hegemony. London.

Perham, Margery. 1960. Lugard, the Years of Authority 1898- 1945. London: Collins.

Seligman, C.G. 1934. Egypt and Negro Africa. London. Shelton, A.J. 1971. Thle Igbo-Igala Borderland: Religion and Social

Control in an Indigenous African Colonialism. Albany. Vansina, Jan. 1978. Tihe Children of Woot. Madison, WI.

Young, M.W. 1966. "The Divine Kingship of the Jukun. A Re-evaluation of Some Theories," Africa 36, 135-53.

BOURGEOIS, notes, from page 63 The basic research for this article was carried out in Djenne between December 1983 and April 1984. It was funded by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, to which I am deeply grateful. Many thanks are due the Ma- lians cited in the following notes, who are all from Djenne unless otherwise noted. My special appreciation goes to Mamadou Kamara, Sekou Kontao, Alpha Moi Sanfo, and

Djafar Sanfo. I also wish to thank Ali Ongoiba at the Archives du Mali, Saliou M'Baye at the Archives du Senegal, and espe- cially Mamadou Ibra Sail at the Institut Cheikh Anta Diop (Dakar). 1. Pronounced as in GENtle plus Nay. The local spelling seems preferable to the Anglicized Jenne or Jene. 2. The date of the mosque's construction is not sure. Sadi

(1964:23) puts it at about 1200, Mauny (1961:495) about 1330. See Triaud 1973:127-34. 3. Djenne's history is not well documented. Saad points out that Djenne "has left us no substantial chronicle of its own" (Saad 1983:129). Two important sources are regional histories

originally in Arabic, completed in the seventeenth century (Sadi 1964, Kati 1964). Neither chronicle concentrates on

Djenne. Dubois (1896, 1911) includes some oral history of

Djenne, as does Monteil (1903, 1932). Ba and Daget's (1984) compilation of Peul oral tradition includes material on

Djenne. It mentions (p.153) that in 1821 the Peuls transferred

many manuscripts in Arabic to their capital Hamdallahi, which was later destroyed. Meniaud (1912:21), who visited

Djenne in 1910, notes an active tradition of "official" and unof- ficial chronicles but complains that the French are denied access to them. It is widely believed in Djenne today that a number of prominent families have important collections of old documents. If this is so, the notables are reluctant to show them - some say out of courtesy, because varying accounts

by different ethnic groups challenge cherished details of fam-

ily histories. 4. Following the oral traditions of his day, Sadi (1964:23) put the date at about 800. Some modern historians suggest the later date. For a good critical review of decades of arguments, see McIntosh and McIntosh 1981: 9-10. The old site was abandoned by 1400. 5. Y. Toure (interview) told the story of Koi Konboro's conversion in full. In two other interviews, Samounou and M.A. Sidibe told slightly shorter versions. 6. A French word meaning "a person of considerable religious learning," marabout is widely used in the Sahel. Brav- mann (1983:114) traces it to the Arabic murabit, a "man who is 'tied' or 'attached' to God." Monteil (1932:149) identifies by name and birthplace alone the marabout who converted Koi Konboro as Fode Sanoro from Touara. But this seems a confu- sion with Fode - a title (see Kati 1964:173) - Sanou, also from Touara, whom Sadi (1964:32-33) identified as a cadi, or judge, who served much later under Askia Mohammed. 7. It is no coincidence that the legend depicts Islam, Djenne's soul, rescued by a denizen of the river, another example of

Djenne's debt to the life-giving Bani. 8. If he made one at all. Sadi (1964:23-25) mentions no such journey. 9. Sadi (1964:166) says "all the inhabitants." But it is not clear whether this means everyone or just the men. 10. View no. 1: north wall, ca. 1895. Dubois 1896:161. View no. 2: north wall, (interior), ca. 1895. Dubois 1896:162. View no. 3:

Fig. 2. North and east walls. View no. 4: north and east walls. Postcard marked "Colonies francaises, Senegal & Soudan, Ruines de Djenne [sic] (Moyen Niger)." (Postcard collection, Institut Cheikh Anta Diop. Universite de Dakar.) During printing, the negative of this photograph was flopped; left and right































































Fig. 2. North and east walls. View no. 4: north and east walls. Postcard marked "Colonies francaises, Senegal & Soudan, Ruines de Djenne [sic] (Moyen Niger)." (Postcard collection, Institut Cheikh Anta Diop. Universite de Dakar.) During printing, the negative of this photograph was flopped; left and right are reversed. View no. 5: distant view of north wall. Postcard marked "405. Afrique Occidentale-Soudan - Djenni' - Viue

d'ensemble, Collection Generale Fortier, Dakar." (Postcard collec-

tion, Institut Cheikh Anta Diop, Universite de Dakar.) View no. 6: Fig. 3. View no. 7: Fig. 4. 11. Dubois 1896:154 (also see p.158). In both French editions

are reversed. View no. 5: distant view of north wall. Postcard marked "405. Afrique Occidentale-Soudan - Djenni' - Viue









90 90 90 90

as well as the American, the text reads "Kasbah" for "Kaabah." But this is a misprint, an interpretation supported by another instance (p.156) where Dubois speaks of the "kas-

bah" (sic) toward which the mosque's eastern wall faced. 12. The term "Peul" generally refers to a people also known as the Fulani who live in areas from Senegal through Nigeria. In Mali, the name "Peul" designates a particular, local Fulani

group. 13. Sekou Amadou was born about 1775 in a village of Peul cattle-herders near Djenne. His father was a Muslim cleric. As a young man, Amadou wove rope (Sow 1978:46) and studied with minor marabouts in Djenne. 14. See Willis 1967. Trimingham (1970:177) and others believe that, as a younger man, Amadou had traveled to what is now northern Nigeria and participated in the jihad of Uthman Dan Fodio. But the Peul historian Amadou Hampate Ba

(interview, January 1986) disputes this. 15. The mosque was the first building constructed in Hamdallahi (Arsoukoula n.d.:16). Including its courtyard, it measured 70 meters square (Brasseur 1968:419). It had no towers (Ba & Daget 1984:47; Bari, interview). Diarassouba's mention (1983:21, 40) of its "minarets" is a literary trope. 16. Callie noted that in Timbuktu there were five neighborhood mosques, "small and built like private homes, except that each is surmounted by a minaret" (Caillie 1830:340). Monteil (1903:303) listed eleven "important" neighborhoods. The number of local mosques that Amadou found in Djenne varies widely depending on the source - A. Korobara (interview), 5; V. Monteil (1971:96), 9; C. Monteil (1932:150), "not less than nine"; Diete (interview), 13; Yattara (interview), 14. Bia Bia (interview) says that in the history of Djenne there has been a total of 34 mosques. 17. Monteil did not draw upon the view of Peul marabouts. He mentions almost none in his monograph, while listing (1932:158) in detail the spiritual lineage of many members of the Tidjania Islamic brotherhood, to which the Peuls did not belong. 18. Ismaila Barey Traore was the son of Bilal Barey Traore. The building campaign for Amadou Sekou's mosque occurred from A.H. 1249 (A.D. 1834/35) to A.H. 1250 (A.D. 1835/36) (Undated document in the collection of Djafar Sanfo, written by his great-grandfather, Mohammed Lamine Sanfo, who died in A.H. 1290 [1883/84]). Coincidentally, the architect of the present mosque was also an Ismaila Traore. 19. Letter from Sekou Amadou (Johnson 1976:484). Amadou believed that the first mosques in Islam had no minarets (Ba, interview July 8, 1985). 20. Seven cubits, according to Bari (interview). Tientao (interview), born about 1891, remembers that as a young man he could touch the ceiling of the mosque with a stick. 21. According to Amadou, the presence of bats during prayer would taint it. Also proscribed were women (because of menstrual blood), mares, camels, monkeys, dogs, rabbits, and (in Fulfulde) guedel allah, probably crickets (Bari, interview). 22. The following sequence, though not its analysis, is taken from Ba and Daget (1984:154). Koita (interview) corroborates the series by saying that Askia Mohammed built a mosque on the eastern site before Sekou Amadou did and that the western-site mosque that Amadou suppressed was "built by Arabs." The tradition is considered accurate or plausible by Delafosse (1912, vol. 2:275) Marty (1920-21, vol. 2:235), and Mauny (1961:494). Prussin (1974:17,19; 1986:182) notes the dis- crepancy between the "straightforward" and "complex" se- quences. Neither she nor Snelder (1984:70-71) chooses between them. 23. Sekou Amadou deliberately modeled his state "after an idealized version of the Songhai empire" (Saad 1983:215). 24. Snelder calls the eastern site "site A," the western "site B." If this nomenclature is applied, the Peul version of the

building sequence through Sekou Amadou's mosque is B-A-B-A-B (Snelder 1984:71). 25. B. Yarro (interview) identifies the site as "Mandougou." In Manding, madougou - literally "the land of the master"- means "royal palace" (Kati 1964:98, 335; see Monteil 1932:39, 194). In Timbuktu, though its palace had disappeared by the seventeenth century, a site retained the name Madougou until at least as late as the early twentieth (Kati 1964:335). 26. Amadou's version has recently produced a variant. The Peul historian Ousmane Cisse (interview) asserts that Koi Konboro constructed not one but two mosques, one on each site. And when I challenged the sequence described in his Empire Peul du Macina, Amadou Hampate Ba - more tenta- tive than Cisse - volunteered the "possibility" that Koi Kon- boro might have built two mosques (interview, January 1986). Corroborated by no other source, and manifestly im- plausible, the variant's importance is not historical but political. It reflects, I suggest, a shift toward compromise - the willingness of two kinsmen, moderates by nature, more in- terested in harmony than "purity," to soften the orthodox

Peul tradition in an effort to heal old wounds. 27. The capture of Djenne cost the invaders 14 lives, among them two French officers, and 57 wounded, including 6 French. The city's losses were far higher - 510 dead and

probably over 1,000 wounded (Meniaud 1931:401-2). (Though well intentioned, the account in Baratier (n.d.:93-95) of

"Djenne's chief's" noble suicide following his defeat is pure fantasy. 28. How ironic that one of the earliest and staunchest West- ern champions of African art, Leiris (1934:92), should have branded the mosque as foreign. About this time the travel writer Paul Morand stopped in Djenne. Like many others, he was astonished that rain had not ravaged the grandeur of the

mosque. Unlike others, he did not settle for wonder but po- sited an "explanation" at once foolish and splendid. He wrote that every year the mosque was totally rebuilt (Morand 1928:134). 29. The establishment of medersas was a colony-wide policy (Froelich 1962:169). French interest in adapting the Algerian model to West Africa occurred as early as 1899 (Pradelle 1973:36). 30. The letter's date is particularly important. On April 13 the

mosque was inaugurated, and four days later Bleu mailed the text of the iman's inaugural address to Ponty in Kayes (Bleu 1907). Ponty had ample time to receive this letter before send- ing his own. Ponty visited Djenne again in January 1911. But the source mentions neither mosque nor medersa (Sonolet 1912:8). 31. Two plans of the present mosque have been published. The one in Prussin 1974:18 and 1986:183 is reproduced by Snelder (1984:66). Another is in Ago 1982:42. Neither plan indicates the varying widths of the columns. Incidentally, al-

though Gardi (1973:241) asserts the columns' mud encases wooden posts, the pillars are in fact solid mud. 32. In Timbuktu, Saad (1983:283) notes, "in the mid- nineteenth century the repair of the Sankore mosque from a state of virtual ruin" cost a sum "equivalent to 600 blocks of salt." In 1902 in Djenne, a block of salt cost 45 francs (Monteil 1932:270). The parallel is obviously subject to various qualifi- cations. But it is still of some interest that the cost thus calcu- lated comes to a figure, 27,000 francs, considerably more than what the French spent on both the mosque and the medersa. 33. Ba (interview, January 11, 1986) disputes this, claiming that Ponty paid for it all. 34. His investiture in Bandiagara marked the end of the Tukulor empire (Oloruntimehin 1977:314). 35. Monteil 1903:109,112; 1932:155-56; Felvre 1909:125-26. The Sanfo family was at once Marka and Songhai. For the puzzl- ing reason why, see Monteil 1932:125-26. Identification as Marka is at least partly voluntary. The family originally came from Djindio, a town northeast of Djenne on Lake Debo. Ac- cording to legend, an early ancestor, Zacharia, was invited to

Djenne to resolve the problem caused by the deaths of a series of leaders, or imams, of Djenne's Great Mosque, each after only a few months in office. Zacharia arranged the appoint- ment of Almamy Ismaila, who proceeded to hold the office for forty-two years (A.M. Sanfo, D. Sanfo interviews). 36. The Peul leader in question was Ahmadou Kisso Cisse (Monteil 1903:120). The city's titular head was Ba Hasseye Maiga, and his son was Sekou Hasseye Maiga. See Bleu 1907. 37. "The French ruled. They did what they want" (Bia Bia interview). "The local people had no power" (Koita interview).

38. Despite all the hype and hope that the French devoted to the medersa (Anonymous 1907b; Haywood 1912:161), they were unable to recruit 30 students from the Djenne cercle

population of 70,000. After two years they expanded their search to neighboring cercles as well (Felvre 1909:119-22; Bre- vie 1923:250). Even so, in 1913, the medersa closed (Marty 1920-21, vol. 2: 259). It seems the structure survived until

1955, when it was replaced by the current school building (Anonymous 1958:245). The west end of the school's south wall is said to incorporate part of the south wall of Sekou Amadou's

mosque (0. Cisse interview). 39. Mama Koina, as told to B. Yarro (interview); Bia Bia

(interview). 40. A.M. Sanfo and D. Sanfo (interviews) also support this version. 41. According to Moussa Sow, of the Institut des sciences

humaines, Bamako, there is no word in the Peul language, Fulfulde, for "defeat." One says instead, "withdrawal." 42. A total of twenty-one people interviewed in Djenne stated this. 43. Their relative symmetry, probably due to North African

influence, contrasts with their more random arrangement on

mosques with more conical towers, of which the most im-

pressive example in the area is at Dougouba (Pelos 1985:30- 31). But there is no need, as Prussin suggests (1974:20-21), to

assign the strict order of Djenne's toron to modern influence. 44. A courtyard view that Gardi (1973:240) identifies as being of Djenne's mosque is in fact a view of the Great Mosque of San. It is a shame, given the paucity of information on Djen- ne's mosque, that one respected source is erroneous. 45. In contrast to the mosque, the medersa was clearly a French colonial structure (for a drawing based on a photo see Dubois 1911:214). True, it saluted Djenne's distinctive architecture: phallic pinnacles crowned the corners of the facade, and almost thirty triangular finials, expanded from the classic set of five over a central doorway, extended over almost the entire front facade. But these details adorned a

building with emphatically non-African features. Unlike even the grandest Djenne house, whose windows are ex-

tremely small, the medersa displayed a second-story open arcade over a ground-floor open colonnade. These sets of open- ings lit verandas allowing, on each floor, circulation among four rooms (Marty 1920-21, vol. 2:259) that were much larger than in any traditional Djenne house. 46. The placement of toron on the Djenne's mosque's eastern facade has varied over the years. In April 1984, for example, horizontal rows of toron adorned the two facade surfaces between central and flanking towers and the two between the flanking towers and the north and south corners. But not long ago, toron occurred only between the north tower and north corner (updated postcards, author's collection; also see Gardi 1973:238-39). For many years the facade's south corner quoin (east wall) displayed toron at three levels. In 1984, they occurred at eight, presumably rearranged during a major repair that was performed about 1972 (Dembele, interview). 47. They were right. When Georges Louis Oval finally left

Djenne, it was in manacles with a hammock thrown over him like a net (D. Cisse, interview). 48. Not far from Djenne, the fine mud-brick Great Mosque of San (Bourgeois & Pelos 1983) is in greater danger. A Saudi- backed Muslim brotherhood is seeking to replace it with a mosque in concrete.

CONTRIBUTORS

JEAN-LOUIS BOURGEOIS is co-author, with photographer Carollee Pelos, of Spectacular Ver- nacular, on traditional West African architecture. (A revised version is due out later this year.) Their Smithsonian exhibition of the same name will travel through 1988 at least. PATRICIA J. DARISH was Research Associate and Acting Curator of the Arts of Africa, the Pacific, and the Pre-Columbian Americas at the Indiana University Art Museum from 1983 to 1986, where she planned the installation of these collections and coordinated production of a catalogue. Currently residing in Kansas City, she is completing her dissertation on Kuba textiles and working on several projects related to Kuba arts. P. CHIKE DIKE is Chief Ethnographer, Head of Research and Documentation, Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments. He has done fieldwork throughout Nigeria, particularly among the Igala and Igbo. CHRISTRAUD GEARY, an anthropologist, is presently a Rockefeller Fellow at the National Mu- seum of African Art, where she is researching German colonial photographs from Cameroon. W.A. HART lectures in philosophy at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. In the early 1970s he was a lecturer at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. JEAN KENNEDY teaches African art history at the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oak- land, and has arranged many exhibitions for contemporary African artists.

91

49. Guibbert (1983:9-15) discusses the succession of authors who have assigned the origin of Sahelian architecture to

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Photographs, page: 29-41: Michael Cavanaugh and Kevin Montague 43: Dietrich Graf 44 (left), 81 (left): Hillel Burger 45 (left), 50 (right), 52 (right), 53 (bottom):

Antje Voight 45 (right): Alfred A. Monner 48, inside back cover: Christraud Geary 49: Werner Forman Archive 50 (left): Museum fuir Volkerkunde, Berlin 54-63: Carolee Pelos 64-67: Patricia Di Rubbo 69 (center & right): Fritz Mandl 73 (center): Christie, Manson & Woods 69 (left), 74 (right), 76: W. A. Hart 82: Cherie Sandum 83: John Povey

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BOOKS Rare, important, and out-of-print books on Af- rican, Primitive, and Ancient art purchased and sold. Catalogues available on request. Please write for further information. Michael Graves-Johnston, Bookseller. P.O. Box 532, London SW9 ODR, England. 01-274-2069. ANTIQUITIES For sale: Antiquities, Old African, Oceanic, other Primitive and Precolumbian art, artifacts and weapons. Specializing in early pieces with known provenance. Free illustrated catalogue. William Fagan, Box 425E, Fraser, Ml 48026.

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A.O.F. 3.3.

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superieure de Bamako. Triaud, Jean-Louis, 1973. Islam et societes soudanaises au moyen

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The following articles in this issue have been accepted for

publication after being refereed by members of the African Arts review panel: "Basketry in the Aghem-Fungom Area of the Cameroon

Grassfields," page 42. "The History of the Great Mosques of Djenne," page 54. "Masks with Metal-Strip Ornament from Sierra Leone,"

page 68.

"Regalia, Divinity, and State in Igala," page 75.

OPPOSITE PAGE. MBONG NKUO SAA LEI SAA OF WEH, CAMEROON, MAKING A COILED UTILITY BASKET WITH AN AWL, 1984 (SEE PAGE 42).

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