Jean-Louis Bourgeois - David Rifkind

The History of the Great Mosques of Djenné 

Author(s): Jean-Louis Bourgeois 

Source: African Arts, Vol. 20, No. 3, (May, 1987), pp. 54-92 

Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center 

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3336477 

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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 imposing 

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 successors: 

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 unquestioningly 

as the truth. Actually they are fabrications 

designed - until now successfully- 

to obscure the roles of powerful 

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 (McIntosh 

& McIntosh 1981:1). The present 

city3 was founded at a nearby site between 

800 and 1250.4 Now it is a relatively 

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 commerce, 

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 caravans 

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 Konboro, 

who probably lived during the 

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 Muslim 

sage or marabout named Ismaila6 settled 

in Djenne, Koi Konboro, angry 

thirteenth century. Konboro was the 

city's twenty-sixth king and its first to 

become a Muslim (Sadi 1964:24-25; Mon- 

and 

suspicious, sought an excuse to kill him. 

A counselor hit on a scheme. Lend Ismaila 

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 Ismaila 

a tobacco box filled with gold dust, 

which the marabout buried for safekeeping. 

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 summoned 

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 Konboro'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. Konboro's 

successor added towers to the 

mosque, and his, in turn, surrounded it 

with a wall (Sadi 1964:25-26). Its "galleries 

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 

54 

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 violent 

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 freestanding, 

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'seye-view 

drawing shows huge buttres- 

ses 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

-I.. p 

tower stood to its left (see Fig. 4, caption), 

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 re- 

plastering. 

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1. THE PRESENT GREAT, OR FRIDAY, MOSQUE, DJENNE'S THIRD, DESIGNED BY ISMAILA TRAORE, BUILT 1906-7. 

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. 

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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 irresponsible 

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 corrupted 

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 additional 

taxes if necessary. Negotiations 

were stalemated ostensibly while the 

grand council considered "how to suppress 

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 

collected in a pool on the roof, which collapsed, 

exposing 

Great Mosque's gutters (Diete, Maigalo, 

N. Cisse, S. Toure, interviews) "above 

and below" (Y. Toure, interview). Rain 

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 entered, 

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 northsouth 

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 

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 

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 

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 genealogy 

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- 

56 

r 

GREAT MOSQUES OF DJENNE 

PEUL SCENARIO TRUE SCENARIO 

WESTERN SITE EASTERN SITE j WESTERN SITE EASTERN SITE 

1200 .. ...MA.HALA TANA@PO.Mb.SQUEt. KOI KONBORO MOSQUE............... KOI KONBORO MOSQUE MAHALA TANAPO MOSQUE 

1300 ............. ........... ..... ....... I ................ O 

V ? O o ... ....................... O 

........................................ 

............... O ? . O ? ... ..... ............................................... O 

1400 1e -..r.......................I????????????????????????? 

o o............... I,ooo, 1... o......... o o...... ..... 

1500 * .... *oO-*00O--OOO-oo 

. 

e**-.*.- ASKIA MOHAMMED MOSQUE.o-.-oo-o . 

....... 

o-o- 

... .......,......................... .. . ................................... 0 

- O.-O .................................................. 

1600.. *O O .I 0 ....... O ................j. ................. 

MOROCCAN MOSQUE 

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

...... ............. .. ................. 

............................. 

........ 

1800 ... ......... ..... SEKOU AMADOU MOSQUE (1835) 

1900 '"PRESENT MOSQUE (1907)' -,-O- O ... oooo"o-@@@-@@. ... 4.---------1@@ 

* 

PRESENT 

RESENT 

MOSQUE 

SEKOU AMADOU MOSQUE

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 confirms 

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 concocting 

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 forgeries 

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, African, 

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 incontrovertible. 

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 

RUINED TOWER HERE SHOWN BEING RECLAD (FAR 

LEFT) OCCUPIED A POSITION ON THE LEFT OF THE 

FACADE. FROM LANDOR, ACROSS WIDEST AFRICA, 1907. 

Yli.a;?.;. .r 

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

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57

Landor. He visited Djenne in December 

1906, while the mosque was under construction. 

"The French are to be 

praised," he wrote, for their consideration 

toward the native people in reconstructing 

this place of worship for them 

(Landor 1907, vol. 2:461). At the inauguration, 

the mosque's imam, or leader, 

thanked the French effusively for "endowing" 

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 "handsomest 

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 having 

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 administration" 

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 examining 

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, patterned 

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 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, 

preoccupation 

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 "authorizing" 

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 engineers 

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 surveying 

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 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. 

photograph 

taken in the first week of December 1906 

shows that construction of 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 disproportionately 

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 building 

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 mosque, 

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 occupation. 

Reconstructing the monument 

would declare that Djenne was reasserting 

its psychological and spiritual inde- 

pendence. 

The issue, whose outcome would affect 

the very soul of the city, became 

where to put the medersa. There were 

58

.*? ,, 

.t *r.iur 

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 standing 

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 rea- 

son to resent the Peuls: in 1864 they and 

their allies had forced his father to abandon 

Hamdallahi and commit suicide. 

According to local historians in Bandiagara, 

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 threequarters 

of a century earlier: how to circumvent 

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 favorite 

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 al- 

lowing 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

porting, a useful version of an intriguing 

story39 about Ponty when he was commander 

of Djenne. It is said that he enjoyed 

changing at night into local clothing 

and walking the streets of the city. 

One evening he came upon Sanfo praying 

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 deserve." 

"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 Africa, 

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 personalizes 

and mythologizes the two 

leaders' connection. It shifts their association 

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). Finally, 

as time went on, they too subscribed 

to the fiction that the French in their omnipotence 

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 blameless, 

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 umns had survived above what had become 

ground level. But some stumps 

may have been sheltered below the surface. 

Landor, who visited Djenne in December 

1906, wrote that "many of the 

columns had already been reconstructed" 

(1907, vol. 2:461). It is uncertain 

whether this implies that each new column 

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 constantly 

(Landor 1907, vol. 2:461) except 

during 

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- 

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 staircases 

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 unworkable 

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 Kossinentao 

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 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 

having 

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 Sahelian 

architectural studies, Labelle Prussin, 

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, geometrically 

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 roofline 

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 African 

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 expan- 

sive 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 mar- 

ketplace. 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 princi- 

pal 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 impor- 

tant 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 orna- 

ment. 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 re- 

construction 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 in- 

cluded. 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), 

62 

which was bounded on the west by a 

simple wall pierced by two doors (Fig. 

5). In the new mosque the wall was re- 

placed by a narrow, single-story struc- 

ture reserved for women (Prussin 

1974:22). Towers, high ceilings, and 

women's gallery - all dramatized indi- 

genous 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, gener- 

ous French have been reinforced. Better 

to break the covenant of silence and re- 

veal the mosque for what it is - a basi- 

cally African monument with a past 

marked by intrigue - than to let it re- 

main 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 an- 

cient tradition vital in the modern world. 

Every spring Djenne's mosque is re- 

plastered (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 replaster- 

ing 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 replaster- 

ing (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, inter- 

views). 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 re- 

build 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 ter- 

race and calls the town to prayer. Just be- 

fore 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.

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 orig- 

inally 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. 


Arts 12, 1: 78-81. 




et hierar- 



den. 










tion. 













Af.7.15. 



















July 22, 1924. 







sing mask. 








ure 13, 2053. 










1978. 








Arts 12, 1: 78-81. 




et hierar- 



den. 










tion. 













Af.7.15. 



















July 22, 1924. 







sing mask. 








ure 13, 2053. 










1978. 








Arts 12, 1: 78-81. 




et hierar- 



den. 










tion. 













Af.7.15. 



















July 22, 1924. 







sing mask. 








ure 13, 2053. 










1978. 







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. 



Bibliography 






Bibliography 






Bibliography 




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 

Halle. 



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Munich. 



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study (1981). 




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Man (une). 


London. 








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Plastik. 

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signments. 








Perham 1960. 













study (1981). 




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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 ac- 

cess 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 aban- 

doned by 1400. 

5. Y. Toure (interview) told the story of Koi Konboro's con- 

version in full. In two other interviews, Samounou and M.A. 

Sidibe told slightly shorter versions. 

6. A French word meaning "a person of considerable reli- 

gious 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 





























(Dakar). 





See Triaud 1973:127-34. 






























mann (1983:114) 













journey. 







































(Dakar). 





See Triaud 1973:127-34. 






























mann (1983:114) 













journey. 







































(Dakar). 





See Triaud 1973:127-34. 






























mann (1983:114) 













journey. 











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 






















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 discrepancy 

between the "straightforward" and "complex" sequences. 

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 tentative 

than Cisse - volunteered the "possibility" that Koi Konboro 

might have built two mosques (interview, January 

1986). Corroborated by no other source, and manifestly implausible, 

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 interested 

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 Western 

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 posited 

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 sending 

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, although 

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 midnineteenth 

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 qualifications. 

But it is still of some interest that the cost thus calculated 

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 puzzling 

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. According 

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 appointment 

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 ar- 

chitecture: 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 ar- 

cade 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 be- 

tween 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 re- 

pair 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 Vernacular, 

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 Museum 

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, Oakland, 

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 

"superior" foreign cultures. 

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Bela, Alpha Bokar (Mopti). Elderly. Diawando historian. 

Bia Bia, Alpha. Middle-aged. Historian. 

Bocoum, Sory Bayeya. Middle-aged. Marabout. 

Cisse, Amadou Hamody Mama. B. 1930. Farmer. 

Cisse, Dioro. Middle-aged. Retired pharmacist. 

Cisse, Nouhoun. B. 1908. 

Cisse, Ousmane. Elderly. Former deputy. Peul historian. 

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Koi'ta, Sekou Bella. B. 1902. Diawando historian. 

Kontao, Sekou. B. ca. 1923. Bozo. 

Korobara, Almam. Middle-aged. 

Korobara, Sarmoye. B. 1912. Imam of the mosque. 

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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 African, 

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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Mazeyrie. 

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Societe d'editions geographiques, maritimes et coloniales. 

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1971. 

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cidentalefrancaise. Paris: Larose. 

Roume, Le gouverneur-general. 1906. "Instructions a Arnaud." 

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A.O.F. 3.3. 

Saad, Elias N. 1983. Social History of Timbuktu: The Role of Muslim 

Scholars and Notables. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 

Sadi, Abderrahman. 1964. Tarikhi es-Soudan (1665). Translated 

into French by 0. Houdas. Paris: Maisonneuve. 

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du Senegal (Dakar) 4 G-10. 

Snelder, Raoul. 1984. "The Great Mosque of Djenne: Its Impact 

Today as a Model," Mimar 12:66-74. 

Sonolet, Louis. 1912. "Le Nouvel emprunt de L'A.O.F." L'Afrique 

occidentale francaise illustree, April. 

Sow, Mamadou. 1978. "Sekou Amadou across Peulh Oral 

Tradition." Unpublished memoir, Ecole normale 

superieure de Bamako. 

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

age. 

Trimingham, J. Spencer. 1970. A History of Islam in West Africa. 

London: Oxford University Press. 

Willis, John Ralph. 1967. "Jihad Fi Sabil Allah - Its Doctrinal 

Basis in Islam and Some Aspects of Its Evolution in 

Nineteenth-Century West Africa," Journal of African History 

8, 3: 395-415. 

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).

Jean-Louis Bourgeois - David Rifkind

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