Jean-Louis Bourgeois - David Rifkind

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.
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