Jean-Louis Bourgeois - David Rifkind

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.
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