Great Mosque of Djenné

The Great Mosque of Djenné, built from adobe brick, is the largest structure of its kind in the world. It stands on the flood plain of the Bani River in Djenné, Mali. The building is a central hub for the local community and ranks among Africa’s most iconic landmarks. In 1988, UNESCO designated it a World Heritage Site, along with the "Old Towns of Djenné."

The first mosque on this site may have been built as early as 1200 or as late as 1330, though the exact date is unknown. The earliest written record comes from the 17th-century *Tarikh al-Sudan*, which draws on oral tradition. According to that text, a Sultan named Kunburu converted to Islam, demolished his palace, and turned the site into a mosque, building a new palace to the east. His successor added the mosque’s towers, and the next sultan built the surrounding wall.

Architectural historian Labelle Prussin offers a different account: Koy Kounboro’s mosque was torn down by his successor Malaha Tampo, who built a new one. That was later replaced by the Songhay ruler Askia Mohammed at the end of the 15th century, who rebuilt Koy Kounboro’s original mosque. After the Moroccan invasion in the late 16th century, that Songhay mosque was destroyed, and Tanapo’s mosque was rebuilt. Prussin argues that this Moroccan-era mosque was too lavish for the puritanical Fulbe ruler Sheku Ahmadu, who in 1830 removed its roof timbers and built a simpler structure on the original Kounboro site. That mosque was later replaced by a French-backed madrasa when the current Great Mosque was built in 1909.

French explorer René Caillié visited Djenné in 1828, long after the mosque had fallen into ruin. He described it as a large, crudely built earth mosque with two massive but low towers, abandoned to swallows whose nests caused a foul smell, forcing prayers to be held in an outer court.

Ten years before Caillié’s visit, the Fulani leader Seku Amadu had conquered the town after launching his jihad. He disapproved of the existing mosque and let it decay—the same ruin Caillié saw. Seku Amadu closed all small neighbourhood mosques and, between 1834 and 1836, built a new mosque east of the old one on the site of the former palace. It was a large, low building with no towers or ornamentation.

French forces under Louis Archinard captured Djenné in April 1893. Soon after, journalist Félix Dubois saw the ruins of the original mosque, whose interior was used as a cemetery. In his 1897 book *Tombouctou la Mystérieuse*, he included a plan and drawing of how he imagined it looked before abandonment.

In 1906, the town arranged to rebuild the original mosque and construct a school on the site of Seku Amadu’s mosque. The rebuilding, completed in 1907, used forced labour under Ismaila Traoré, head of Djenné’s guild of masons. Photographs suggest that some outer walls follow the original layout, but it is unclear if the roof columns matched the earlier arrangement. The symmetrical design of three large towers in the qibla wall was almost certainly new. Debate continues over French influence on the design, though French engineers likely had no direct role.

Dubois returned in 1910 and was shocked by the rebuilt mosque. He blamed the French colonial administration for the design, calling it a cross between a hedgehog and a church organ, and likened the cones to a baroque temple for suppositories. In contrast, Jean-Louis Bourgeois argued that French influence was minimal—except perhaps for the internal arches—and that the design is “basically African,” crediting Ismaila Traoré as the architect. French ethnologist Michel Leiris, visiting in 1931, claimed the new mosque was European work and that locals were so unhappy they refused to clean it, only doing so under threat of prison. Bourgeois, however, maintained that the mosque was built by Djenné’s traditional guild of masons using traditional techniques, with little French involvement. A local political issue also arose: most of the city’s inhabitants, including the Islamic elite, were involved in the controversy.