LARGE MOSQUE

The Djenné Mosque is the largest land structure in the world. She is also named the mosque of Komboro, in tribute to the twenty-sixth monarch of the city, Koy Komboro who, after converted to Islam in the th century, rasa his palace to build what was to be the first Djenné Mosque. It was first destroyed around 1830 by Emperor Peul of the Macina, the fundamentalist Cheikou Amadou. This latter person in fact in the city, since the time when he was a student, a dark rancour. He blamed him for some of his customs, including his practice of singing, dancing and the noisy consumption of millet in front of the mosque. Judging the dirty building, and the law of the Koran forbidding any faithful to put down a mosque, he decided to abandon it and let the rain do his work (the deck must be crépi every year) until it fell into ruins. In 1834, he opened a new mosque on a site a little farther east of the former. The present Great Mosque was rebuilt in 1907 according to the model of that of Komboro, on order of William Ponty, to the exact place where the former mosque was. To further reduce the work of Cheikou Amadou, we destroyed the mosque he built and built a mederasa (Koranic school).

This imposing Sudanese style building, close to 60 m apart, can accommodate up to faithful. The main facade consists of three minarets, separated from each other by five columns. The walls are filled with wooden piquets (palm). This frame, although it has a decorative function, is actually used as scaffolding when, every year in April, the famous corporation of the Djenné masons (bari) recrépit the facade of banco. The mosque has two entrances, one to the south facing the market square, less used, and the other to the north, daily borrowed. The six steps that allow access, built three metres above the ground level, symbolize the transition from the profane to the sacred. We must deplore the fact that the mosque does not visit (unless it pays the price!), because it is forbidden to non-Muslims since, as it says, Italians have filmed a fashion parade inside the building.