Djinguereber Mosque
Interesting facts
- In 2016 a militant who helped destroy the shrines of Timbuktu was convicted at the International Criminal Court, the first case to treat destroying cultural heritage as a war crime.
- The name comes from the local Songhay language, Koyra Chiini, and means simply the great mosque.
- The prayer hall holds so many earthen pillars, needed to keep the spans short, that it can never be seen whole from any single point.
- Each year the people of Timbuktu take part in renewing the mud plaster on the outer walls, a communal task that keeps the building standing.
- The historian John Hunwick showed that the Arabic sources firmly credit al-Sahili only with a royal audience hall in the Mali capital, not with this mosque.
- The qadi al-Aqib's rebuilding from 1570 added the entire southern part of the mosque and the wall around the cemetery to the west.
- That rebuilding caused friction between the qadi and the Songhai ruler Askia Dawud, as the scholar resented the mosque being tied to secular power.
- The local trees once used for the roof beams have disappeared, so timber for repairs now has to be imported from Ghana.
- During a pilot restoration in 2006 and 2007, about half of the wooden roof beams were replaced.
- Around 1990 the mosque was placed on the list of World Heritage in Danger, threatened by sand advancing from the desert.
Why it is worth it
Built almost entirely of earth, straw and timber, the Djinguereber Mosque has stood in Timbuktu for nearly seven centuries. Its sloping mud walls, studded with projecting wooden beams, and its tapering minaret make it a classic of Sudano-Sahelian architecture. The mosque is one of the three great mosques of the scholarly community known as the University of Timbuktu, and with the city's other historic mosques and cemeteries it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.
The mosque is traditionally attributed to Mansa Musa, the ruler of the Mali Empire, who is said to have commissioned it around 1325–1327 after his celebrated pilgrimage to Mecca. Tradition also credits the design to Abu Ishaq al-Sahili, a poet from Granada whom Musa brought back with him; the 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun recorded that he was paid 12,000 mithqals of gold dust. Modern historians are sceptical, noting that the building's form grows out of Saharan mosques and local West African building traditions rather than Andalusian models. Inside are three courtyards, two minarets and twenty-five rows of pillars running east to west, with room for some 2,000 worshippers. Apart from a section of the north facade reinforced with limestone in the 1960s and the limestone core of the minaret, every surface is earth. The Songhai-era qadi Aqib ibn Mahmud rebuilt the mosque from 1570, and local masons still carry out its upkeep; a restoration programme supported by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture began in 2006. In 2012, armed militants destroyed two saints' tombs at the mosque, though the building itself was little damaged.
Timbuktu grew from a seasonal camp into a permanent town early in the 12th century, about 20 km north of the Niger River at the southern edge of the Sahara. Trade in salt, gold and ivory, and its role as a gathering place for scholars, made it a major Islamic city on the trans-Saharan routes, especially after Mansa Musa's reign.
Getting there
The mosque stands in the old town of Timbuktu, in central Mali, about 20 km north of the Niger River. Timbuktu Airport (TOM) lies about 4.5 km from the mosque.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Djinguereber Mosque, also known as Djingareyber or Djingarey Ber, is a famous learning center in Timbuktu, Mali. Built in 1327, it is one of three mosques associated with the historical community of scholars and students known today as the "University of Timbuktu". It was inscribed on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1988.
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