Hand of Fatima
La Main de Fatima
Interesting facts
- The Spaniard Salvador Campillo, who first came in 1978 and soloed his first route in 1982, later married a woman from the nearby village of Daari.
- Measured from base to summit, the sandstone towers rise as much as about 600 metres above the surrounding plain.
- Three Brazilian climbers put up Solução Suicida, a route of some 550 metres on the east face of Kaga Tondo.
- Spanish and French teams opened a wave of new routes in the winters of 1995–96 and 1996–97, including the hard Primera Instancia, graded 7c+, on Kaga Tondo.
- The 1998 documentary about the rock, part of the Adventure Quest series, was directed by the adventure filmmaker John Wilcox.
Why it is worth it
A cluster of bare sandstone pillars stands up out of the flat Sahel plain of central Mali, and from the right angle the separate towers line up like the raised fingers of an open palm. That silhouette gave the massif its best-known name, the Hand of Fatima, after the protective hand symbol of Islamic popular tradition that is linked to Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad. Locally and in French the rocks are also known as Gami Tondo and the Needles of Gami (Aiguilles de Gami).
The formation is an inselberg of sandstone, one of the isolated rock islands that rise abruptly from the plains around the town of Hombori in the Mopti Region. Each of its "fingers" carries its own name: Kaga Pamari, Kaga Tondo, Wangel, Debridu and Suri Tondo. Its sheer faces have long attracted climbers, and the walls include a strongly overhanging cliff of roughly 450 metres. In December 2006 the Italian climbing club known as the Lecco Spiders put up a series of new routes on the towers, and the rock had earlier featured in an adventure documentary filmed in 1998.
The landscape around it is just as striking. Close by rises Mount Hombori, or Hombori Tondo, a flat-topped mesa whose summit at 1,155 metres is the highest point in Mali; its cliff-ringed plateau shelters an unusually rich flora for the Sahel, and caves on the mountain were inhabited more than two thousand years ago. Hombori itself is a small Songhay- and Fulfulde-speaking town on the main road between Mopti and Gao, known for its large weekly market held on Tuesdays. The climate here sits on the edge between desert and semi-desert, with nearly all the year's rain falling between late June and mid-September, which is why the rock towers usually stand over a plain of sand, grass and scattered trees.
Getting there
The Hand of Fatima lies about 12 km west of the town of Hombori, close to the R15 highway that links Mopti and Gao. Douentza, the administrative centre of the cercle, is about 126 km away by straight line. The nearest airports are Timbuktu (TOM), about 210 km away in a straight line, and Mopti Ambodedjo (MZI), about 260 km to the south-west along the same Mopti–Gao corridor.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Hand of Fatima, also called Gami Tondo, and the Needles of Gami is a rock formation in the Mopti Region of Mali near Hombori consisting of a number of sandstone pillars. The formation was named for its appearance of similarity to a human hand, particularly that of Muhammed's daughter, which is a protective symbol in Islamic tradition known as the Hamsa. The formation's "fingers" are named Kaga Pamari, Kaga Tondo, Wangel, Debridu, and Suri Tondo.
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