The Great Mosque of Djenne is the largest mudbrick, or adobe, building in the world, standing on the flood plain of the Bani River in the city of Djenne, Mali. The current structure dates to 1907, built on the site of an earlier mosque that had stood since the thirteenth century and had fallen into ruin, and it is constructed in the distinctive Sudano-Sahelian style, with rammed earth walls reinforced by projecting palm wood beams called toron that double as scaffolding for the annual replastering. Each year, ahead of the rainy season, the whole community takes part in a festival to re-coat the walls with a fresh layer of mud plaster, a practice essential to the building's survival that has itself become a celebrated communal event. The mosque and the old town of Djenne were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.
Cross-Tradition Connections
In Style
An Islamic architecture landmark.
The largest mudbrick building in the world, the definitive monument of Sudano-Sahelian architecture.
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