From the Great Mosque of Djenne to Muhammad’s Temple No. 1

Part 11 of 13 in our journey from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo     
(Connecting Landmarks in Michigan and African History)

The name Timbuktu invokes visions of gold and hidden treasure. One imagines long camel trains tracing a circuitous path through the sub-Saharan desert and arriving in a city thought from a distance to be a

mirage. In reality, this vision isn't far from the truth.   By the 19^th century, only one European had lived to return and describe its beauty. But more than a city of financial wealth, it was a city of intellectual power. As discuss in our first chapter, Timbuktu was the center of the Islamic intellectual world and home to one of the world's first universities. It makes sense that to equal its intellectual and spiritual might that its people would build a church of equal power.

Sudano-Sahelian Architecture

ferey (sun dried bricks)

Mali's Sudano-Sahelian Architecture provides the world with the best examples of adobe religious design. The key construction material is sun baked bricks or ferey. The bricks are stacked together using a mud based mortar and further strengthen by a coating of plaster mud. The walls are decorated with bundles of palm sticks or toron that cantilever two feet from the face of each wall. The carefully placed wood stakes serve an aesthetic purpose as well as scaffolding for workers who must constantly maintain the 

toron (bundles of palm sticks) &
ceramic roof conductors

Mosque's weather sensitive coating. Also extending from the face of each wall along its roof line are ceramic half pipes that act as colossal rain conductors which direct storm water away from its walls.

Just as you might find a nave, a transept and an apse as the organizing principals of a Christian church, there are two key features to be found at any Mosque:

Sankore Minaret

1. Minara (or minaret) are typically a tower or a column with an onion shaped or conical crown. They are usually free standing and provide a visual focal point for the broadcasting of the call to prayer. Modern minarets can still be used this way, but are more typically purely decorative.
   
    
2. The qibla or prayer wall indicates

   

   Qibla wall

   the direction to face during prayer, which coordinates with the direction of Mecca, the holy city of Islam. The mihrab, a prayer niche, is located within the qibla wall and functions as the spiritual center of the mosque, where the imam (the prayer leader) stands to direct the prayer.

Sankore Mosque

Sankore Mosque

Three mosques represent three different Sudano-Sahelian styles. The Sankore Mosque in Timbuktu is designed in the Hausa-Fulani (fortress) style and was originally built in the 15^th century. It is characterize by high protective compound walls that surround a courtyard built in the same dimensions as the Ka'abah in Mecca. Torons can only be found embedded within the mosque's single minaret.

Larabanga Mosque

Larabanga  Mosque

Ghana's Larabanga mosque is built in the Volta Basin style. It is the oldest mosque in Ghana and heavily influenced by Sudanese architecture. The mosque is characterized by a single courtyard with high white and black painted walls topped by turrets that are curved inward. Decorative triangular perforations within the perimeter walls indicate the portal points of entry.

The Great Mosque of Djenne

The Great Mosque of Djenne

The final style is the Malian and can be found at the Mosque of Djenne. It is the largest adobe building in the world. The first mosque built on the site dates to the 13^th century. The current Mosque dates to 1903 when the Mosque was rebuilt. The complex is 245' by 245' and is

Model of the
Great Mosque of Djenne

raised nine feet above grade. Six sets of stairs sit at various points along its perimeter, with the north stair serving as the main entrance. At its interior, a sea of 90 columns support the prayer hall roof. (One should note that non-Muslims have been band from its interior since 1996 after a Vogue Magazine fashion shoot offended local leaders). The qibla is marked by three large minarets topped with spires and ostrich eggs. Sermons are given from the central minaret.

Islam comes to the Detroit

Detroit's Hastings Street
 ("Black Bottom")

In 1921, Detroit's Islamic community had grown just large enough to build it's first US mosque in Highland Park. Though it closed its doors in 1923, by the mid-1930s Arabs, African-Americans, Afghanis, and Indians had prayer spaces along Black Bottom's Hastings Street within the heart of the city's African-American community.  Today, Metropolitan Detroit contains the second largest Arab population outside the Middle East.

Detroit's early Muslims belonged to two groups: (1) immigrants from parts of Europe and the Middle East (who were either Shi'a or Sunni) and (2) African-Americans. African-Americans embraced new alternative versions of Islam framed in response to the racism they faced in the US.

Muhammad's Mosque No. 1

Masjid Wali Muhammad
(former Muhammad's Mosque No. 1)

Masjid Wali Muhammad is home to the first and the oldest African-American Muslim congregation. Currently located on Linwood Avenue since 1954, their original home was on Hastings Street in Detroit's "Black Bottom." It was there that the Nation of Islam was founded by W.D. Fard and

Masjid Bait ul Mukarram

led by the Honorable Elijah Mohammad in the 1930s. Masjid Wali Muhammad received its current name in 1978, when the Honorable Warith Deen Muhammad led the Nation into Sunni Islam. Formerly called Muhammad's Temple No. 1, the masjid was re-dedicated as a mosque.

Muslim Center of Detroit

Masjid Wali Muhammad is located in what was originally a Jewish community center. And like many other mosques and churches in Detroit adapt their needs to spaces designed for banks, warehouses, schools, and old 

Baitul Islam Jame Masjid

storefronts, bringing new life to buildings that would ordinarily be abandoned. Because the physical contours of these spaces can't be altered, the beauty of these spaces are created through color, calligraphy, and ornamentation. In this way, these buildings act as catalyst for rejuvenating community.

Djenne Mosque Festival

Re-mudding the Djenne Mosque

Each year, the entire Djenne community comes together in festival to perform maintenance to the Great Mosque of Djenne. Damaged caused by rain and exposure are repaired over a period of several days amid food and music. Young boys mix plaster in pits, men carry the plaster from the pits and climb the toron to smear a new layer of plaster over the walls of the mosque. Women and girls carry water to the plaster pits and to the men working on repairs. And in the market square, elders sit in a place of honor watching the proceedings.

Conclusion

Motor City Makeover Event

This is the same process that occurs every day in Detroit as neighborhood groups take possession of vacant land to make a community garden or purchase a vacant school building to create a house of worship. So just as the Great Mosque of Djenne is rejuvenated each year, the key to Detroit's rejuvenation is in multiplying these efforts so that each small effort fits into a master vision for a revitalized Detroit community.  And Detroit's Islamic community is and will continue to play a central role in fulfilling this vision.