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.

From the Detroit Bungalow to the Ashanti Traditional Home

Part 10 of 13 in our journey from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo
(Connecting Landmarks in Michigan and African History)
 

Philadelphia row houses

The old cities of the northeast are filled with dense housing. For Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore, the row house is king. The row house is the prototypical housing type, where homes are packed so densely that they share walls, known as party walls, on two sides. This is where I grew up. It goes without saying that with this kind of housing, especially where party walls are only a single wythe thick, one develops a special relationship with one's neighbor. Details like when their alarm clock goes off, what their favorite television program is and what they're cooking for dinner are no longer mysteries, but shared experiences. As a kid, I imagined cutting a hole and exchanging notes with my best friend.

The Home of Orsel & Minnie McGhee

But when I arrived in Detroit, I found the prototypical housing to be very different. The streets were wide and spacious and they accommodated on street parking. There were no row houses. In fact, the typical Detroit home sits detached obstinately avoiding the touch of its adjacent neighbors. Sitting on 30' wide lots, narrow swaths of land buffer the space between houses. It amazed me how wide open Detroit's neighborhoods were. In fact, years later, it filled me with pride, as my wife and I moved into our first house, that the walls could only be touched by us. It's this spaciousness that exacerbates the 25 square miles of land that sit vacant in Detroit. Back east, density reduced the vacantness accumulated by home abandonment. 

The Home of Dr. Ossian Sweet

But at the turn of the century, Detroit built upon the health and environmental lessons learned from the dense cities built back east. Combined with the freedom of the automobile, and the availability of middle class wages, Detroit was destined to be place to earn a piece of the American dream (though for African-Americans the dreams had limits.  See the stories of  Dr. Ossian Sweet and Orsel and Minnie McGhee). Prominently standing in the center of this dream is a single detached house surrounded by a green lawn, a white picket fence and occupied by 2-1/2 kids. Thus, to make dreams come true, Detroit became dominated by two housing types: the Detroit Bungalow and the American Four Square.

The American Four Square was a home you could literally order from a catalog. Sears and Roebucks, Co. offered the dream for $1,995.00 plus shipping in its 1908 catalog. Its layout is, as its name implies, in a square. Typically 2-1/2 stories high, it usually includes four large, boxy rooms to a floor, a center dormer, and a large front porch with a wide stairs. Other common features include a hipped roof, arched entries between common rooms, built-in cabinetry, and Craftsman-style woodwork. Character was created by dressing the home in an architectural style like Tudor, Prairie, Queen Anne or Craftsman.

Detroit Bungalows

Detroit Bungalows were typically built in the Craftsman architectural style. They are typically 1-1/2 stories, with sweeping low pitched gabled or hipped roofs that extend over a front porch that matches the width of the home. The first floor is typically raised a half story to allow for perimeter windows to bring light into a full basement. Dormers bring added living space and light into the attic story and provide an opportunity for the architect to design distinctive front elevations. The chimney also rises along a side elevation, and again provides an opportunity for creative designs frequently done in brick or stone.

Detroit Bungalows

These were the housing prototypes of yesterday's Detroit. But today's Detroit struggles with how to reinvent itself. With huge swaths of land sitting vacant, how should the City rebuild itself? Even more importantly, what types of architecture will complement efforts to rebuild community?

Thousands of mile away, in the African country of Ghana, one can find the few remaining remnants of an ancient building tradition. Though its examples are few, attempts to preserve the forms and decorative motives of traditional Ashanti architecture continues since the early 1960s. The tradition provides an African example of how to intergrate building design with the community of people who use them.

The best examples exist around Kumasi in central Ghana. This was once the capital of the great Ashanti Empire that ruled independently from 1670-1896. The surviving buildings are today typically used as religious shrines. The buildings consist of four rooms around a quadrangular courtyard. Three of the rooms (those for drumming, singing and cooking) are open, while the fourth (the actual shrine) is closed to all but the priest and his assistants. The inner courtyards are usually littered with fetishes (objects believed to have magical powers).

The buildings themselves traditionally have steep thatched roofs. Their lower walls are painted orange/red, and the upper walls are whitewashed. The walls are formed from clay or surface loam soil mixed with water and kneaded to a malleable consistency of 9"-10" in thickness. Over this base layer, a final layer about 3"-4" thick is formed to allow mural decorations to be directly carved into the walls.

These traditional "Adinkra" symbols represent the key characteristic of Ashanti Architecture. These symbols are extensively use in not only their architecture, but also fabrics and pottery. Each symbol conveys a distinct meaning, many linked to traditional proverbs. Fifty-three were recorded by Robert Sutherlan Rattray in his book, Religion and Art in Ashanti, published in 1927.

For me, the lesson to be learned from Ashanti architecture is how well these symbols, embedded in its architecture, connect the building to the people living within it. The designs are not only art, but also literally speak to the user. What better way to connect the architecture with the people who use it?

Adinkra symbols

My suggestion is not to say that in Detroit we build new housing with painted Ashanti symbols (graffiti has already accomplished this), but that we must find ways to connect whatever we build with the people who use it. For African Ashanti builders, their connection was through symbols. As Detroit explores new building patterns, weaving new with old, finding new uses for vacant land, it must connect with its people. They must buy into the notion that this new vision is a benefit to them. It's essential that the architecture compliment the need to build community and directly connect with its users. Perhaps it's a Hip Hop style of architecture as explored by Professor Craig Wilkins of the University of Michigan or a Prefabricated Architecture as explored by Kieran Timberlake Associates. If a building revival is to begin for Detroit, it must find a similar manner to connect its buildings to its people.

The Spirit of Great Zimbabwe and the Memorial to Joe Louis

Part 9 of 13 in our journey from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo
(Connecting Landmarks in Michigan and African History)

"Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans on relief or W.P.A., and poor, would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe's one-man triumphs. No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions – or on mine. I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too." – Langston Hughes, from Autobiography: The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Vol. 14, page 307

The Arrival of Joe Louis

Joe Louis

In 1926, Joe Louis arrived in Detroit. At the age of twelve, the Brown Bomber and his family settled into Detroit's Black Bottom. He would begin his early boxing career at Wheeler Recreation Center, Detroit's first segregated recreation center associated with the nation's first African-American public housing complex, Brewster Homes.  He would eventually go on to win the center' boxing club championship.

Joe Louis would fight 71 times, knocking out his opponents 54 times, endure only 3 defeats and hold the heavy weight championship from 1937 to 1949. He would be victorious in 25 title defenses and be ranked by many as the best of all time. But more important than the victories was what he symbolized for a people. He was the first African-American to be national hero.

A Memorial to Joe Louis

A Memorial to Joe Louis

On October 16, 1986, Detroit dedicated a memorial to Joe Louis. Commissioned by Sports Illustrated Magazine, Robert Graham modeled his sculpture on Louis's tensed arm and clinched fist. The 28'-0" long arm modeled to scale hangs suspended from a steel tripod that sits defiantly amid rush hour traffic at the intersection of Woodward and Jefferson Avenues.

"The Fist"

For a city struggling to reinvent itself amid a shrinking population and mounting fiscal crises, the Memorial to Joe Louis represents the City's new spirit. A spirit symbolized in the Brown Bomber's clinched fist. To me it symbolizes not only the City's strength, but perseverance to find a way to reinvent itself. And just as Joe Louis overcame early racial prejudice and later financial difficulties, the City of Detroit will also endure.

Just as the Fist, as it's known to Detroiters, represents its City's spirit, thousands of miles away the ruins of an ancient city represent the spirit of a nation and a people reviving its pride in its African, sub-Sahara roots.

"To outsiders, perhaps, Zimbabwe is just a name signifying some random geographical boundaries... But for me it is different. Rhodesia was a forbidden country for me, a white man's playland. I was always outside looking in... And I did not know until years of bloodshed and turmoil later just how sweet life could be here... I had inhabited Rhodesia, but in Zimbabwe I lived." -Nozipo Maraire, from Zenzele

A Nation is born

The British protectorate of Southern Rhodesia was created in 1889. Over time, a system of advantage was created that placed 60% of the wealth in the hands of a 4% white minority. Commerce was restricted to whites. The Land Act of 1930 gave the best farming lands to whites. Labor law in 1934 prohibited blacks from entering skilled trades and professions. Schooling, housing, recreation, sport facilities and medical care were all restricted and made to benefit whites.

Enduring this colonial oppression, the native Zimbabwean people finally gained independence in 1980. In order to re-establish pride in their ignored native history, they renamed their nation after the largest stone structures in Africa south of the pyramids known as the Great Zimbabwe ("house of stone"). These precisely cut structures are the remnants of a civilization that flourished during the 13^th century and was mysteriously abandoned by the late 15^th.

While under colonial control, historians insisted that the monumental ruins of the Great Zimbabwe were built by anybody but the Zimbabwean people. Phoenicians, Sabeans, Egyptians, even the Queen of Sheba, peoples whose civilizations had long died before the rise of the Great Zimbabwe, were among those given credit for its construction. It was beyond comprehension that the founders were sub-Saharan Africans. Much of this fiction was promulgated by the British businessman Cecil Rhodes, whose name is now best recognized for its association with Rhodes scholarship.

The Great Zimbabwe

The Great Zimbabwe

The truth is that the city was built by the Benametapa, Bantu-speaking ancestors of the Shona. They built other cities at Mapaungubwe, Dhlo Dhol and Penhalonga. They arrived around 400 AD and created the city sometime around the 1100s. At its peak, it contained a population of between 10,000 and 20,000 people. Most lived outside the wall of the main stone buildings which were restricted to roughly 200 to 300 royals and advisers.

Life for these people remains a mystery for there are no records except for these stone ruins. What is clear is that the area was perfect for grazing cattle and was rich in gold. Some researchers believe the City was built on a gold mine that facilitated trade with the Middle and Far East along the Limpopo River. This trading might is evidenced by unearthed Chinese and Persian pottery and stoneware. Unearthed Arabic inscribed coins are believed to come from the great east African Swahili coast city of Kilwa.

The City seemed to disappear by 1450. Theories center on environmental changes, reduction in usable land and water, and the disruption of all trade markets, particularly gold, with the arrival of the Portuguese.

But what is clear, is that these people were great masons. Without the use of mortar, each stone block is carefully fitted together. Stones were standardized in shape, size and weight to create a smooth and regular finish. There are hardly any straight faces, right-angled junctions or rectangular spaces. Circular turrets decorate the outer walls. Inside, there were a collection of circular huts completely made of daga (clay). Sometimes thirty feet in diameter and two to three stories high, they were finished with colors ranging from pale ochre to rich dark reds.

The Spirit of a Monument
There is now a deep pride in this heritage. There will never be a time when the Zimbabwean people's history is allowed to be forgotten. However, there is still much to be discovered about the people who lived in this great city, as well as the other great east African trade cities of Kilwa, Songo Mnara and Rhapta.

There are also serious economic, public health and living standard issues facing modern Zimbabwe. Price controls, land confiscations, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and drought lead the country's challenges. The average life expectancy of a Zimbabwe male is 42 years. In 1997, 25% of the population was believed to be infected with HIV. Infant mortality rates have climbed to 81 deaths per 1,000 live births (Note that the US infant mortality rate ranks 34^th in the world at 6.81 deaths per 1,000).

But despite the modern challenges faced by Zimbabwe, they will always have a symbol of their spirit. And just like Detroit's Joe Louis Memorial, the Great Zimbabwe symbolizes their strength to endure and to continue to build for the future.

From Kilwa Kisiwani to Highland Park

Part 8 of 13 in our journey from Timbuktu to Kalamazoo
(Connecting Landmarks in Michigan and African History)

Highland Park Ford Plant

Highland Park, MI was launched into the spotlight when Henry Ford purchased 160 acres of land just north of Manchester Street between Woodward Avenue and Oakland Street. Construction of the Highland Park Ford Plant (designed by Albert Kahn) was completed in 1909. The small village of Highland Park went from a population of 4,120 in 1910 to around 46,500 in 1920. At Highland Park, Ford would relocate his Piquette Avenue Assembly Plant and implement the first assembly line for the production of automobiles. At its peak it would produce 1000 "Tin Lizzies" a day.

Chrysler headquarters before
demolition

In 1913, Highland Park's Brush-Maxwell automotive factory opened as a division of the United States Motor Car Company. The factory complex shared space with the Chalmers Automotive Company. Chalmers ended production in 1923 and in 1925 the Maxwell Motor Company was reorganized into the Chrysler Corporation. The original Brush-Maxwell plant would grow to a size of 150 acres and become home to Chrysler for the next 70 years.

But just as quickly as the automotive industry arrived, it left Highland Park. Ford Motor Company downsized its operations in the late 1950s and eventually sold the factory in 1973. The Chrysler Motor Company moved its headquarters to Auburn Hills between 1991 and 1993 dislocating a total of 6,000 jobs. Highland Park's population dropped from a peak in 1930 of 52,959 to 11,176 in 2010.

Packard Motor Plant

Fisher Body Plant 21

Ford Piquette Avenue Plant

What remains today is a city struggling to recover from the loss of its auto industry. The city and its surroundings are littered with the history of its once mighty automobile production. In addition to the Ford and Chrysler plants, you can still find other abandon automotive manufacturing monuments. At Detroit's Milwaukee Junction, one can find Henry Ford's first assembly plant and the Fisher Body Plant 21. Not far from Piquette Avenue, you can find the Packard Motor plant. And there are many more abandon sites that provided the parts and raw materials in support of these might assembly plants.

The Mosque of Kilwa

As one looks at the photos of these abandon factories, I can't help but compare them to ruins found on the east coast of Africa. The ruins are remnants of a great trading empire that once supplied goods across the Indian Ocean to India, China, Indonesia, Arabia and Rome. These cities were the melting pots that gave birth to the Swahili culture. Today, when comparing these decaying structures to those found in Highland Park and Detroit, the same emotions are invoked. Just how mighty were these cities? What did they produce? How did they so quickly disappear?

Trade along the east coast of Africa existed as far back at 60 AD. The cities included Kilwa Kisiwani, Songo Mnara, Kizimikazi, Sanje Majoma and Unguja Kuu. The greatest of these cities was Rhapta, whose location today is still debated, but whose trading might lives on in the ancient Roman navigating guide the "Periplus of the Erythraarean Sea" (Periplus of the Red Sea).


The great Muslim explorer Ibn Batutta reached the city of Kilwa in 1331 and wrote,

"We ... traveled by sea to the city of Kulwa [Kilwa in East Africa]...Most of its people are Zunuj, extremely black...The city of Kulwa is amongst the most beautiful of cities and most elegantly built...."

The Mosque of Kilwa

The great Mosque of Kilwa built in the 11^th century is probably the most famous piece of architecture that remains from these cities. Built out of coral stones and lime mortar, it contains sixteen domes believed to be the first true domes on the east African coast. The largest dome would retain its title as the largest on the east African coast until the 19^th century. Proof of the city's trading might is found in the Mosques' chief decoration of embedded Chinese porcelain. Other buildings on Kilwa include the Husuni Kuba palace built around 1310 and the Geraza (Swahili for 'prison').

Songo Mnara

At Songo Mnara, one can find the remains of five mosques, a palace complex and some thirty-three domestic dwellings constructed of coral stones and wood.

At Unguja Ukuu, oral legend tells of how a local land owner, Mohammed was Joka, could foresee the future and could cast spells making the city invisible. For a period, it was the capital of Zanzibar.

The Chinese explorer
Cheng Ho

These cities were trading with India and the Chinese long before the arrival of the Europeans. Goods exchanged included ivory, tortoise shells, gold, spice, and iron. In 1417, the great Chinese explorer Cheng Ho (or Zheng He) on his sixth of seven expeditions reached East Africa. He is said to have traveled with more than 300 ships and 28,000 men. The largest of his vessels was 444 ft. in length (By comparison, Columbus' Santa Maria was 60 ft. in length). After the death of the Chinese Emperor in 1425, contact with the Chinese ended opening the door to the Europeans.

Indian Ocean Trade Routes

The Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama reached east African shores in 1488. Finding little gold, the Portuguese besieged cities like Kilwa and indulged their appetite for slave trade. And with their arrival, began the slow decline and eventual abandonment of most of these trading cities. By 1840 Kilwa was abandon.



Songo Mnara

Kilwa Kisiwani

We know very little of what life was like in these Swahili cities. It wasn't until the 1960s that the search for the City of Rhapta began in earnest. Serious archaeological investigation of Kilwa didn't begin until the 1950s. Much of Kilwa's mysteries remain unexcavated. In 2008, the World Monuments Fund included Kilwa on its Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. It seems amazing that ruins such as these remain unstudied. These are truly lost cities and it's my hope that their mysteries can be solved before they are forever lost to time and the elements of nature.