The Great Mosque of DjennéInstruments for Africa
The Djenne mosque, as the centre of Islam in the city, is closely associated with the Djenne Manuscript Library, the depository for the private collections of about 150 Djenne families. The subject matter of the manuscripts is mostly connected to the two main branches of traditional Djenne scholarship: orthodox Islamic treatises and devotional material often in poetic form.
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There have been many revered poets in Djenne during the centuries and their work is still being copied and used during the melodious Fatias (communal recitations) in the religious festivals which are dotted throughout the Djenne year: particularly Mauloud, the festival which celebrates the birth of the Prophet Mohammed.
People at the Great Mosque of DjenneInstruments for Africa
There is also a very large number of manuscripts dealing with the esoteric branch of Islam for which Djenne is well-known: countless manuscripts provide spells and incantations, as well as recipes for how to prepare remedies for all ills and the fulfilment of all desires.
Plastering the Great Mosque of DjenneInstruments for Africa
There are manuscripts explaining how to become rich, be admired by one’s friends and neighbours, stop one’s child from wetting the bed or one's wife from being unfaithful, be victorious in battle, cure madness or ingrown toenails, be protected from snakebites, and be sexually potent - the latter perhaps useful since a Djenne husband normally has to keep not only one but often three or even four wives happy…
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There is also ordinary correspondence of course, there are judgments – fatwas – from the Qadis (Islamic judges) as well as commercial contracts, wills and other archival material.
Plastering the Great Mosque of DjenneInstruments for Africa
The manuscripts are written in Arabic, but sometimes they use a local language in transliteration using the Arabic alphabet. Some rare manuscripts are many hundreds of years old, but the main bulk of them are from the nineteenth and even twentieth century.
To copy manuscripts is still part of the culture in Djenne, where the past and the present are seamlessly interwoven.
People at the Great Mosque of DjenneInstruments for Africa
Nevertheless, the art of calligraphy suffered some decline when photocopiers and printers became available, and there is now an effort underway to revive the art of calligraphy in Djenne.
The Great Mosque of DjenneInstruments for Africa
Some of the manuscripts are very beautiful and the Djenne calligraphers were well known for their work. They used the organic material from the surrounding nature to prepare their inks which were of a high quality and bought by the calligraphers of Timbuktu, where there is less vegetation to provide material for the inks.
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The fate of the manuscripts of Timbuktu has had worldwide coverage since at the end of the Jihadist occupation in 2013 when the retreating extremists destroyed several thousands of manuscripts before they fled Timbuktu at the liberation of the city.
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The reason for this destruction remains unclear- it is possible that some of the esoteric material was regarded as unorthodox and haram – unclean, forbidden.
There has been an intense international effort to save the manuscripts of Timbuktu, and a large part of them are now in Bamako, undergoing conservation and digitisation work.
Details of the Great Mosque of DjenneInstruments for Africa
It is therefore particularly important that between 2009 and 2017 the manuscripts of Djenne have been digitized in a major effort by the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme www.eap.bl.uk and while the physical manuscripts are kept in Djenne, digitized copies of nearly half a million images are kept in the National Archives in Bamako as well as at the British Library, and they are now available for scholars online.
