Just as a public clock might establish the rhythm of some towns and cities, the Djinguereber mosque has set the time for nearly 700 years. Only recent attention on northern Mali – including a 2012 Jihadist occupation – has disrupted the gentle routine built around five prayers a day and an annual “restoration week” that triggers a DIY frenzy in the city’s homes.
“We have not had to do major patching up since 2006 when the Aga Khan’s restoration programme began,” says the Djinguereber muezzin, Mahamane Mahanmoudou. “But I can see some small cracks now. We will have to do some work this year,” says the 77-year-old, who is also mason-in-chief of the mosque.
Timbuktu has never, to anyone’s knowledge, been the capital of any country. But its history, coupled with the pleasing sound of its three syllables, have made it a megalopolis in the human imagination ever since Emperor Moussa I built Djinguereber after returning from Mecca in 1327.
Takrit scribes in Cairo – through which the miles-long camel caravan of the king of the vast Mali Empire passed – said his wealth and generosity was unlike any they had seen. He gave away so much West African gold while on his travels that the value of the metal collapsed. Even under modern scrutiny, Emperor Moussa I’s wealth comes out on top; in 2012, celebritynetworth.com proclaimed him the richest man ever to have lived.
Retired headmaster and local historian Salem Ould Elhadje says no one knows where Kankou Moussa – the “king of kings” as he is known in Mali – established his capital, or even if he had one. But the trading centre Timbuktu – and in particular Djinguereber mosque – were certainly his pride and joy: “He established administrative buildings here, centres of scholarship and universities. He brought an Andalucian architect from Cairo to build Djinguereber. The protruding beams are a reminder of European buttresses. The conical minaret recalls the Egyptian pyramids.”
“Thanks to Kankou Moussa Timbuktu ceased to be a vulgar centre of trade, in gold, slaves and salt, and became a centre of learning and religion. At the heart of it, Djinguereber was and remains a marvel of architecture where, when 2,000 people line up for prayers on a Friday, you feel the greatness of God and Islam in your soul.”
Miraculously, the mosque was only slightly damaged by the Islamist groups - led by al-Qaida and Ansar Dine - who occupied Timbuktu in 2012. They smashed up almost all the city’s remaining mausoleums - the resting places of Timbuktu’s legedary 333 saints - and burnt thousands of ancient manuscripts. To extremists, Timbuktu’s ancient form of Islam - in which superstition and magic cohabit with the teachings of the Qur’an - is heresy.
Djinguereber mosque, in common with most buildings in city-centre Timbuktu, is constructed in mud brick; more elegantly known as “earthen architecture”. It’s a method in which layer upon layer of wet soil (“banco” or adobe) is rendered on to limestone rocks or onto bricks made from banco. In other parts of Mali, where humidity rates are higher, straw is mixed in as binding. The method is durable but requires regular maintenance.
“By building Djinguereber out of banco, Kankou Moussa bestowed nobility upon the building method,” says Ould Elhadje. “But banco is really the simplest, cheapest form of construction, known in every village.”
This year Mahanmoudou will probably choose a day in August – the end of Timbuktu’s drizzle of a rainy season – to call his volunteer team of 20 carpenters and masons to the north door for a briefing. They know exactly what to do – be it a problem with an insect-gnawned beam or door, or a crack in a wall. They are the proud descendants of the tradesmen from Yemen and Egypt who completed the building in 1327.
Elsewhere in the city during the weekly restoration period other teams will work on the Sidi Yahya and Sankoré mosques. Once done with the sacred buildings, everyone will be able to get to work on their own flat-roofed homes, which – apart from a few recent concrete exceptions – are constructed of the same heat-proof materials as the mosques.
But some things have changed in the last 690 years, says the head of the carpenters’ corporation, 55-year-old Diadjé Mahmane Maiga. “The climate has changed and borassus palms do not grow here any more. They provided our hardwood beams and the timber for our traditional doors, whose design our forefathers brought from Yemen. Now we have to import hardwood from Ghana at great expense.”
Indeed climate change long ago relegated Timbuktu from its status as an oasis ringed with mango trees and criss-crossed by canals. These days, Timbuktu is more like a desert outpost; the Niger river runs several kilometres to the south of the city and is not navigable all the year round.
To add to its woes, the price of banco – the earth that, when mixed with water, compacts into bricks or render – has recently soared. The UN military mission in Mali, Minusma, is currently building a 52-hectare super camp for 1,000 soldiers and civilians next to Timbuktu airport, right on top of one of the city’s key banco quarries. Ironically, another UN body – Unesco – listed earthen architecture as a world treasure a decade ago.
No one owns the banco quarries. They are, as the builders of Timbuktu say, “God’s gift to the poor for building.” The only expense involved in collecting the material – which is cut from the ground with pickaxes, rather like peat – is the amount charged by local tip-truck operators and their labourers.
Lorry owner Babayé Tandina says the residents of Timbuktu are furious: “We used to collect banco next to airport. The airport is only 6km from the city. Now we have to go more than 10km for the same quality, so instead of charging 11,000 Francs for a five cubic metre load (£12), we are charging 22,000 Francs (£24). We do not have the choice because of the fuel price.”
A Minusma spokesperson said the land for the UN super camp was chosen by the Malian government: “We are not aware to what extent the government coordinated its decision with local officials. Planned Minusma projects to improve the road system of Timbuktu will widen the availability of banco to additional sites.”
The UN blunder is a speck on Djinguereber’s proud history. Whatever the cost, Mahanmoudou and his team will always track down banco to patch up the mosque. The greater threat to the survival of Timbuktu is the poor governance that continues to be endemic in Mali, and which made hardline Shari’a governance (as a contrast to institutionalised corruption and neglect) appear attractive to northern Malians in 2012.
Despite a French military intervention that began in 2013, and the deployment of 10,000 UN peacekeepers across northern Mali, armed fundamentalists continue to be active, and Timbuktu’s mosques prime targets for their sledgehammers. But amid continued economic hardship, the survival of residents’ own banco homes - some of them even older than the mosque - is under threat.