West Africa · a Light

A whole town replasters its mosque in a single morning

The Great Mosque of Djenne in Mali is the largest mud brick building in the world. Its walls are made of sun dried bricks and coated in banco, a mud and rice husk plaster that the rainy season washes away every year. So each spring the town replasters it. Masons of the local guild direct the work, young men carry the mud, women bring water, and the bundles of palm wood that stick out of the walls, the toron, are the permanent scaffolding they climb. It is done in one day. The present building dates from 1906 and 1907, raised on the footprint of a much older mosque, and how closely it follows the earlier one is still debated by historians of the region.

Djenne, Mali · rebuilt 1906 to 1907