Well, not at the Univerity of Oxford, of course, but at the AGM of a charity called the Mali Development Group, who had asked me to go and give a talk about my life in Mali, and my work with the Djenne Manuscript Library etc. This is the talk I gave last weekend. Some of it was written for Google who are preparing an 'interactive' educational study tool- an online visit to Djenne and the Mosque.
The talk seemed to be well received, and I enjoyed giving it:
I have been asked to talk about my work
with the manuscripts of Mali. I am in one way the most unlikely person to do
so, since I am not an Arabist, and my connection with the manuscripts of Mali
happened quite by a happy coincidence, which I will tell you about, and I will
also talk more generally about Mali and in particular about Djenne, where I
lived for 12 years. I hope you forgive me if I will tell you things you already
know, since you are probably mostly people who know Mali very well, maybe
better than I.
In 2005
I visited the ancient town of Djenne with some friends- those were of
course the days of relative peace and prosperity in Mali, when tourism was on
the increase. I fell in love with Djenne, and since I had always wanted to have
a little hotel in an exotic far away place, I decided to go back on my own after
the holiday and spend some time in this town, on a fact finding mission to see
if this might be the far away place I had been dreaming of. It was, and I built
my mud hotel which opened for Christmas 2006, with a couple of my friends from
the previous year having returned to stay in my hotel!
Hotel Djenne Djenno was successful. I also
began a textile business which is still running, using the wonderful local mud
painting technique called Bogolan, or ‘made by mud’ in Bambara.
I got married to a Malian, Oumar Keita
who worked at the Djenne hospital. (first picture above) Life
was sweet for several years.
One day three local dignitaries dressed
in ‘Grand boubous’ and prayer caps came to visit me at the hotel. This itself
was quite a remarkable occurrence, because a
traditional Djenne notable would regard a hotel as a sinful place where all
sorts of haram business goes on- one
of them being the sale of alcohol. Nevertheless they had decided to dispense
with their objections for once, because they wanted to ask me a favour. Would I go and have a look at the Djenne
Manuscript Library and try to help them find some funding? They were in fact
the President of the Manuscript Library
Committee, the archivist and one of the
11 town councillors.
Of course, I was very happy to go and
discover their library, which I did not know anything about. I thought that all
manuscripts in Mali were from Timbuktu.
I did manage to raise funds through the
British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme, and between 2009 and 2017 we digitized a large part of Djenne’s
manuscripts, and achieved nearly a half a million images. These are now
available to view on the Endangered Archive Programme’s website.
Before talking about the manuscripts in
more detail, let us look at the extraordinary town of Djenne, which was my home
for 12 years.
The most famous building in Djenne, in
Mali and maybe in the whole of Africa is of course the iconic Great Mosque of
Djenne.
The present Mosque was built as late as 1907 but it was reconstructed on
the ruins of the first Mosque which was built in the 14th century, the
same time as many of the cathedrals of Europe were built. This was at the height of the Malian Empire
when Mali was one of the richest countries in the world and the fabulous wealth
from the Malian gold mines was traded across to Europe and the Middle East along
the caravan trade routes through the Sahara, bringing with it an early exposure
to Islam.
The Djenne chief Koy Konboro was the first to have embraced Islam in
this city and he is said to have built the first Mosque, at around the same
time as the great Mosques of Timbuktu the Djingarey Ber and the Sankore, so
around 1320.
The brother of Koy Konboro took over after his death, but he was not a
Muslim and practised the old religion of animism. He separated the mosque into
two parts- one for Islam and one for the old fetishist practices.
Islam was by no means the universally accepted religion in Djenne and
many continued to worship the old gods. The influence of the earlier African
religion can be felt even today in the importance of magic in Djenne’s social
fabric- today it is practised by the many marabouts, who are learned men
who have studied the Koran and often use the written Arabic of the Koran as
potent incantations to manipulate the present and the future. There is a famous
Fulani proverb which says ‘those who write are magicians’, a poignant
saying in Mali where the literacy rate is only 33%.
The Fulani are a pastoral people who are spread throughout the West
African Sahel countries. During the nineteenth century they carried out
sweeping Jihads of West Africa in order to purify Islam. They established
several ‘empires’ the first being the Sokoto Caliphate in northern Nigeria in
1804. Later the religious fervour spread to Mali and in 1819 the Fulani
chief Sekou Amadou conquered Djenne. During the reign of his Massina Empire the
mosque was abandoned and left to fall into ruin. Just as the iconoclasts of the
Reformation in Europe destroyed the decorations of churches because
ornamentation was considered a distraction from God, the religious leaders of
the Massina Empire found the beauty of the Djenne mosque to be too ostentatious.
The puritanical Islam represented by Sekou Amadou abandoned the mosque
and built a simpler one close by.
The Fulani wars of the nineteenth century can be said to have inspired
some of the Jihadist Groups of the recent Malian conflict, since one Jihadist
group in central Mali have adopted the name ‘The Liberation of the Massina
Front', hankering back to those glory days of religious fervour and a ‘purer’
Islam.
The efforts to purify Djenne of its magic practises has never been
entirely successful however. In the beginning of the 20th century
the French administrator of Djenne, William Merlaud-Ponty , was friendly with
the incumbent Imam. One day he asked his friend -a marabout well versed
in magic like most Djenne Imams through history - if he could help him become
the Governor General of French West Africa. ‘Sure’ said the Imam. ‘If you help
me rebuild the mosque of Djenne’. And so it came to pass. The mosque was
rebuilt by order of the French colonial administration and by the masons of Djenne.
And the magic worked, because Monsieur Merlaud- Pointy did indeed become
the Governor of the whole of French West Africa.
Whether the present mosque is an invention of the French architectural
advisors of the day, or really a recreation of the original mosque has been
debated. There is a very early picture of the ruin which shows a good
indication of the remnants from which a replica could have been built, and when
the building work was undertaken there were still old people alive in Djenne
who remembered the original mosque and could guide the masons. It is therefore
not impossible that the present mosque is indeed a near copy of the original
one. The architecture is the most flamboyant example of the Sudan- Sahelian
style of architecture of which there are many examples throughout towns and
villages in the Niger
inland delta.
.
The
rainy season with its violent storms and torrential downpours ravages the
fragile surface of the mud plaster which covers the buildings and they
therefore need to have a new layer of mud applied every year. Like
the rest of the buildings in this city entirely built from mud, the Great
Mosque must be replastered once a year.
This results in a joyous festival, called the ‘Crepissage’, which is one
of the great spectacles of the world I think.
The crepissage
(mud-plastering in French) of the Djenne buildings can take place at any time
during the dry season (December to May)and the most usual time for the crepissage
of the mosque is April. The mud is first collected from the river and
brought into town where it is left to mature in great mounds in special large
vats in front of the mosque. The mud is mixed with rice husks and often with an
oily substance to make it more water repelling: this can either be the
traditional shea butter: derived from the fruits of the beautiful oak-like
trees which dot the country side in the Massina- the inland Niger delta-
or sometimes discarded engine sump oil which provides a less romantic but
cheaper alternative these days.
After
around three weeks of fermentation the mud is mature and ready for
plastering onto the walls- this is always done directly by the hand.
The masons of Djenne belong
to the Barey-Ton, or the Masons’ Guild, an ancient institution which
imparts knowledge to its members from generation to generation: not only the
mechanics of the mud brick building and plastering but also the secret
knowledge of magic which must accompany each building task. The crepissage of
the Mosque is not simply blessed by the Imam but it also has an ‘extra layer’
of blessing provided by the masons’ incantations and talismans. The Imam’s
Islamic blessing signify Bey-koray (white magic) and the masons’
incantations signify Bey- Bibi (Black magic). Both are necessary for the
smooth running of the task ahead- and once these rituals have been performed in combination
with the customary animal sacrifice the work can finally begin. If you ask a
Djenne inhabitant whether there are ever any accidents during the Mosque crepissage
when hundreds of people are precariously perched high on top of slippery
make- shift ladders and speed is all that matters they will tell you that no
one has ever come to any harm- so it seems that it is working!
The master masons and the neighbourhood chiefs, the kintigi,
oversee the work and direct the complex traffic of the teams as hundreds of
youths come running at high speed from different directions with wicker baskets
of mud on their heads. But amazingly they never crash into each other. If only
the traffic in Bamako could run as smoothly!
And about
ten o’clock, after about 6 hours, the work is completed.The mosque is standing
freshly plastered, still wet in the morning sun, protected from the elements
until next year through this amazing festival which is one of the great
unifying events in the Djenne calendar, the day when everyone forgets petty
grievances and jealousies and is rightly proud simply to be a Djennenke-
a denizen of this great ancient city of Djenne.
Archaeological
evidence puts the origin of Djenne to the third century BC. In the early middle ages the city shifted its
position a little and the ‘new’ city of Djenne sprung up.
Writing
was introduced to Mali in the form of Arabic, through the conversion of the first
Malians who undertook the Hadj to Mecca. It was, like Latin in Europe, the
language of religion. Only the learned marabouts knew the
language. Nevertheless, in Djenne a culture of learning sprung up and some
regard the city as the very oldest cultural centre in the Sub-Saharan region.
The chronicler Abd-al-Sadi wrote the famous Tariq al Sudan (1655) partly
when he lived in Djenne, and noted:
‘God has drawn into this blessed city a certain number of doctors and
pious people, foreign to the country, who have come to live there; these people
are from different tribes and different countries.’
Al-Sadi
was writing at the height of Arabic scholarship in Djenne. The Moroccans
conquered the city in 1591 and brought with them fresh impulses and inspiration
which stimulated a vibrant period of creativity in architecture and literature.
Those glory days are long since over, partly because the French administration
insisted on French being taught rather than Arabic and therefore the language
lost some of its status. However, in some ways Djenne remains a centre for
Islamic studies and people from far and wide send their sons to study under a
Djenne marabout. These boys are called Talibes and they are made
to spend this time of their boyhood often in great deprivation with the purpose
of making them strong and reliant on Allah.
There are
around 50 Koran schools where marabouts also teach both boys and girls
from Djenne to recite the Koran, writing their homework on wooden tablets. Only
a very small number of these children will ever learn to understand Arabic, but
they will learn to recite the Koran by heart. After many years of learning by
rote they are gradually given some insight into the meaning of what they
recite. This is very different from the way we in the West regard education: we
are used to it being freely available in libraries and schools and we regard
the developing of understanding an essential part in the education
process, but in Djenne learning is traditionally given slowly, even
cautiously, and it has to be earned. The reason for this is the great respect
and reverence in which the Arabic language is held: it is regarded as holy and
imbued with the power of magic. To enter into these mysteries too quickly is
believed to be harmful, even dangerous.
Many also
come to Djenne to learn the art of magic from a marabout. Djenne is well
known in Mali and even far beyond for the skill of the marabouts who are
even called for and commissioned by the presidential candidates to exercise
magic during the times of elections etc. They also work by internet, and some marabouts
conduct consultations through the local cybercafé.
The form of Islam adhered to in Africa is of the
Sunni school. Djenne’s strategic importance as a commercial, intellectual and
religious centre made the city an early conduit of Islam to the rest of the
Niger inland delta. However, during the domination of the Bambara Kingdom of
Segou in the latter half of the 18th century the strict observation
of Islamic rules of conduct seems to have become more relaxed, perhaps through
the influence of the Bambara people who had conquered Djenne in 1770 and whose
kings had always refused to convert to Islam and were fiercely attached to
their ancestral animist beliefs. The magic practises which form an
important part of the religion in Djenne were allowed to develop and flourish
during this time, and it was partly this aspect which prompted Sekou Amadou’s
Jihad when he conquered Djenne in 1819 and established his Fulani empire of
Massina.
In spite of these efforts Djenne’s magic practises and maraboutage
have remained deeply rooted in the religious fabric of Djenne. At the same time
there is also a large adherence to Sufism, the mystical expression of Islam,
and in particular the Tijaniyyah form of Sufism which is spread over large parts of West Africa.
These two aspects of Djenne’s religious make-up are sometimes combined,
and many members of the Tijaniyyah brotherhood are practising maraboutage.
It is a good idea not to
have too many enemies in Djenne. While the population is gentle and agreeable
for the most part, and as good Muslims they resign themselves to the will of
Allah, there are also many who are not adverse to indulging in a little magic
in order to get their way. There is a flourishing trade in potions and elixirs,
spells and gri-gris or talismans imbued with power for good or ill.
This trade is largely the
monopoly of the marabouts who often make a lucrative side-line as
purveyors of magic potions.
There are potions for all ills- physical and metaphysical. There are potions to
make people love you, and to make them stop loving someone else for instance.
The following story was
reported on Malian radio as a news item:
“A young wife went to a marabout to obtain a potion to give to her husband in
order to prevent him from taking a second wife. The marabout liked the look of her and decided he wanted her for
himself. He gave her a potion which she promptly dispensed to her husband, who
fell ill of a mysterious decease and died within two days. The wife was hardly
in a position to say anything. After the prescribed time of mourning the marabout made her a visit and was
politely received. He began courting the young widow, who soon invited him for
dinner one night. At the end of the evening he began to feel unwell. The widow
said: ‘the potion you gave me was not used up- I gave you the remaining half in
your dinner.’ The marabout died
within two days. “
The reason we know this
story is that he didn’t want to face Allah without making amends- he had the
time to go to the gendarmerie to give himself up before he expired.
The most common forms of maraboutage
require more than a potion and are often prepared in connection with the
written Arabic word in phrases from the Koran, as well as some form of animal
sacrifice. If the wish is to make someone fall in love with one, then the marabout
might require the sacrifice of a ram, for instance. With the blood from this a
suitable line from the Koran is written a
certain amount of times- it could be hundreds- on one of the wooden tablets
used in the Koran schools. This is then washed off and the liquid obtained from
the blood is carefully poured into a bottle which becomes the love potion which
can be drunk or applied on the skin – which does of course require some
proximity to the beloved...
Many potions obtained in
this way are traded to the capital and transported to clients in Bamako on the
Djenne bus.
Although there are some
factions in Djenne who disapproves of such practises there has always reigned a
good-natured tolerance between those who practise magic and those who feel that
a good Muslim should not try and influence the will of Allah but be limited to
the study of the Koran and to executing the five pillars of Islam, i.e:
reciting the profession of faith; praying five times a day; giving alms,
fasting and going on pilgrimage.
There are also marabouts
who specialize in the preparation of herbal remedies. Some of these undoubtedly
work, such as the highly efficient natural laxative senna, an important
export for centuries which found its way to Europe together with the gold, palm
oil and other exotic products with the trans- Saharan
camel caravans. Other medicines are prepared from roots and leaves which are
sometimes boiled or dried and pulverised and often mixed with sacrificial blood
or maybe with the ash from burned paper on which appropriate lines from the
Koran have been written. It is of course impossible to separate the magic from
the purely medicinal benefits from the natural sources here, but there is a
power of healing from belief itself, as has been proven by studies of the
placebo effect, so the healing properties of the ashes from the writing of
Arabic phrases from Koran should perhaps not be underestimated...
Many such
recipes and descriptions can be found in the ca 10000 manuscripts which are
kept in the Djenne Manuscript Library, a stones’ throw to the north of the
great mosque. This is the view of the Mosque from the Library.
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. 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.
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. 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...
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.
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.
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. 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. The manuscripts of Djenne were
never directly threatened because central Mali was not occupied by the
Jihadists, but the subsequent deterioration of the security situation in this
area has highlighted the precariousness of these manuscripts. 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 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.
The whole city
of Djenne together with the archaeological site of the first city:
Djenne-Djeno, became a UNESCO world heritage site Old
Towns of Djenné in 1988. This conferred status and the
recognition of the world that the city of Djenne was worth preserving. It
became a protected and revered location but this distinction also entailed the
responsibility on its inhabitants to preserve it and not to build in other
materials but mud in the city. This arrangement worked very well as long as
peace lasted. The tourist industry was flourishing in the first decade of the
21st century. Mali was becoming a popular destination for the more
adventurous traveller and Djenne featured on the list of unmissable places for
everyone who visited Mali. The Djenne population, including many young who made
good money as tourist guides, understood the value of tourism and its
relationship to the Djenne architecture and the preservation of the city.
All that changed in 2012 after the coup and the
Jihadist take over of the North. The extremists seemed at one point to be marching
south and invasion appeared inevitable. Many civil servants who worked in the
hospital or the schools, including the Prefect, the highest state official in
Djenne, fled the city.
Imam
Yelpha, when I asked what he would do if the Jihadists took Djenne, (would he
flee?) laughed heartily and said ’the Djenne people have seen empires rise and
fall and survived sieges and battles since the beginning of time. We are not
frightened- and in any case, all the marabouts of Djenne have had a
special meeting and arranged it all: they will never come...”
Djenne
was spared invasion however, but the ten month Jihadist occupation of the
northern part of the country has been followed by a deteriorating security
situation which has put most of Mali into a red no-go area. Needless to say
this has been disastrous for the fledgling tourist industry, and Djenne has
lost its main source of income and thereby the raison d’etre for the
protection of its architectural heritage. The partial withdrawal of the state
presence in Djenne and the subsequent weakening of institutions such as the Mission
Culturelle, a branch of the Ministry of Culture with the task of enforcing
the rules of the UNESCO brief, have further weakened the resolve to protect
this mud city. This protection is now not necessary so much against the
Jihadists who are encamped in the surrounding countryside as against the wish
of the local people to build their houses in cement and the understandable wish
to be part of the modern world. Ultimately the extremists are responsible of
course, since if the security threat was no longer there tourism would come
back and therefore also the wish by the locals to protect this fragile and
unique city.
Djenne is changing now and the challenges to
the fabric of the city are not only from the ever present threats of famine or
war or jihadists but also from the inroads of global culture and social media.
Young people are no longer so interested in the ancient,
traditional world Yelpha inhabits. Even the most humble shepherd normally owns
a smart phone and has a Facebook account. This
acts as a window onto an apparently enchanted world, and the effect is to
deepen a feeling of isolation and highlighting the lack of opportunity that
faces the youth in Djenne, where there are no industries or economic
development.
I left Djenne at the end of June
2017. It was no longer possible to continue having a hotel there, and my dear
husband Keita had sadly died in 2016.
Finally, I should say a couple of
words about the project in Timbuktu, which takes me back to Mali every few
months. At the end of the British Library projects in Djenne, we continued with
a project in Timbuktu, again with the Endangered Archives Progamme, digitizing
the contents of three very ancient and important libraries which choose to keep
their manuscripts in Timbuktu during the Jihadist occupation- they hid them in
and around the city. These libraries are the Imam Essayouti, which is the
library attached to the Djingarey Ber Mosque, the Al Aqib Library, attached to
the Sankore Mosque and the Al Wangari Library of the Sidi Yahia Mosque. Out
partner in this project is the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, an
institution run by Benedictine Friars from Minnesota. They are in fact my new
employers since they offered me to continue working as project leader when the
British Library’s two year project was up, last July. So I am still keeping a
small foothold in Mali and will be returning in December.
