NOV20

Classroom lesson · Djenné Grand Mosque · 🇲🇱 Mali

Djenné Grand Mosque

The largest mud-brick building in the world

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

The Great Mosque of Djenné is the largest building in the world made entirely from mud brick — a material called adobe. It stands in the middle of a colourful market town in central Mali and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988. It looks like something from a fairy tale, with tall spiky towers and wooden beams poking out of its walls.

Tell me more

The mosque was first built around 800 years ago, though the current building dates from 1907. Its three large towers rise about 13 metres high — that is as tall as a four-storey house. The wooden poles sticking out of the walls are not decorations — they are built-in scaffolding, used by workers who need to climb up and repair the surface after the rains.

Every year in spring, the whole city of Djenné comes out for a great replastering festival. Thousands of people carry buckets of fresh mud mixed with rice husks (which make it strong), and they work together to smooth new mud all over the walls and towers. Music plays, families laugh and shout, and the mosque ends up looking brand new by the end of the day.

Djenné sits on an island surrounded by the Bani River, a tributary of the Niger. The town has been a trading centre for over a thousand years. The market that fills the square in front of the mosque every Monday is one of the most famous markets in West Africa, full of vegetables, spices, cloth and crafts.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01The mosque needs to be repaired every single year. Why do you think the people of Djenné choose mud brick instead of stone or concrete?
  2. 02Imagine your whole school came together to fix one big building. How would you organise everyone? Who would do which job?
  3. 03What other buildings do you know that were made from natural materials found nearby?
Try this

Classroom activity

Build a mini mud-brick wall. Mix earth or clay with a little dried grass or sawdust and water to make a paste. Press it into small brick shapes and let them dry in the sun. Then stack them to make a small wall. Notice how the grass makes the bricks stronger — that is exactly what the builders of Djenné do.

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