DjennéPrayer Times in Djenné, Mopti

Djenné, on the inland delta of the Niger, has been a center of Sahelian Islamic learning since at least the thirteenth century and was a key node of the trans-Saharan trade network linking Timbuktu, the Niger valley, and the Maghreb. The Great Mosque of Djenné, in its current form rebuilt in 1907 on the site of older mosques going back to the early thirteenth century, is the largest mud-brick building in the world and a defining example of Sahelian Sudano-Saharan mosque architecture, with its distinctive engaged buttresses, projecting toron palm-wood beams that double as scaffolding for annual replastering, and three minarets crowned with ostrich-egg finials. The annual community-led replastering of the mosque, the crepissage, is an event that mobilizes the entire town. Djenné remains an active center of Maliki jurisprudence, Quran schools, and trans-Saharan scholarly memory, and Friday prayers fill its great mud sanctuary.