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wall. The Saré-kaina quarter, also known as the Sané-
gungu quarter, is the area inhabited by the rulers
and political élite; in this area are the largest houses
and also the remains of the Moroccan kasbah built
on the site of the Songhay royal palace. The Sankoré
quarter in the north-west tip of the city is the area
formerly inhabited by the Berber tribes and is said to
have been founded by Sidi Mahmoud a sixteenth-
century immigrant from Oualata. The main material
of construction in Timbuktu is mud brick, although
stone is used for strengthening
the walls and in
important places such as doorways. Early nineteenth-
century descriptions of the city describe the making
of hand-rolled round bricks which are then baked in
the sun. Roofs are made of split palm beams and palm-
frond matting which is then covered with earth.
Construction is in the hands of a group of Songhay-
speaking people known as the ‘gabibi’ who are also
responsible for gravedigging.
The major monuments of the city are the three
ancient mosques each located in a different quarter
of the city. Reputedly the oldest building is the
Sankoré Mosque,
which was founded by a woman
during one of the periods of Tuareg rule, possibly
during the thirteenth century. The building was
subsequently repaired, rebuilt and developed so that
in its present form it consists of an irregular form
based around a square central courtyard. This
courtyard seems to represent an early phase of the
mosque’s development as it conforms to the
dimensions of the courtyard built by Qadi al-Aqib
in 1581. On the south-east
corner of the mosque is a
small, square, entrance vestibule built during Fulbe
rule in the nineteenth century to serve as a Shar
ia
court. The mosque contains two mihrabs, a small one
in the east wall of the interior courtyard and a larger
one in the east wall of the sanctuary. The larger
mihrab is located north of the centre of the east wall
Great Mosque, Timbuktu, Mali (after Prussin)
Timbuktu (also known as Tombouctou)
282
and externally consists of a tower-like conical
projection similar to that of the Dijingueré Ber
Mosque. The dominant feature
of the building is the
minaret on the south side of the courtyard, consisting
of a large stepped pyramid similar to that of the
mausoleum of Askiya Muhammad at Gao. However,
the Sankoré minaret is slightly smaller and has an
internal staircase instead of external stair ramps as
at Gao.
The most famous mosque in Timbuktu is the
Dijingueré Ber Mosque, which was built between
1324 and 1327 by Mansa Musa emperor of Mali after
his return from the Hajj.
The mosque is attributed to
the architect Abu Isahq al-Saheli who built a royal
audience chamber at the same time. Today there is
no trace of the audience chamber which may have
resembled that of the capital at Niani described by
contemporary Arab travellers. Like most other
ancient buildings in the city the mosque underwent
several successive stages of construction and repairs.
As it stands at present the plan of mosque consists
of a roughly rectangular sanctuary with a small
internal courtyard at the northern end and a large
double-walled external
courtyard on the western
side. The oldest part of the mosque is generally
agreed to be the western part of the sanctuary. In
this part there are round arches made of dressed
limestone supporting the roof, a feature not found
elsewhere in West Africa until the colonial period.
Like the Sankoré Mosque the Dijingueré Ber has two
towers, a conical mihrab tower with projecting toron
(acacia wood stakes) and a tapering square minaret
adjacent to the interior courtyard.
The third ancient mosque in Timbuktu is the
small complex in the centre of the city known as the
mosque of Sidi Yahyia
built in the mid-fifteenth
century. This consists of a rectangular sanctuary
attached to a short, square, tapering minaret enclosed
within a large outer courtyard. The sanctuary is four
bays deep and has three entrances on the short
northern side and two entrances in the eastern wall
either side of the wide shallow central mihrab.
According to tradition, the first imam of the mosque
is buried under the minaret,
a concept that parallels
the stepped pyramid minarets of the Gao and
Sankoré mosques.
The houses of Timbuktu are either single-storey
or two-storey courtyard houses. The two-storey
houses tend to be more elaborate and are mostly
confined to the Sané-gungu quarter inhabited by the
chief merchants. From the outside the houses are
generally quite plain with shallow square buttresses
dividing the wall into panels. The doorways are fairly
simple with wooden doors decorated with Moroccan
brass bosses, although
this has been superseded by
snipped tin decoration. Above the main doorway is
a single window, decorated, containing a Moroccan-
style hardwood grille. Each grille consists of two
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
