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various groups of nomadic Fulbe arrived in the area
and were absorbed into Djallonke society. During
the seventeenth century
more Fulbe groups with a
strong attachment to Islam arrived from the Muslim
state of Macina in the north-east. These newly
arrived Fulbe organized themselves into a
theocratic state under the direction of the religious
leader Karamoko Alfa. During the nineteenth
century a jihad was instigated against the non-
believ-ers of the area until the whole area was under
Islamic control. The new state was divided into nine
provinces each under a different leading family
with a capital at Timbo.
Despite the strongly orthodox beliefs of the new
state, the integration of previous generations of
Fulbe into the resident
pagan society meant that
the architecture was essentially that of the Djallonke
modified to fit the requirements of Islam. The
essential architectural unit of the pre-Islamic
Djallonke is the sudu, or roundhouse, a form which
was also adopted for religious shrines and burials.
The basic form of the sudu consists of a thatched
roundhouse enclosed by concentric walls with two
opposed entrances. Each entrance gives access to a
semi-circular vestibule and the main central space
of the building. Beds consist of moulded mud
platforms set against the walls of the central inner
space. Several sudu,
or house units, form a family
compound with a separate one for each wife. The
entrance to a compound was through an entrance
vestibule which was a round sudu-like construction
with a doorway either side. Such vestibules were
used to receive visitors in a similar manner to the
more familiar entrance rooms of Islamic courtyard
houses (compare for example the houses of
Timbuktu). The houses of Timbo have the same
basic form as traditional Djallonke housing except
that the bed is placed opposite the entrance rather
than to one side; they also
have rectangular storage
platforms supported on four posts in the centre of
the room. During construction a piece of paper
containing a verse of the Quran is buried under each
post.
The mosques of Futa-Djallon have the same
basic form as the houses although they are built
on a larger scale. The earliest mosques were copies
of the traditional village meeting-houses which
consisted of a raised circular floor enclosed within
a low mud wall above which is a steep conical
thatched roof made of rafters supported by posts
embedded into the wall. When a new mosque is
built the older mosque
is often converted into a
women’s area or a Quranic reading room and
included within the compound of the new
building. As elsewhere in the Islamic world
mosques are often associated with the palace of
the local ruler, thus at Fougoumba the royal
audience hall was directly opposite the mosque.
In the mid-nine-teenth century a new concept in
the architecture of mosques in the region was
introduced by al-Hajj Umar who established
himself as the ruler of Dingueraye. Educated as a
strict Sufi, the new leader attracted a large
following which transformed Dingueraye from a
small village into a town of 8,000 people. As a
result of this huge influx
of people a city wall was
built to enclose the entire settlement and a new
mosque was erected. Although this mosque has
not survived, its replacement built on the same
site in 1883 is thought to have essentially the same
design. Like earlier mosques in the region the
Great Mosque at Dingueraye consists of a large
thatched roundhouse with a diameter of 30 m and
enclosed within a wooden fence. The thatch
reaches down almost to the ground so that the ten
entrances are only marked by gaps in the wooden
fence. The outer wall of the mosque consists of a
mud wall containing
posts supporting the roof
rafters. Immediately inside the outer wall there is
circular arrangement of wooden pillars which also
supports the roof rafters. The extraordinary
arrangement of the interior consists of a square,
mud-brick, box-like building in the middle which
forms the sanctuary of the mosque. This mud-brick
structure has three entrances on each side except
for the qibla side where there is only one. The
entrance on the qibla side is through an opening
in the side of the mihrab and is reserved for the
imam. The flat ceiling of the box is supported by
rafters resting on sixteen wooden pillars arranged
in four rows. In the
centre there is a mud-brick
pier which protrudes through the roof of the box
to support a series of radiating rafters holding up
the steep conical thatched roof. This design was
later copied in other parts of Futa-Djallon and has
now become the typical mosque form of the area.
The rationale behind the Dingueraye Mosque
design can be deduced from a drawing of the
design by al-Hajj Umar. The drawing depicts a
magic square and appears to refer only to the
central square box and makes no reference to the
outer circle of the thatched roof. Local religious
Futa-Djallon
