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The Djinguereber Mosque founds monumental Timbuktu

1327 CE·Culture, arts & philosophy·West Africa (Mali, Timbuktu)·
1327 CEDate
Culture, arts & philosophyCategory
24Empires active
Date
1327 CE
Category
Culture, arts & philosophy
Region
West Africa (Mali, Timbuktu)
Era
Post-Classical / Medieval
Significance

In 1327, shortly after returning from his celebrated pilgrimage, Mansa Musa commissioned the Djinguereber Mosque at Timbuktu, a great congregational mosque built of mud brick and timber in the Sudano-Sahelian style.

Tradition credits its design to the Andalusi poet and scholar Abu Ishaq al-Sahili, whom Musa is said to have brought back from Mecca, though many scholars now stress that the architecture drew chiefly on existing Saharan and West African building traditions. Whatever its origins, the mosque anchored Timbuktu's transformation from a seasonal trading camp into one of the Islamic world's great centres of learning. Alongside the Sankore and Sidi Yahya mosques it formed the nucleus of the University of Timbuktu, where jurisprudence, theology, astronomy and grammar were taught and where a vast trade in manuscripts flourished. Drawing scholars from across the Sahel and North Africa, Timbuktu became a byword for remote erudition and a hub linking the gold and salt of the Sahara to the wider Muslim intellectual world. The mosque was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.

See the world map in 1327 CE →More culture, arts & philosophyThe Post-Classical / Medieval era

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