The Djenné civilization
Geography
Djenné ceramics come from Mali which has a surface area of more than 1,200,000 km², which is about twice the size of France.
The north and the center of the country are practically Saharan: arid, dry and endemically suffering from drought. These are areas of nomadic cattle-raising (bovine, especially ovine and caprine) whose very poor economy suffers from the absence of maritime outlets and, with the exception of some gold lodes, an almost total lack of mineral resources.
The more humid south benefits from the Senegal and Niger river valleys where agricultural output is greater, principally fine quality millet, rice, sorghum, and groundnut... Mali is the second only to Egypt in African cotton production.
The Niger River, flowing from its source in Guinea, crosses Mali, passes through Bamako and Timbuktu and is used for agriculture irrigation.
The population of Mali is almost 9 million, three quarters of it being rural, and one quarter urban. About half of the population is under the age of 15, making Mali extraordinarily young and astonishingly vital.
The ethno-linguistically, the country has a Bambara-Malinke-Dioula majority (50%), as well as other ethnicities such as the Peul (10%), Dogon (7%), Songhaï (6%) and Tamashek (Tuaregs 4%).
King Koi Koumboro converted the country to Islam and built a prestigious mosque in Djenné in 1280. Today the country is 90% Muslim, 9% animist and 1% Christian.
In Mali, these various ethnic groups live together peacefully: the Songhaï, Peuls, Bambaras, Sarakolés, Bozos, Dogons and Mossi.
History
The first inhabitants of Djenné-Djono (a few kilometers from present-day Djenné) settled there as early as the 3rd century B.C.. The city of Djenné is built on an 88 hectare island between two branches of the Bani River, a tributary of the Niger.
The city was at its height during the 8th century A.D. spreading out over more than 30 hectares. Like many others like it, not much is known about this pre-Islamic civilization. However, in can be safely said that for nearly 1,600 years of uninterrupted occupation the city consisted of more than 10,000 inhabitants, with another 50,000 in its vicinity. The city eventually became the center of Islamic expansion in sub-Saharan Africa.
Archaeological excavations attest to an ancient long distance trade route leading past the mines and quarries of the Sahara (granite, sandstone, basalt). This activity had been important before the first imports from North Africa began to appear in Europe. Djenné has always been a crossroads for trans-Saharan trade. Goods from the north, particularly jewels and rock salt, were exchanged for products from the south like cola nuts, gold and ivory.
How can the disappearance of this ancient African civilization be explained? Two assumptions exist today. The first is of a political/religious nature: the continuation of the funerary tradition of the deceased being placed in an earthenware burial jar continued until the 14th century, which seems to show that all or a part of the inhabitants of Djenné-Djono refused to convert to Islam.
What happened to these people? Displacement, mass migration, were they driven off? This could explain the construction of the new Islamic city of Djenné.
The second assumption is that there may have been a series of successive droughts which would have obliged the residents to live closer to the Niger River. The two assumptions could also be taken together...
From the 12th to the 14th centuries Mali lived in an Islamic Empire. After more than one century of evolution, the country became quite structurally organized, and Mali (or Manding) took in the Sudanese (Sosso, Bambara etc). The country, a true federal state, experienced strong economic development thanks to the exploitation of gold and trade along the Niger River valley, an important outlet of the Sahara. This development would continue until the 14th century, while being continually Islamized, and trade developed with the neighboring Maghreb region.
In the 15th century, this state would subside under the combined and freqent raids by the Mossi, Songhaï and the Tuaregs. In 1443, Djenné was taken by the Tuaregs, then by the Songhaï Empire in 1470. Morocco took possession of Djenné in 1591. In 1670, Djenné belonged to the Bambara de Ségou kingdom, later it was conquered by Sékou Amadou (Peul Empire of Macina) in 1819, and then by the Toucouleur d' El Hadj Empire in 1862, before being taken by the French troops under Louis Archinard in 1893, in the French colonial era. It would then be integrated into French Sudan.
Culture
Djenné-Djono and Djenné are located on the trans-Saharan trade route, and are true confluences between the wandering world and the sedentary world. The caravans which crossed the desert towards Timbuktu exchanging slaves and gold for salt, passed by these cities as they experienced extraordinary development.
The exceptional environmental conditions of security and abundance in this region supported a true artistic explosion, more especially so in that the Islamization of Djenné along the Niger river in 1043 did not prevent in any way artistic production from developing in the entire river basin... The 13th century is regarded as the peak of production of these splendid human and animal figurines from this civilization Production would start to decline starting in the 14th century.
In 1943 Theodore Monod discovered the first terra cotta statuette from the civilization of the Middle Niger on the Kaniana hillock, about two kilometers from Djenné. Since this date, many other terra cotta objects have been found in different buerial mounds, as well as pieces in iron and bronze. These pieces are the work of the Djenné culture which developed from the 8th to the 18th century. To our knowledge, there are 65 active excavation sites in the immediate periphery of Djenné.
In the 1970's some statues appeared on the art market which astonished collectors and researchers. These statues were found in the interior delta of the Niger, a vast, often flooded land between Ségou and Timbuktu, in Mali.
The first of these, which we have seen, was found close to Djenné, and these stones and statues were improperly called the "Djenné stones" , "Djenné statues", and "Djenné style". The truth is that a great part of these statues was found very far from Djenné...
As usual, and how can they be blamed, the local inhabitants launched wild excavations and the pieces circulated, without classification, without drawings, dating tests, research etc... Most of the finds have come in the last twenty five years, when modifications began in the rhythm and the quality of the Niger delta floods, leaving new areas of dry land.
Thermoluninescence tests of these pieces dates these statues from the 11th and 12th centuries to the 18th century. The majority are from the 14th and 15th centuries.
Aesthetics
The statues classified as Djenné are of a very particular stylistic diversity. There are quite large equestrian statues, very finished, very elaborate, representative of kings, warlords, glorious warriors, nobles, and ancestors. The horse, introduced to Africa during the second millennium B.C., had become an emblem of power and wealth. These statues are rigid, hieratic, and made to inspire respect.
In quite another register the Djenné statues, contrary to traditional African statuary, show a certain flexibility of the body. The positions are asymmetrical, the bodies are twisted, contortive. There is a great freedom of movement which is particular to this art, and it is quite original compared to traditional African figuration, from any era or in any material.
The Djenné statues represent men and women, in squatting positions or kneeling, with the hands on the knees or thighs. Human representations sometimes integrate zoomorphic elements. There are different types of pieces; riders and their mounts, busts, seated or kneeling individuals. Some are elaborately decorated, others are stripped down.
The representation of faces, though very free, is codified enough: almond eyes, strong jaw, and almost cubist noses, worked in large rectangular marks.
In certain statues the subject covers his eyes, or his mouth, as if it was holding in a cry, some hold their stomach, naked, lying, bound, suffering, or ill. Many seem to be expressing pain.
The bodies sometimes show heavy scarifications, scabs, pustules, or blisters... perhaps due to filariose, a tropical and subtropical disease transmitted by mosquitos. The adult form is a white, thread-like worm which enters the human through the skin at night.
Are these statues dedications, memories, a type of questioning, or recantations? We cannot say for sure... In any case, the snake is omnipresent in Djenné statuary, it slithers on bodies, entering and leaving bodily openings: the nose, the mouth, the ears, the sex. Here, it is often mixed with the member, infiltrating it, coiled up... It decorates the top of shaven craniums or bald people. It is sometimes associated with pregnant women. Is this a relation to the creation myth? Immortality? We do not know anything of it and yet we long to. As a terrible alternative, does this snake represent this very mobile white worm which gives this disease which eats the individual from the inside? Looking at the statues more closely, the eye is not the same when one knows that the degenerative disease involves oedemas reaching the size of a pigeon egg...
The function of the Djenné statues remains uncertain: they do not take part in ritual funerary but were perhaps embedded in walls or under floors of the houses over which they were to have a protective role, to perpetrate an ancestral bond, to be used as expiatory icon, to better fight off disease or suffering...
How did this culture die out? The statues that have been found are often mutilated and broken. Their fragmentary state suggests a willful destruction, systematic, brutal, ritualistic... But when? By whom? For what? The silence is enigmatic and almost disturbing.
