New Meanings and Historical Messages in the Larabanga Mosque
2016; UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center; Volume: 49; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1162/afar_a_00311
ISSN1937-2108
Autores Tópico(s)Architecture and Cultural Influences
ResumoAs a structural manifestation of the ways in which time and transformation have been allowed to act upon the human environment, architectural form is very much a documentary record of the histories, events, influences, and interruptions that make up the cultural fabric of society. Architecture, in essence, is a three-dimensional working through of past and present narratives that collide, contest, and negotiate with one another within a specific context. Such conceptualizations in the contemporary period find ready expression in iconic, heritage-saturated structures like the historic earth and timber mosque of the village of Larabanga in Northern Ghana (Fig. 1), which is one of the oldest remaining earthen mosques in the region. The mosque, whose construction is tentatived dated around the mid seventeenth century in conjunction with the founding of the town itself, has served as both a symbol of regional Islamic faith and in many ways an architectural emblem of Larabanga's primary cultural group, the Kamara. However, in the past two decades, these identities have become increasingly problematized by the addition of two new careers to the mosque's repertoire: those of national heritage site and tourist attraction. The uneasy rapport that has developed between these various identities has generated shifts within the mosque's conceptual program as newly introduced building materials like cement compete for prominence with traditional earthen material, and the presence of tourists during religious events like Ramadan force the mosque's established and contemporary roles to collide in unpredictable and sometimes volatile ways. Such occurrences not only speak to the ambiguous nature of the mosque's current reality within this community, but also the condition of the community itself as a society in a state of rapid social, economic, and cultural flux. As such, this essay will explore the modes through which the Larabanga mosque itself is being remade both physically and symbolically in the contemporary period to navigate the murky waters of development while continuing to sustain the value systems and cultural frameworks that have formed the foundation of the community's distinctive identity. In doing so, it will highlight the role of the mosque in the context of Larabanga as a layered text that is capable of encoding not only established identities but also their contemporary reimaginings within its evolving material and conceptual frameworks.The nature of the mosque's expressive flexibility is in some ways rooted within the Afro-Islamic architectural legacy from which it descends. Larabanga's historic mosque is part of a genre of West African Islamic forms previously known as the Sudanese style that originated between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Niger Bend area of Mali. While current scholarship has problematized the "Sudanese" designation by highlighting its rootedness in French imperial terminology (the region was previously part of the colonial French Soudan; Prussin 1968:35), certain fundamental components of this style can still be identified within regional forms. Perhaps the most iconic of these forms is the Great Mosque in Djenné, Mali (Fig. 2). Currently the largest freestanding earthen structure in the world, the mosque is constituted entirely of mud brick covered with an earthen clay plaster that is specific to this area in its composition of local earth, organic materials, and mineral deposits, which are left behind on Djenné's flood plain after the annual rains (Morris and Blier 2003:197). This clay mixture is also distinctive in terms of the highly sculptural surface quality it creates on many of the buildings in Djenné, making them appear to grow directly from the ground as if they are a natural extension of the earth itself (Vogel et al. 2007). Embedded in many of the sculpted walls of Djenné's architectural forms are also palm timbers called toron (Fig. 3), which act as both scaffolding for the city masons (barey ton) to replaster the surface of communal structures, as well as aerators that wick moisture from the walls to preserve the structure's integrity. In addition, both the mosque and the houses built in this style maintain heavily molded, sculptural facades whose composition of protruding and receding geometric elements and series of pillars and pinnacles lining the rooftops not only emphasize their extreme verticality (Shaw 2006:64) but also gesture to pre-Islamic ancestral beliefs and their manifestation within the form of the earthen mound (Fig. 4; Prussin 1982).1Yet these structural components and their physical attributes are also grounded within a larger architectural framework that positions the built environment as both a product and a producer of Djennenke cultural identity. Through the communicative components of form, material, and organization, the collective reality of the Djenné landscape is that of a structural manifestation of established bodies of cultural knowledge and architectural practice, a reality made possible by the accomplishments of the keepers of this knowledge, the barey ton. As the protectors of Djenné's specialized architectural knowledge systems, the barey ton maintain an intimate rapport with the built environment that not only manifests through its construction but also through the spiritual practices they perform to ensure its success. Trevor Marchand notes that "the importance of benedictions, amulets, and blessed objects in the construction process is equal to, if not greater than, the mortar than binds bricks" (Marchand 2009:85). In addition, because the architectural practices and traditions in Djenné constitute such a powerful brand of knowledge, the barey ton have instituted ancillary forms of social control to protect it. Mason work in Djenné is largely a kin-based occupation, which means that the architectural practices and associated ritual knowledge systems within the barey ton are passed down generationally within familial groups. This creates something of a hereditary exclusiveness that is supported by the fact that the primary cultural group of the masons, the Bozo, rarely marry outside their cultural group (Marchand 2009:92). Such parameters have helped to create a largely impenetrable occupational network whose various elements actively mediate access to kin-based architectural knowledge systems through both social and cultural languages of exclusion.In fact, it is the intimate interconnectivity that exists between the barey ton and built form in Djenné that makes ongoing questions (or doubts) about the authorship of the current mosque structure somewhat perplexing. The contemporary Djenné mosque is actually one of three structures that are said to have existed in this area in one iteration or another for over 700 years. The current structure was rebuilt during the French colonial regime in 1907 after decades of neglect and, as such, has been the subject of much debate with regards to the particular source of its aesthetic. Architectural historian Labelle Prussin has said that this structural system was most likely the result of early twentieth-century French Beaux-Artes influence and the stylistic leanings of the École Polytechnique (Prussin 1977:73). While the theory merits consideration, other scholars, including Jean-Louis Bourgeois, have pointed out that, while the project was funded by the French, the construction of the building itself was nonetheless undertaken by Djenné's masonry guild, and the particular aesthetic of the mosque has been linked to noted regional mason Ismaila Traoré (Bourgeois 1987:60). Suzanne Blier has also observed that structures like the mosque embody a "fluid engineering approach" more in line with local practice and evident in architectural siblings elsewhere around the region (Morris and Blier 2003:196–97). Supporting this argument is the fact that variations of this style appeared at numerous points along the trade routes into the West African forest region well before the arrival of European architectural regimes. This gestures towards the presence of an emergent Afro-Islamic architectural sensibility that took root in multiple West African landscapes as early as the seventeenth century and assumed a variety of styles that reflected the particular cultural character of the context in which they developed. Many of these styles have even been identified by Prussin (1968) according to the communities in which they appear: i.e., the Bobo-Dioulasso style (Burkina Faso), the Kong style (Burkina Faso), and Kawara style (Côte d'Ivoire).Thus, with regards to the development of an Afro-Islamic architectural rubric in Djenné, this structural language would provide the first step in the creation of a regional vocabulary that would eventually progress into the West African forest region and evolve within this context to more closely align with the traditions and approaches of the cultures existing within. It is important to note as well that most of these adaptations would come as a result of Muslim merchants arriving in the forest region from the Sahel and coming into contact with a variety of social, spiritual, and environmental factors that they would use to adjust their cultural and architectural sensibilities. Shifting climate patterns and increased humidity, as well as the presence of numerous political, social, and cultural frameworks that would keep Islam from becoming the sociopolitical authority that it had been in the Niger Bend, gave rise to hybrid architectural styles expressive of a more fluid, malleable Islamic identity that no longer required the Sahel's monumental, proclamative architectural languages of authority to create a statement (Prussin 1968:72). Instead, this merger between the monumental earthen legacies of the Niger Bend and the diverse cultural and structural sensibilities of local populations would produce a series of small, modest, yet highly sculptural structures that reflect the translation of Sahelian vocabularies through the filters of local area toolkits and architectural repertoires towards expressing a newly established Islamic identity based on the cultural and architectural currents of the West African forest region (for more on the assimilation of Islam into local contexts, see Bravmann 1974, 1983; Prussin 1968, 1969; Apotsos 2016).2The Larabanga mosque (Fig. 5) is very much a result of this process, a structural embodiment of the impetus to reinvent this Sahelian architectural vocabulary along the lines of the distinctive cultural and spiritual identity of a specific context. The mosque, thus, exists as a reflection of this process of cultural and architectural development: a point of reference for an early regional Afro-Islamic legacy as well as an active part of a cultural environment that tailored this stylistic genre to its particular needs. With regards to the mosque's formative context, the village of Larabanga is the only 100% Muslim community in Ghana and an area endowed with acute spiritual power made manifest through both its material environment and its human inhabitants. With regards to the latter, Larabanga is popularly known as a town full of mallams, or Islamic spiritual healers who use mystical knowledge systems to heal a variety of physical, social, and psychological maladies (Fig. 6).3 Like other spiritual practitioners in the region, the mallams in Larabanga do this by combining certain Islamic mystical practices with local spiritual repertoires to create complementary medicinal treatments. Specifically, Larabanga's mallams use isims—collections of Arabic texts that have been compiled and passed down within specific mallam families for generations—to develop prescriptive treatments for clients in need. Typically, mallams couple the nature of a client's problem with an appropriate isim and from there prescribe a specific remedy, which might require the client to make a sacrifice, collect specific herbs for bathing or cooking, or even refrain from certain activities for a period of time. Clients may also be required to write out a particular phrase from the Qur'an repeatedly on a slate, then wash off the ink and use the water for bathing or cooking. Occasionally, divination practices may also be deployed, but this practice is somewhat contentious and thus not widely used. But it is important to note that healing practices in Larabanga, as well as regional traditions that use similar spiritual customs, all tend to combine Islamic knowledge systems with more localized healing practices to create highly efficacious, tailored remedies. Raymond Silverman has detailed similar conventions in the town of Bondoukou in northeastern Côte d'Ivoire, where karamokos (the Dyula term for individuals who practice healing conventions similar to those of mallams) utilize particular spiritual skill sets to "manipulate the greatest of forces, the word of God" (Silverman 2007:118). Through the creation of amulets (sebe), talismans, and other protective objects that combine Qur'anic verses with other efficacious substances, karamokos can evoke a number of beneficial results, ranging from curing sicknesses to inducing love and securing success in business. Yet these forms derive their fundamental power from their relationship with the divine through the word of God, and thus maintain an intimate point of connection with the practices of the mallams in Larabanga.4Also supporting Larabanga's distinctive spiritual identity is the fact that the village itself is considered a shrine, possibly even an amulet or talisman, containing mystical power that has long been associated with its particular geography. The community of Larabanga was founded by a powerful mallam named Ibrahim Braimah, who journeyed to the Gold Coast from the Sahel with his older brother Abu Kabir (popularly known as Dokurugu) and another mallam named Fati Morukpe in the seventeenth century. According to local chronicles such as the Kitab Ghanja, the Amr Ajdadina, and the Ta'rikh Ghunja, they came at the behest of a Malian cavalry officer/prince named Ndewura Jakpe, who required their assistance in conquering the town of Kango on the border of present-day Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire (Wilks et al. 1986). The brothers' spiritual aid allowed Jakpe to triumph over his foes and, as a reward, the new sovereign declared that the brothers and their descendants would serve as the spiritual advisors for his newly established Gonja Empire in perpetuity. As an added bonus, the brothers were also allowed to live independently of the empire's authority and establish their own spiritually autonomous settlements. With Jakpe's blessing, the brothers undertook a journey to locate settlement sites removed from the non-Islamic practices and lifestyles of the local peoples, and Abu Kabir was the first to settle at a site that became known as Dokrupé, or "old man's place." From there, Abu Kabir commanded his younger brother Braimah to continue onward and found an additional settlement, at which time Braimah threw a spear into the air and declared that he would build his new community wherever it landed. The spear traveled for several days before embedding itself into an area of high, fertile ground known by area peoples as Zuriyir, and as Braimah approached he noticed a certain brightness or nura around the site that seemed to emanate from the very earth itself. This area became the foundation on which Braimah built both Larabanga's historic mosque and his home, and the surrounding space eventually became the first section of the town, fittingly named Yirikpani or "the landing of the spear." He also named this emergent community "Larabanga" or "land of the Arab," possibly in reference to his ancestry as the descendent of a powerful spiritual leader named Ayuba, who came to the Sahel from Medina in the early histories of the medieval West African empires.Miraculous occurrences would continue for Braimah at this site, the next involving his acquisition of Larabanga's ancient Qur'an, which is still kept in the village today and is brought out during events like the Jintigi or the Fire Festival for special readings about the coming year.5 As Braimah began to build his community, he prayed to God for a Qur'an so that he could lead people along a righteous path of Islam. Some of the remaining non-Islamic peoples in the area told Braimah of a special place a short walk from his new mosque that had potent spiritual properties. Braimah proceeded to this site and prayed fervently for God to deliver him the sacred text. At this point, a large Qur'an, one of the seven oldest compiled Qur'ans in the world at that time, all of which were located in Mecca, fell from the heavens directly into his hands.6 The site, known as Zubgebni or "base of the mountain," became a sacred place and further established the budding community as an area of great spiritual significance.Additional demonstrations of this site-specific efficacy continued to occur in the early modern and contemporary periods as well, continuously affirming Larabanga's power as a place of spiritual authority. In the late nineteenth century, Guinean warrior Samori Touré and his army were passing through this area on a campaign to conquer the Gonja Empire when his horses sank up to their withers in the ground along the road next to Larabanga. Touré was an extremely powerful military leader at this time, both the founder of the short-lived Wassoulou Empire (1878–1898) and a famed heroic resistor of French colonial oppression, against which he waged war for over two decades (Peterson 2008:261–62). However, Touré was also known throughout the region as a ruthless leader who subjugated and massacred numerous local populations during his campaign, a fearsome reputation that preceded him into Larabanga. As such, when Touré sent a false message of peace to the inhabitants of Larabanga, intent on gaining their trust so that he could free his horses and destroy the town, Larabanga's elders decided to test his sincerity. They invited Touré to a feast in his honor and one of the elders wore a hat that had been enchanted with supernatural powers. If Touré attempted to take the hat for himself, it would ensure his ultimate and irrevocable defeat in the region. If he did not, he would pass on from the village unharmed. Sure enough, at the feast Touré did indeed take the hat, and soon after his campaign came to an untimely end.7Following Touré's less-than-successful engagement with the power of this site, the most recent "encounter" occurred in the 1960s, when the Ghanaian public works department decided to construct a road running from the town of Bole to the regional capital of Tamale. The surveyors in charge of the project sited the road so that it ran directly through Braimah's sacred area, and thereby activated the power of the place once again. Workers found their efforts to clear the site thwarted by a large stone that kept appearing in the center of the construction zone. The construction crew removed the stone and continued work, but the stone reappeared the next day, and the day after that as well. Some say that the stone was eventually taken as far away as Côte d'Ivoire, only to return again the next day (Apawu 2012:38). Eventually, the road was rerouted so that it curved around this sacred space, and today when one travels to Larabanga from Bole, it is impossible to miss the massive curve that veers around the site where Larabanga's Mystic Stone (Fig. 7) now sits.8This collection of narratives, starting with Larabanga's mystical founding by Ibrahim Braimah's and continuing into the contemporary period's wonderfully compelling accounts of thwarted roadwork, reveal a connection between site and individual in the community that acts as a necessary component in empowering and maintaining sacred space. Importantly, this type of relationship has resonances with other religious systems in West Africa as well, which suggests perhaps a history of regional dialogue regarding the symbiotic relationship that exists between individual and sacred geography. Although Larabanga maintains no dedicated connection to the spiritual rhetoric of Sufism, this Islamic system nonetheless offers an interesting lens through which to consider the establishment and development of Larabanga's identity as an empowered space.9 The holy Sufi city of Touba in Senegal comes to mind as the site where individual and geography have united to create a pivot around which the spiritual world turns. Founded by Sufi Cheikh Amadou Bamba, Touba was the result of a mystical vision given to Bamba by the angel Gabriel during a transcendental moment in the wilderness under an mbeb tree. The experience led Bamba to found a city organized solely around Suif Mouridist principles (see Roberts and Roberts 2003; Ross 2006), a narrative that has strong thematic connections with Braimah's founding of Larabanga. In addition, the spiritual figure of Cheikh Amadou Bamba himself and his role as a wali or saint resonates with the figure of Braimah, both of whom were able to maintain a rapport with the divine as a result of "the sincerity of [their] profound faith and [their] prayers," in the words of Louis Brenner (2000:326–27). In other words, each individual was able to experience his piety made manifest via a series of miraculous phenomena and occurrences that stood as "signs of [their] spiritual elevation" (Brenner 2000:327). The fact that both Braimah and Bamba's spiritual powers are diffuse within their descendants, as well as the sites with which they are associated, again emphasizes the remarkable compatibility of their spiritual narratives. As architectural manifestations of this, both Touba and Larabanga act as anchors of divine ordinance, the Larabanga mosque and Mystic Stone positioned as umbilicals, in the words of Braimah descendent Hussein Salia, connecting the village to the power of Mecca, and Touba's Great Mosque embodying the Sufi notion of the qutb, which, in the words of Zachary Markwith, is seen as "a continuation of the inner function of the Prophet, leaving humanity and the universe with a living link or bridge to heaven" (2009:26–27). Doctrinally, the qutb is an axis or pole around which the world is organized, manifested physically by the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur'an, yet also existing through physical points in human space. Touba more generally is one such point, a place of transcendence articulated not only through architectural structures present, but also through the design of the community itself, which incorporates the form of the khatim, sometimes called a magic square, which is a configuration that places an inhabitant in a position of receptivity for empowering forces or baraka (Ross 2006:92–93; see also Bourdier 1993). However, Touba is also anchored by the centrally placed Grand Mosque, which contains Bamba's tomb and thus channels concentrated blessing into the surrounding area. The Larabanga mosque and Mystic Stone act in a similar way as spiritual circuitries that feed the sacred power of Mecca into the village and in the process actively inscribe sacred aura onto the landscape.Because of this channeling, structures like the Great Mosque at Touba and the Larabanga mosque are endowed with concentrated blessing that is capable of being transmitted through physical contact. Indeed, physical contact is the major delivery mechanism for this type of blessing, which is first activated by prayer and then conveyed via tactile interaction. This aspect in the Larabanga mosque is particularly underscored through the presence of various social, cultural, and phenomenological barriers that have been installed around the structure as a way to regulate access to this power. Radiating out from the mosque in a ringlike fashion, these preventative membranes filter incoming individuals according to specific qualities, conditions, and identities (Fig. 8). Some boundaries reflect broader Islamic protocols with regards to interactions with sacred space; however, many of the structure's parameters are specific to Larabanga in and of itself and function as necessary safeguards for preserving the sanctity of the mosque and thus the efficacy of its power.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the primary strategic methods used to institute these barriers are spatial languages of exclusion, some of which even deny visual access. The first such filter is activated when an individual enters the clearing of the mosque, where a village member waits to sort incoming visitors according to their residential status. Village residents are able to visually access the mosque free of charge, while visitors and foreigners are required to pay for the privilege. The next barrier involves entrance to the actual mosque space itself; only Muslims are allowed within the structure, and that access is further constrained not only by the gender-specific entrances that actively segregate men from women, but also by the small, exceedingly cramped doorways that allow only the petite, the extremely flexible, or the highly motivated to squeeze through. Once inside, men and women are confined within separate womblike prayer spaces, and the final division is activated when the doors are closed and worshipers become phenomenologically separated from the exterior world. Almost all sensorial stimulation is eliminated by two-foot-thick earthen walls and minimal window and door openings, which collectively isolate the individual from the profane environment outside so as to maximize communion with the divine. At the conclusion of their prayers, individuals vacate this cool, dark interior by again squeezing through these tight, claustrophobic channels to emerge into the world renewed as a Muslim, reaffirmed as a vetted member of the community, and charged with the blessing conveyed by this tactile interaction.10 The spiritual empowerment that results from the physical penetration of this space and one's phenomenological experience of it also supports an idea that "the deeper, more profound, or more spiritual aspects of Islam are to be found in its hidden aspects" (Brenner 2000:335). Such aspects are carefully secured through the preventive membranes that surround the mosque, separating, segregating, and in the process creating an elite group of empowered individuals qualified to partake in this spiritually affirmative experience. Yet, paradoxically, it is also the dedicated concealment of this sacred experience, encoded in the structure's preventive registers, that allows the architecture itself to remain spiritually and culturally potent. Tactics of concealment in African visual and material culture have been observed by Polly Nooter-Roberts, who notes that often "the content of a secret [in African art] is less important than the use of secrecy as a strategy" (Nooter 1993:58). Following this, Allen Roberts remarks that "secrecy is the essence of politics, for it implies a hierarchy of privilege and dependency; some people know something; others do not" (Roberts 1993:65). Thus, the control of knowledge systems in the form of mediating interaction with the Larabanga mosque, in conjunction with the blatant brandishing of this control via the mosque's rigidly constructed defensive infrastructure, creates a hierarchy of power, particularly with regards to those who "own" this knowledge (Nooter 1993:58).In Larabanga's case, the aforementioned owners are the Kamara cultural group, who reinforce the mosque's protective barriers and protect its spiritual knowledge and experience in ways similar to that of Djenné's barey ton. Like the barey ton, the Kamara of Larabanga have traditionally governed themselves according to specific social protocols and regulations that in many ways make access to Kamara culture as onerous and exclusive as access to the mosque space itself. The Kamara are thought to be one of the earliest Mande clans in West Africa, first appearing in the eleventh century in the area of Sebi, located in Mali's present-day Mopti region (Rodney 1970:47, Massing 1985:25). The Kamara also became important allies for the renowned Malian king or Mansa Sundiata Keita in his battle against the sorcerer Samanguru in the thirteenth century (Niane 1975:95, Massing 1985:38). Oral histories also suggest that the Kamara have long been associated with healing, a quality that Larabanga's first Kamara, Braimah, transmitted to his contemporary descendants who are collectively gifted in the arts of using sacred and highly secretive spiritual knowledge systems. Larabanga's Kamara have also gone to great lengths to keep this particular legacy undiluted. Kamaras are patrilineal, meaning that one can only be a "true" Kamara if one's father is a Kamara. Probably because of this, rarely even today do marriages occur outside the community; most community members marry within the village between families, regardless of the increased mobility of the younger population and the availability of reliable public transport. In addition, to be a true Kamara, one must be related to at least two of the twelve families, or houses, of the Kamara clan. Each family has historically resided within a specific section of the community, where they live, build, and farm, and should a stranger move to the area and wish to settle on Larabanga land, they either have to locate themselves in the Zongo or "stranger" section of the town, which is located on the outskirts of the village near the new government school, or obtain permission from the elders to build in a clan-controlled area. Rarely is such permission given.It should also be noted that this social infrastructure stands in marked contrast to the larger regional culture of the Gonja, whose aforementioned founder, Ndewura Jakpe, awarded Braimah and his descendants the right to live autonomously from this larger society. The Gonja as a regional collective encompasses a number of di
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