Lomography

7 mosques of Bani
written by vicuna on December 4th, 2008 , 2 comments (4 votes)

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The 7 mosques of Bani are one of the most important religious and cultural places of Burkina Faso and Sahel area. Bani is a little city (4000 people are living there)in the north part of the country and is famous for this amazing architectural construction of 7 mosques.

This city, surrounded by little mountains, witnessed a “revelation” by a saint man called El Hadj Mohammed. The people from Bani say that he lived 40 years in the desert. 1979 he heard the voice of Allah in a dream asking him to built a mosque and show him the truth of his faith in Islam. He had no architectural knowledge at all but immediately began to built a mosque in Bani, with the help of all citizens of the town. The only material they had was the typical red earth of this area, clay and wood.
And when you see this huge mosque, with this great facade and the huge muezzin tower, you can only be impressed by the amazing human work that was achieved by this man and the people of Bani.

But the work wasn’t finish: after the main mosque, he built 6 other mosques on the surrounding hills with a very precise plan (only the plan he had in his dream, because there was never a written project to built these monuments): when linked together (looking from the sky) they have the shape of a man praying Allah and are all visually connected to the main mosque who is the center of this architectural structure. I couldn’t verify the view from the sky, but when you climb up the hills you can easily see each mosque all around the city.

But as these impressing constructions are only made of clayey mud and wood they’re very fragile and are suffering every year during the rain season from important damages and many of the little mosques are in a very bad state. The people try to built them up again, but a few times later another part is collapsing. That’s really sad to see how this amazing human creation is condemned to disappear….

So, if you have the chance to visit Burkina Faso, you must go visit these mosques of Bani.

See the link for more informations (only in french, sorry, didn’t find any good links in english…): http://www.lefaso.net/spip.php?article5656
http://www.voyages.liberation.fr/jeunesse-dun-tour-du-monde/bani-sainte-miserable