Last winter break, while vacationing in Touba (see this post from January 2012), I was able to visit the Murid shrines of Khourou Mbacké for the first time. Khourou Mbacké is only about 25 km from Touba, near Ndoulo off the road to Diourbel, but, as the village has not (yet) developed into an urban center, I had not included it in my previous research on Murid urbanization. Yet the place is an important shrine and certainly deserves a write-up on this blog.
Shrines on Khourou Mbacke's central square include the mosque-mausoleum of Sëriñ Mbaye Diakhaté (minaret on the left), Kër Mame Diarra (center) and the mausoleum of Sëriñ Habibou Mbacké (right). (ph. Eric Ross)
Khourou Mbacké is associated with the early life of Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba. In Fighting the Greater Jihad:Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913 (Ohio University Press, 2007) my friend and fellow scholar of the Muridiyya, Cheikh Babou (Associate Professor of History at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia) relates a tradition which places Ahmadu Bamba’s birth in Khourou Mbacké. Whether or not this was the case, Ahmadu Bamba certainly lived there with his parents and siblings as a child, prior to their move to Porokhane in 1865. Later in life it is in Khourou Mbacké that he asked that those of his children who died in infancy be buried.
Khourou Mbacké is also associated to the life and legacy of Mbaye Diakhaté. Sëriñ Babacar “Mbaye” Diakhaté was a taalibe of Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba. It is Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba, while living under house arrest in Diourbel, who ordered Mbaye Diakhaté to establish a daara (Koranic school) in Khourou Mbacké, thus reviving the abandoned village of his childhood. Since Mbaye Diakhaté’s death ca. 1954 Khourou Mbacké has remained under the jurisdiction of his sons. A magal in memory of Mbaye Diakhaté is held annually on the 7th of Sha’ban.
Mbaye Diakhaté wrote many panegyrics for his master in Wolofal, the Wolof language written in the Arabic alphabet. These poems have become very famous. They are recited at Murid gatherings. They circulate mostly in oral form, as audio cassettes. Recordings and videos of recitations Mbaye Diakhaté’s Wolof poems can be accessed over the web sites such as these:
Most of the documentary sources dating from the era of Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba are either in French or in Arabic. Wolof sources, written in Wolofal, are now also being studied by historians and linguists. Among them is Fallou Ngom, Associate Professor and Director of the African Language Center Language Program at Boston University. His annotated bibliography of Sëriñ Baye Diakhaté’s major Wolofal works is available on-line from Boston University’s digital common. Over lunch at a conference in Dakar a few weeks before my visit to Khourou Mbacké, Fallou and I had discussed the prospect of a joint excursion to the shrine. I’m sorry our paths didn’t cross in Khourou Mbacké, at least not this time.
Badou Diakhaté (left) and Cheikh Diakhaté (center) standing with author. The photo was taken in the mausoleum of Cheikh Anta Mbacké in Darou Salam, which we also visited that morning. This mausoleum is undergoing reconstruction. (ph. Eric Ross)
During my brief visit to Khourou Mbacké this past January I was accompanied by Badara Diakhaté and his cousin Cheikh; Badara (Badou) is the son of my host in Touba and I have known him since he was about seven years old. Now a young man with a degree in computers, he works at IFAN in Dakar.
On reaching Khourou Mback we first met with the Calif, Sëriñ Moustapha Diakhaté. We were then given a tour of the monuments by the knowledgeable man the Calif had assigned. Badou and Cheikh did the translation. I took many pictures and sketched a plan of the village.
Plan of the village of Khourou Mbacké
Khourou Mbacké is ordered around a central square (the pénc) where most of the shrines are clustered. Some of these mark the locations of the houses where Ahmadu Bamba’s parents had lived. Others mark burial sites.
View of eastern façade of Kër Mame Diarra. Her room is under the dome to the right of the entrance. (ph. Eric Ross)
The location of the house where Ahmadu Bamba’s mother, Mame Diarra Bousso, had lived is marked by a memorial building called Kër Mame Diarra (#4 on the above plan). Like Khourou Mbacké’s other religious monuments it is surfaced in tile, but it is the most lavishly decorated of them all—grey tiles with brown tile trim and wrought iron window fixtures. Its green dome rises over a room furnished with a bed and book cases all leaden with copies of the Koran and books of religious sciences.
View of Mame Diarra Bousso's room (ph. Eric Ross)
Mame Diarra Bousso (1833-1866) is buried in Porokhane and her mausoleum complex there has developed into a major Murid shrine.
The location of Ahmadu Bamba’s father’s house is now marked by a mosque (#3). This is the only monument not surfaced in tile. The morning of our visit a daara (Koranic school for children) was in session in the ancillary shelter (mbaar) next to it. Momar Anta Saly Mbacké (1822-1882), Ahmadu Bamba’s father, is buried in the cemetery at Derkhlé and his last place of residence, Mbacké Kayor, is also a shrine.
The mosque laid out by Ahmadu Bamba and the mausoleum of Sëriñ Mbaye Diakhaté constitute a single building (left). (ph. Eric Ross)
The other mosque on Khourou Mbacké’s square (#2) is purported to have been laid out by Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba himself. The building contains the mausoleum of Sëriñ Mbaye Diakhaté. It has one minaret and is surfaced in tile.
Large mausoleum over the graves of Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba's children. (ph. Eric Ross)
Next to Ahmadu Bamba’s mosque is the cemetery where he had his children buried (#1). This cemetery is now contained within a large mausoleum whose exterior arches and roof are decorated with dark green tile. Inside, the original burial ground remains undisturbed. No floor has been laid and the small tombs are carefully maintained. The list of the children of Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba who are buried here, provided to me by on-site, is appended to this post.
Mausoleum of Sëriñ Habibou Mbacké (ph. Eric Ross)
The other mausoleum on the square is that of Sëriñ Habibou Mbacké (#5). It too has been surfaced in tile.
Two blocks south of the pénc is a blessed well, the Aïn Shukri. A bilingual French-English panel at the site records how Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba ordered his taalibe Mbaye Diakhaté to dig this well in Khourou Mbacké and bring him some water. When water from this well was brought to him, the Sheikh drank some of it and uttered a prayer on the rest. He then ordered that the remaining water be returned to the well, and that the well be named Aïn Shukri (the Well of Thanks).
View of Aïn Shukri (the Well of Thanks). (ph. Eric Ross)
The well, where water is brought up by pulley, is enclosed in a roofless hexagonal kiosk.
View of the mausoleum of Sëriñ Abdou Salam Mbacké. (ph. Eric Ross)
South again from Aïn Shukri, towards the railroad tracks, is the small mausoleum of Abdou Salam Mbacké. It is the most vernacular of Khourou Mbacké’s shrines. It is built as a one-room house, surrounded by trees.
List of Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba’s children buried in Khourou Mbacké
A print-out list of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba’s offspring buried in Khourou Mbacké was obtained from the caliph, Sëriñ Moustapha Diakhaté. Spelling of the names is as in the original. Only the spelling of titles (Sëriñ/Serigne, Soxna/Sokhna) have been modified.
Mouhamadou Abdoulahi, son of Sokhna Faty Touty
Sokhna Aminata, daughter of Soxna Khary Penda Fall
Sëriñ Abdoul Djamil, son of Soxna Khary Penda Fall
Sëriñ Abdoul Wahab, son of Soxna Khary Penda Fall
Soxna Mouhsinatou, daughter of Sokhna Faty Mbéya Diop
Soxna Maryamou, daughter of Sokhna Faty Mbéya Diop
Soxna Fatimatou Bintou, daughter of Soxna Ndiakhate Sylla
Soxna Salimatou, daughter of Soxna Khar Diop
Soxna Maryamou, daughter of Soxna Maimounatou Diakhaté
Sëriñ Abdou Salam, son of Soxna Khoudia Diop
Sëriñ Abdoul Baakhi, son of Soxna Assiyatou Diakhaté
Casablanca was a hotbed of modern architecture during the first half of the 20th century. In 1917 it became the second city in the world, after New York City’s zoning law of 1916, to adopt a comprehensive master plan for urban development. Until the 1950s various permutations of the “modern” and Art Deco styles were enthusiastically embraced by Casablanca’s architects and inhabitants alike. At the time, the city was seen (and marketed) as a French America, a version of Chicago, home to the kind of brash capitalist modernity which threw up skyscrapers.
Immeuble Liberté in 2007 (ph. Patrick Berger). The aptly named building, designed by Léonard Morandi, was completed in in 1951.
While Casablanca’s cutting-edge modern urban planning and architecture were certainly conditioned by colonialism, the architecture generated during that era should also be considered as part of Morocco’s cultural heritage. One of the objectives of Casamémoire, a Casablanca-based civil society organization, is to foster an awareness of this heritage, and several people at Al Akhawayn University were happy to participate in this year’s Journées du patrimoine.
The Journées du patrimoine is an annual open house weekend when the public gets to enjoy guided tours of heritage buildings conducted by volunteers. Exhibits, performances, screenings and conferences on art and architecture are also held across the city. This year’s event, the fourth of its kind, was held April 6-8. Professor Said Ennahid, an archeologist who teaches Islamic art history at AUI, and I were determined to get students involved. A student club, the Social Sciences Club, took the initiative of organizing a dual event to mark the occasion. One of its members, Rim El Jadidi, had interned with Casamémoire and is doing her senior capstone research on the city’s heritage.
On Tuesday April 2 we invited one of the founders of Casamémoire, Architect Aberrahim Kassou, to come to AUI to present the film “Salut Casa” (Jean Vidal 1954). The film showcases France’s “achievements” in Casablanca, in “a mere forty years,” at the very moment its rule was being seriously challenged. The city’s modern architecture and the pace of its economic growth (in today’s parlance Casablanca had a “tiger” economy in the early 1950s) are especially highlighted in the film.
Don’t believe what YouTube puts as the date of this film (1940) though. “Salut Casa”came out in 1954 and Jean Vidal shot it in the course of 1951-52.
For the Casamémoire open house weekend (ironically, AUI was holding its own annual open house the same weekend) Kenza Yousfi, President of the Social Sciences Club organized transportation to take students to Casablanca. AUI faculty members: Sofia Kocergin, Sandra Phelps, Said Ennahid, John Shoup and I, accompanied the students. Professor Kocergin’s Communications Studies students had a practical exercise on event promotion to prepare. The Moroccan students all have homes, family members or friends in the city (or in nearby Rabat) so accommodation was not an issue for them. The foreign students stayed at the international-class Hyatt while, for the most part, the AUI faculty members who accompanied the group stayed at the very faded Hôtel Excelsior (architect: Hyppolyte Delaporte), the finest hotel in Casablanca when it opened in 1916. We made it our headquarters for Saturday’s walking tour. This downloadable Google Earth kmz file locates the buildings mentioned in this blog post.
View of Place de France (Place des Nations Unies today) in 1918. The Hôtel Excelsior rises to the left. In the background is the five-story Magazins Paris-Maroc department store (no longer extant). The clock tower on the right marked the division between the old city (the Madina) and the colonial Ville Nouvelle. The original clock tower was built in 1911. It was demolished in 1948, along with the that part of the Madina. In 1993 a facsimile was erected on a different spot facing the square. Today, Place des Nations Unies has the heaviest traffic in all of Morocco, and this has probably been the case since the above photo was taken. (source. Jean-Louis Cohen & Monique Eleb, Casablanca: Mythes et figures d'une aventure urbaine, Belvisi/Hazan, 1998, p. 61)
The current Tour de l'horloge as seen from a Hôtel Excelsior room. Behind the clock tower is Casablanca's tallest monument, the minaret of Hassan II Mosque. (ph. Eric Ross)
The Hôtel Excelsior in 2012. Next to it is the 15-story BMCI Building, designed by Alexandre Courtois (1904-1974) and completed in 1950. (ph. Eric Ross)
Saturday’s walking tour started on Place Mohammed V, formerly Place Administrative (this square has changed its name far too often, but its original name of Place Administrative best describes it). This large public square was the showcase of the architectural style promoted by Resident Lyautey, a style recently designated as neo-Moroccan. Lyautey personally oversaw the designs of the civic and administrative buildings built around the square, and he encourage the architects he hired to think beyond the box of Orientalist architecture hitherto practiced in French North Africa. Moroccan motifs, designs, materials and craftsmanship were to be re-thought within the practices of the functionalist architecture then emerging in Europe. The result, on Place Administrative, is a fantastic display of the highest-quality architecture. The lavishly funded public buildings are made from the best construction materials and were designed on a grand scale and with great attention to detail. Today, access to these buildings is very restricted, so the annual open house offers the only opportunity to visit them, and to take unlimited photos!
The Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) is now the Wilaya, the seat of the Regional administration. It was designed by Marius Boyer (1885-1947) and completed in 1927.
The former Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), now the Wilaya of Casablanca, as viewed from the gallery of the Palais de Justice (Court House). (ph. Eric Ross)
The trimming on the exterior of the Hôtel de Ville is local grey sandstone. A wide frieze of green zellij (cut tile work) marks the roof line. A clock towers above the building. This was Casablanca’s second clock tower, after the Tour de l’horloge (see above). Keeping proper time was an important part of the colonial agenda.
Court in the Hôtel de Ville (ph. Eric Ross)
The Hôtel de Ville is organized around three leafy riyadhs (garden courts). Paintings by Majorelle (1859-1926) hang in it’s marble stairwells. State rooms on the very majestic upper floor include the mayor’s office (at the time) and the Hall of Honor, where the mayor conducted civil marriages.
High Atlas scene painted by Louis Majorelle in the grand staircase of the Hôtel de Ville (ph. Eric Ross)
The neighboring Palais de Justice (Court House), completed in 1922, has the most monumental facade on the square, with a great central portal leading to two columned galleries on the main floor.
The Palais de Justice, built by Joseph Marrasat (1881-1971), was completed in 1922 (ph. Eric Ross)
The portal pavilion is capped with the most splendid zellij frieze.
Green and blue zellij frieze above the portal (ph. Eric Ross)
One of the two-story galleries which flank the entry portal. It is floored in imported white marble trimmed with Moroccan stone. (ph. Eric Ross)
The third building the AUI group visited on Place Administrative is the Casablanca office of the Bank al-Maghrib, the state bank. Designed by Edmond Brion (1885-1973), it was completed in 1937.
The facade of the Bank al-Maghrib raises above the foliage of the Place administrative. (ph. Eric Ross)
By the mid 1930s the neo-Moroccan project had taken on with architects operating in the city’s private sector. The colonial authorities therefore patronized a more sober decor for the Bank al-Maghrib. The austere economic situation of the day also lead to the understatement of opulence. For example, Earth-tones replaced the bright greens and blues in the zellij work. Clearly though, no expense was spared for the great bankers of the metropolis. One finds halls clad in fine marbles, others in expensive wood paneling with exquisite Art Deco marquetterie. The bank’s Board Room would not have looked out of place in a Manhattan skyscraper. I would love to have posted pictures of these rooms but I can’t manage to take good indoor shots.
Glass ceiling of Bank al-Maghrib's lofty main hall. Natural light penetrates to the heart of the building. (ph. Eric Ross)
We would have liked to visit the other monuments on the Place Administrative: the Post Office, the administrative buildings, the public fountains, esplanades and contentious statues, but time was pressing. We had to move on.
Bank al-Maghrib marks the limit between Casablanca’s civic-administrative center and its Central Business District. As private-sector patrons of grand architecture, the banks embraced the spirit of the official neo-Moroccan style, and of the times. Many of their buildings were out-right modern, with no reference to classical European or Orientalist styles.
The Attijariwafa Building (originally the Banque Commerciale du Maroc) was built by Marius Boyer in 1930. (ph. Eric Ross)
Other commercial buildings, office blocs, department stores and cinemas, adapted the neo-Moroccan motifs to Art Deco.
The Compagnie Algerienne Building was built by Henri Prost and Antoine Marchisio in 1926. (ph. Eric Ross)
Casablanca’s CBD is a living gallery of Art Deco, à la fois modern, Mediterranean, French and Moroccan. Solidly built as these buildings are, many are in need of restoration, or at least of maintenance and repairs.
Art Deco apartment building in Casablanca's Central Business District. (ph. Eric Ross)
Our itinerary through downtown Casablanca took us through the Passage Sumica, one of the city’s famed pedestrian galleries. Built in the 1920s and 30s these pedestrian shopping galleries (Passage Glaoui, Passage Tazi, etc.) pass through city blocs, linking the sidewalks of the busy commercial streets on each side. They allow street-level pedestrian traffic to penetrate straight through the blocs, giving additional access to buildings above, and increasing commercial retail space and store frontage. They were cutting-edge amenities for the emerging metropolis. Apart from stores, passages have coffee shops and give access to hotels, cinemas and the other anchors of the type of pedestrian-shopper-flaneur modernity Casablanca became famous for.
The Passage Tazi, under the Omar Tazi Building, was opened in 1929. It traverses the center of the block. (ph. Eric Ross)
Art Deco glass ceiling of the Passage Tazi. Natural light bathes the passage even though it runs through the center of the block. Offices and apartments rise along the block's perimeter. (ph. Eric Ross)
The AUI group could only catch a glimpse of the Art Deco exuberance around us as we hurried to the Assayag Building.
The Immeuble Assayag, completed in 1930 (ph. Eric Ross)
The Assayag Building was the epitome of modern urban living. The architect, Marius Boyer, did away with the dank inner courtyards-cum-light wells that typified dense urban blocks likes those described above. His Assayag apartment building rose as three towers. The octagonal stairway at the center of each is designed to be lit and ventilated naturally. Unfortunately, the mechanical apparatus necessary to operate these elaborate system has not been maintained. Run-down it may be, the Assayag Building must still be a grand place to live. The penthouses at the top of the towers begin on the seventh floor and rise in terraces two additional floors. Apartments in this and other blocs were designed with a new clientele in view, the young upwardly-mobile single person or childless couple. They were not designed for families. They had open multilevel plans and ranged in size from studios to multistory penthouses. As such tenants might have cars, the Assayag and other large apartment blocks in the central neighborhoods had underground parking in the basement.
An afternoon in the Madina
After a quick lunch (chacun selon son gout) the AUI group met at the Tour de l’horloge (1993 remake version) for the tour of the old city. We first visited the Dar al-Makhzen (court house and general administrative center). The adjoining mosque, which we did not visit, is reputed to be the oldest functioning mosque in Casablanca. From there we headed to the current Friday Mosque, called the Oulad al-Hamra Mosque, and to the adjacent Residence of Lyautey. The Residence currently houses the Casablanca chapter of the Union Marocaine du Travail (or UMT), one of Morocco’s largest and oldest labor unions.
Chairman Mao Tse Tung is among world dignitaries who have been received at the UMT residence in Casablanca's Madina. (ph. Eric Ross)
From the UMT residence we were taken, by a very competent volunteer guide (as everywhere we went throughout that day and the next), to the Ettedgui Synagogue. This synagogue dates from the 1930s. It is a private synagogue which still belongs to the Ettedgui family, though they no longer live in Morocco. While ordinarily it would be possible to visit the building, Saturday, April 7 was Passover and so the synagogue was not open for visits. We proceeded to the Spanish Church. Only recently has the Spanish state turned over control of this church and its attendant buildings to Morocco. The Church buildings are currently being rebuilt and will serve as a community center. Our group was allowed to visit the site and explore the chantier.
Habous and the Mahkama
Sunday’s itinerary was less hectic than Saturday’s and took us to a few outlying neighborhoods. The Habous neighborhood was built in the 1920s to house the city’s growing Moroccan (“Muslim” was the official designation at the time) working class. It was laid out next to the new Royal Palace. Albert Laprade (1883-1978) and his colleagues conducted extensive field studies of Moroccan urban architecture before he set out to design the neighborhood in 1917. Moroccan spatial compositions and motifs guided every scale of the design. This model modern neighborhood (modern in terms of building materials and urban amenities) is a terrific mise-en-scène of traditional architectural devises: alleyways, doorways, arches at every turn. It is picturesque and highly esthetic. And it is great architecture. Built of durable materials at the human scale, every detail in the urban composition was carefully designed and executed.
Residential alley in Habous. (ph. Eric Ross)
There are similarities with Essaouira (aka Mogador) in the use of sandstone trim on white walls. But whereas Sidi Mohamed b. Abdellah imposed straight wide streets on 18th century Essaouira, Laprade imposed picturesque angles in Habous.
The densest part of Habous, containing the souks, faces the Mahkama and the Friday Mosque. (ph. Eric Ross)
The Habous neighborhood is one last great expression of the fin-de-siècle arts and crafts movement. The model was never replicated. Rather, the industrial rationale in modernism won over the craftsmen. Mass-produced minimalist housing characterized most subsequent planned neighborhoods for workers (such as Cité Socica, built in 1942). Also, the technocratic top-down planning approach, responsible for the design of every single nook and cranny in Habous, was at odds with the types of traditional building processes which “organically” produced the nooks and crannies of Morocco’s authentic urban architecture.
Readers will probably not be surprised to learn that the Habous neighborhood did not serve its intended social group. Rather than working families getting affordable housing, Habous became the must-have address of the Moroccan bourgeoisie, and of the Fassi upper class in particular, who appreciated access to a Friday mosque… and to the nearby palace. The hub of Muslim Casablanca during the colonial era, with its coffee houses and bookstores, Habous is still considered the epitome of Muslim urbanity today. The souks designed by Laprade are specialized in the finest Moroccan crafts. Habous is where Baydawiya brides go shopping for all their wedding things.
Habous is also famous for another astounding feat of arts and crafts architecture, the Mahkama, or “tribunal.” The Mahkama (by Auguste Cadet) is a fantastic urban palace which took over a decade to complete (1941-1952). Nothing like it exists anywhere. Built on a slope, it appears to tower over Habous neighborhood. One gains access to it through massive gate portals.
The Mahkama rises like a castle above Habous. (ph. Eric Ross)
Inside the Mahkama, the pasha’s “offices” are conceived as an Alhambra. Sunlit courts gleam with white stucco work. As with the stucco work, craftsmanship on the cedarwood ceilings is crisp and perfect in every detail. And all of it is real! The best craftsmen were recruited and the best materials used. It is an extraordinarily refined restitution of Alhambra architecture, at life-size scale, with the finest materials. I took dozens of great photos but can’t possibly post them all here. This is just a glimpse.
A corner of a patio in the Mahkama. (ph. Eric Ross)
I doubt the Mahkama ever served its purpose as the offices of the Pasha of Casablanca, and I am not sure what governmental function it serves today. I am just thankful that once a year, during the Journées du patrimoine, the public can get a look at this jewel.
The culture factory in the Abattoirs
One of the pillars framing the main gate to the Abattoirs (ph. Eric Ross)
From Habous we headed to the bildi (working-class) neighborhood of Hay Mohammadi. One of the largest employers in this neighborhood was the slaughter house, les abattoirs. The municipal facility by the rail yards was built by Georges-Ernest Desmarest and Albert Greslin in 1922. It was designed to the best hygiene standards of the day, and for industrial efficiency. It closed in 2000. In 2008 a collective of arts and cultural associations, including Casamémoire, obtained the right to reconvert this brown-field site.
Roofs are designed to provide natural light and ventilation (ph. Eric Ross)
Main hall in the Abattoirs (ph. Eric Ross)
Since 2009 the Abattoirs are a fabrique culturelle (culture factory). The principal building consists of a gigantic hall. Natural light enters through roof apertures and internal divisions are low. The base of the pillars and the divisions are clad in durable white tile. Given its original purpose, the facility is equipped with industrial-caliber pulleys, braces, electricity and plumbing. There are also large external areas and many ancillary buildings. The Abattoirs offer perfect work and exhibition spaces for visual and performing artists. For now, only a small part of the huge facility is being used. Our group saw an exhibit of paintings (urban scenes, I am sorry I don’t recall the artist’s name), and caught a glimpse a dance troupe rehearsing to Malian musicians.
Abattoir graffiti
An evening at Rick’s Café
Fully in keeping with the weekend’s theme of engaging with the history of Casablanca, and of appreciating its legacy on the city’s imaginary, AUI faculty members (the usual suspects), patronized Casablanca’s most evocative establishment, Rick’s Café.
Apart from the set for the café, every other architectural element depicted in that film is wrong. The Casablanca presented to the American cinema-going public by Warner Brothers in the fall of 1942 was shot entirely in three different Hollywood studios. It had nothing to do with the brazen metropolis of modernity described above. Contrast the Hollywood version of Casablanca with Jean Vidal’s “Salut Casa” of ten years later. The screenplay for “Casablanca”, and the sets, called for Tangiers. The film was hastily re-edited to coincide with the US landings in North Africa and the Casablanca Conference of January 1943.
Yet the film, the city, and that moment are now the stuff of legend–a romance for modern war-torn times. And nowhere are the legend and the romance more delightfully experienced than at Rick’s Café at the northern tip of the Madina. Whatever my misgivings about the external sets in “Casablanca,” the real Rick’s Café is in the best tradition of entre-deux-guerres langueur, sumptuous yet intimate, and thoroughly drenched in jazz. Kathy Kriger’s restaurant-lounge, which opened in 2004, is a classy addition to Casablanca-by-night, and it would have been right at home in the Casablanca of my grandmother’s era.
Interior of Rick's Café (ph. Eric Ross)
Remembering Casa
As a fils de Piednoire, Casablanca’s heritage has very personal meaning for me. My mother, Anne-Marie Roigt (later Ross, 1939-2009), grow up there, so “remembering” Casablanca is not simply an academic exercise.
Author's mother, Anne-Marie Roigt, caught by a sidewalk cameraman on a Casablanca street (ca. 1953)
A few years earlier the author’s mother and grandmother, Maria Maillis, were similarly snapped by a street photographer in a Casablanca “passage”
I asked my aunt Francine, who moved from Casablanca to France in the early sixties, about photographs like the ones above. There seemed to be lots of them about. My aunt told me that roaming cameramen would snap photos of unsuspecting (or suspecting) strollers, take their names and address, collect the fee, and then send them the photos after they had been developed. It’s hard to imagine such civility and trust between strangers on the sidewalks of any major city today.
The photos taken by these street-level professional photographers are common in the family albums of the Casablancais of that era, as was showcased in VH magazine (or Version Homme, the magazine of the Moroccan male. Who says I don’t keep up with the times?). In November 2011 VH magazine devoted an issue to “L’age d’or de Casablanca.” Casamémoire’s initiatives featured prominently in its coverage. Casablanca’s modern architecture has been featured in other glossy magazines as well, and in Royal Air Maroc’s in-flight magazine. More practically, the work of preserving and “re-activating” Casablanca’s protectorate-era urban heritage is gaining momentum.
I grew up with family stories about specific locations in the Casablanca of the 1940s and 50s. There were the “Boulevard de Bordeaux” stories, where my mother’s family was living at the time, and there were the “Librairie de France” stories. My grandmother, Maria Maillis (later Critch 1905-1996), had worked at this bookstore while single-handedly raising her two daughters and caring for her retired father. She was very modern, a self-made woman. Like virtually everyone else around her in Casablanca, she had come from somewhere else but she thrived in the city’s French cosmopolitan space. She remained an enthusiast of tall sleek white buildings all her life. The bookstore where my grandmother worked still exists, with its original name.
The author standing in front of the Librairie de France in 2003
From November 1942, Casablanca was awash in Americans. The Americans loved Casablanca (see Rick’s Cafe above) and the feeling was reciprocal. Around 1952 (sorry, I don’t know the exact year) my grandmother married George Critch, a engineering consultant with the US Army (sorry, I don’t quite know the work he did). They had a civil ceremony at the Hôtel de Ville. I was delighted therefore to be able to visit the Hall of Honor at the Hôtel de Ville where they had married.
Group of AUI students and faculty visiting the marble-clad Hall of Honor in the Casablanca Wilaya (formerly the Hôtel de Ville) during the Casamémoire open house. My grandmother married her second husband in this hall. (ph. Eric Ross)
Seated in the center, my grandmother and George Critch during their wedding ceremony in the Hall of Honor of the Hôtel de Ville, ca. 1952.
Maria Maillis and George Critch leaving the Hôtel de Ville as newly-weds. A true Casablanca love story.
Author standing on the steps of the Casablanca Wilaya, formerly the Hôtel de Ville. (ph. Eric Ross)
In 1955 Dad George’s work took him to Orléans, France, and not long thereafter to Ankara, Turkey. He took his new family, my teenage mother in tow, along with him… but that’s for another blog post.
I first visited Casablanca as a 19-year old backpacker. By then my family had no contacts there at all. Everyone they had known had left. I spent only a few days in Casablanca, staying at the Youth Hostel near Bab al-Mrissa. What I remember most about my stay in the city is sitting on the square next to the Oulad al-Hamra Mosque mulling things over. This is when I determined that the next time I traveled to the “developing world” (it was 1982, I had just completed CEGEP/junior college) it wouldn’t be as a tourist. I can say that my career doing field work in foreign and not-so-foreign lands got started that morning on this square.
Boys play football on the little square near Oulad al-Hamra Mosque, in Casablanca's Madina (ph. Eric Ross)
Teaching at AUI since 1998, I have become a regular visitor to Casablanca. I take students there on field trips, I take guests on tours, even though I feel I don’t really know the city. You can’t know a city until you live in it. Yet I have now woven some new family stories into Casablanca’s fabric. My nephew Olivier came to visit in the summer of 2010. We spent a few nights at the Hôtel Excelsior before he flew back to Montréal. And in the fall of 2007 I had the pleasure of touring the city with my cousin Patrick Berger, an native of Casablanca who now lives in Toulouse. Patrick took me to the haunts of his youth, mostly around rond-point Mers Sultan. Many still serve beer.
Breakfast with my cousin Patrick Berger, a native of Casablanca, on the terrace of the Cafe Excelsior on Place des Nations Unies (formerly Place de France) in fall 2007 (ph. Elène Cloosterman)
Further reading
Casablanca’s protectorate-era architectural heritage is now well known, and it has been eruditely documented and beautifully illustrated by Jean-Louis Cohen & Monique Eleb. Their book has been published in both French and English:
Jean-Louis Cohen & Monique Eleb, Casablanca: Mythes et figures d’une aventure urbaine, Belvisi/Hazan, 1998.
Jean-Louis Cohen & Monique Eleb, Casablanca: Colonial Myths and Architectural Ventures, The Monacelli Press, 2003.
Morocco’s former Spanish zones also exhibit startling works of protectorate-era architecture.
Antonio Bravo Nieto, Arquitectura y urbanismo español en el norte de Marruecos, Consejeria de Obras Publicas y Transportes, Direccion General de Arquitectura y Vivienda, Junta de Andalucia, 2000.
On French colonial-era architecture in North Africa generally, see:
François Béguin, Arabisances, décor architectural et tracé urbain en Afrique du Nord 1830-1960, Paris: Dunod, 1983.
Figures de l’orientalisme en architecture, Revue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, vol. 73/74, Edisud, 1996.
Long overdue, I can now launch the page on Senegal’s Tijânî shrines and neighborhoods (look for the Tijânî page under the “Touba and more” tab). While my work has centered on the Murid holy city of Touba, no study of any one of Senegal’s Sufi orders would be complete without taking into account the others. These orders share some common traits, as do the shrines and settlements they have created. Only when set against their commonalities can the particular orientations of each tarîqa be fully appreciated. Senegal’s Tijâniya, for instance, has a strong urban basis.
The Tijâniya is the largest tarîqa in the country in terms of numbers of adherents, and it has been present in Senegal’s largest cities since the turn of the 20th century.
The Great Mosque of Madina Baye, Kaolack (ph. Eric Ross)
The main branches of the Tijâniya are urban, with major zâwiyas located in Kaolack and Tivaouane. Dakar and Saint Louis too have been historic Tijânî centers. Other branches of the Tijâniya have experimented with a sharî‘a-based autonomy from the state, establishing more or less autonomous towns like Tiénaba and Madina Gounass. I have mapped these two shrine towns (thanks to imagery from Google Earth), though I have yet to visit them. Easy access to recent satellite images has also allowed me to update information on places I last visited ten years ago or more.
Satellite image of the Niassène zâwiya in Leona neighborhood, Kaolack, dated May 2011. Construction on the enlarged mosque is approaching completion. I have not visited Leona since 2001, when a smaller mosque stood on the site. (source: Google Earth)
Readers of the new page will see that, towards the end, I resign myself to inserting color maps. Color can be the bane of cartography. Any phenomenon can be represented in black & white. Black & white forces clarity of information, avoiding needless distraction. As color also adds to the cost of print publication, I have become used to not using it. On the web though, black & white does not come across effectively at all. Whereas color! Color rules the web. It makes anything look better. So, from time to time I will update the map-work on last year’s Touba pages, originally intended for black & white print, with brand-new web-fabulous color versions. That said, I will steadfastly avoid the garish tints so often used in web cartography.
And I do promise to launch pages for Senegal’s Khadr (Qâdirî) and Layène shrines… with yet more color maps.
This baobab on Gorée’s main square stands in front of what was formerly the governor's residence. It is accessorized with benches. Gorée is known for its ancient baobabs. (ph. Eric Ross)
Baobabs do not only mark Senegal’s historic sites (see previous post). They are a living part of its contemporary urban spaces as well. As cities across the country have expanded into farmland, mature baobabs have often been spared destruction and now have new careers as neighborhood landmarks. In some cases, such as in Gorée (above) and Santhiaba (below) they have been integrated into the design of public places such as civic squares and mosque yards.
The mosque and baobab on the pénc (public square) of Santhiaba neighborhhod, Dakar, form a pretty civic ensemble. Santhiaba's pénc is important to the Lebu community, the original occupants of the land on which the capital was built. (ph. Eric Ross)
Baobabs in Murid shrine towns
In Murid shrine towns in particular, baobab trees serve a range of popular religious functions. Often, they stand in cemeteries, or else on streets and public squares next to mosques. They are part of the spiritual topography of the shrine space, along with built structures, blessed wells and other memorial trees. I have not been systematic in my attempt to locate sacralized baobabs, but here are some I have come across.
The Guy Siyare
A gigantic baobab in Touba’s Mbal neighborhood (Touba Mosquée ward), known as the Guy Siyare (ziyâra), the “Visitation Baobab,” has a large inner cavity oriented to the qibla. Moreover, the doorway to the cavity is just big enough for a person to enter comfortably, as if made to measure.
The cavity within the Guy Siyare, the "Visitation Baobab," in Touba's Mbal neighborhood is configured like a mosque, replete with a properly oriented mihrâb. (ph. Eric Ross)
A legend has grown around the Guy Siyare–grown in large part due to the efforts of those who charge pilgrims an entrance fee–according to which Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba had prayed in its chamber. Though unfounded in the shaykh’s hagiography and devoid of the support of Murid authorities, this “tradition” has established the Guy Siyare as a minor stop on the tour of Touba’s holy sites.
The legitimacy of the tradition notwithstanding, the image of a Sufi shaykh praying, or ensconced in khalwa in the trunk of a great tree speaks to the transcendent qualities of these quiet giants living among us.
Detail of a 16th century Persian miniature showing a Sufi meditating in the trunk of a çinar. (source: front cover of the paperback edition of Henry Corbin's Histoire de la philosophie islamique, Paris: Gallimard, 1986, The image credit inside the cover does not identify the manuscript. It says only that it is the property of the Reza-ye Abbasi Museum in Tehran)
Truly, baobabs are the chinars of tropical Africa (see post on çinar trees)
The Guy Texe
The most well-known baobab in Touba was the Guy Texe, the “Baobab of Bliss,” which used to stand in the cemetery. Legend had it that this baobab was a conduit to Tûbâ, the Tree of Paradise for which the city is named. Each leaf on Tûbâ is said to represent the life and works of an individual. Though I have yet to track down the original source of this Guy Texe tradition, in the 1960s the tradition began to be cited in reference works on the Murids.
The Guy Texe used to stand amidst the mausolea of "the mothers of the Murids" in the center of Touba's cemetery (sketch by Eric Ross based on author’s photo)
Though difficult to access through the built structures, the Guy Texe was visited by pilgrims who inscribed their names on its trunk. The trunk was serving as a writing board, as a registry of the names of those who wished to enter paradise. There are a number of such guy mbind (baobabs of writing) across the sacred Murid landscape. Pilgrims etch their names on these trees, in Arabic or Latin script, as an act of devotion, like registering a prayer.
Names are inscribed on the trunk of the new guy mbind in Touba’s Gouye Mbind neighborhood (see below) in both Arabic and Latin scripts (ph. Eric Ross)
In the Neo-platonic universe of the Sufis, actual trees, those we live with here on earth, are distant emanations from a single Universal Tree, the tree as God imagines it, an archetype readily identified as Tûbâ the Tree of Paradise. Certain trees in the material world, however, are more closely linked to the paradisaical tree than others. Of all the earthly trees available in the Senegalese landscape, baobabs are the ones elected.
The parochial Murid practice of registering one’s desire for eternal bliss in the Hereafter on the trunk of a tree is rooted in a much wider Islamic popular eschatology. In speculative Islamic literature, and in popular genres such as the Isrâ’ w-al-Mi‘râj narratives, the cosmic Sidrat al-Muntahâ (the Lote-tree of the Extremity) mentioned in Sura The Star, 53:14) is associated with the Divine registry of individuals and their acts and utterances (the Lawh al-Mahfûz). This Divine record consists of the leaves (warqa) of the Sidrat al-Muntahâ. There is even one night each year, the Night of mid-Sha’bân, the Night of Destiny, when one can appeal to Merciful God who, Alone, has the Power to erase (delete?) some of the data from the record. These same speculative and popular works invariably conflate the identities of the Sidrat al-Muntahâ and Tûbâ into a single arboreal entity.
Popular traditions which locate the Divine Registry at the Cosmic Tree are recorded in 19th century Egypt (by Edward Lane in Manners and Customs), in 18th century Morocco (the Naskhah festival for Mawlay ‘Abd al-Salâm b. Mashîsh) as well as in contemporary Swahili, Fulbe and Senegalese traditions.
In my Ph.D. thesis (“Tûbâ: An African eschatology in Islam,” McGill University, Islamic Studies 1996), I argued that these modern traditions found across Africa can be traced back to the Ancient Egyptian tradition of the cosmic Ished tree.
Ramesses II sits beneath the cosmic Ished as the gods Attum, Seshat and Thot write his names and years on its leaves. (from the Ramesseum)
Many 19th and 20th Dynasty pharaohs had themselves depicted having their names inscribed for eternity on the leaves of the Cosmic Ished tree by gods. Such larger-than-life reliefs can be seen on the pylons of major temples across Thebes. The British Egyptologist Budge (1911) was of the opinion that the ancient Ished tradition was the origin of the popular Muslim tradition relating to the leaves of Sidrah which he observed around him. In Civilisation ou barbarie (1981), Cheikh Anta Diop was the first to relate this ancient Egyptian conception of a divine arboreal register to the contemporary Murid tradition.
An aside,
February being Black History Month, I take this occasion to recall how Cheikh Anta Diop changed my life. I first read his works as a Master’s student doing field work in Senegal. That was in 1988, only a year or so after his death. Luckily, at that young age, researchers are still impressionable. I had never been comfortable with the Eurocentric perspective of most of the world history I had read up until then, and I had never accepted the marginalization of Africa in those narratives. Diop’s erudite refutation of the white supremacist underpinnings of what passed for World/Western History in the mid-20th century provided me with an alternate framework and impacted the orientation of my subsequent research.
Back to the Guy Texe…
What is known about the Guy Texe is that Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba selected the tree as the burial place of Sokhna Aminata Lo, his first wife and the first person to die in Touba. Thereafter his other wives, the “mothers of the Murids,” were buried under the baobab and mausolea were constructed over their graves. The tree fell, from age perhaps, in 2003. It nonetheless remains on the Ministry of Culture’s list of historic monuments (see list in previous post), as does the Guy Siyare despite the lack of official sanction by the Murid leadership in Touba itself.
Satellite image of part of central Touba, showing Gouye Mbind ward next to the cemetery. (source: Google Earth)
Gouye Mbind ward
Just east of Touba’s cemetery is Gouye Mind ward, home to the lineage of Serign Lamine Bara and to the current Calif General of the Murids, Cheikh Sidy Moukhtar Mbacké. The neighborhood gets its name from a baobab on which pilgrims to Touba would write their names. Under Serign Falillou (1950s) a fence went up around the cemetery. The area around the guy mbind, which stood outside the fence, was allotted. The tree continued to stand on this residential street next to the cemetery, and to attract pilgrims, until it fell in the early 1980s. In 1994 the woman who lives in the house next to the spot showed me a photo of the tree which she had kept. A few days after that visit I saw that she had cleared the spot in the street where the tree had stood and surrounded it with a low wall, sacralizing, or at least memorializing, the space. Such occasions serve to remind researchers collecting data in the field of the impact we have on the “object” of study.
More recently, in the past 10 years, a second guy mind has emerged, at the corner of the same street, but closer the center of Gouye Mbind neighborhood. It stands a block away from the pénc (the public square with a mosque) and the calif’s residence.
The new guy mbind in Gouye Mbind ward stands on a street corner. like many others in the neighborhood, both streets are being paved for the first time (Jan. 2012). Some of the tree's limbs have been trimmed for a utility line. (ph. Eric Ross)
The new guy mbind is a relatively young (slender) tree. It is fenced and has a gate. I do not know how or why this tree was chosen, nor by whom, but it has clearly been integrated into Gouye Mbind’s spiritual topography.
Inscribed trunk of the new guy mbind (ph. Eric Ross)
Darou Marnane
In Darou Marnane ward, a large guy mbind has pride of place right on the public square. It stands just to the right of the entrance to the Keur Serigne Touba (a large compound where Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba had lived, see section on Darou Marnane on the Touba page).
Satellite image of Darou Marnane ward, showing location of the guy mbind on the pénc. (source: Google Earth)
Since the photo below was taken, some of the upper limbs of Darou Marnane’s guy mbind have been cut off to make way for a power line. Such is often the lot of urban public trees everywhere.
The guy mbind of Darou Marnane in full leaf, October 2000 (ph. Eric Ross)
The guy mbind of Darou Marnane in January 2012. The entrance to the Keur Serigne Touba is behind it. (ph. Eric Ross)
Names inscribed on the trunk of Darou Marnane’s guy mbind (ph. Eric Ross)
Darou Mousty
Darou Mousty, the “Second City” of the Murids, has several guy mbind. Mame Tierno Birahim Mbacké founded Darou Mousty in 1912 in a grove of mature baobabs (see section on Darou Mousty in other Murid shrines). These baobabs still tower above the shrine town today.
Satellite image of the center of Darou Mousty, locating two guy mbind. The image was taken in April, when baobabs are leafless. Their grey limbs and branches contrast with the green canopies of other types of trees around them. (source: Google Earth)
One of Darou Mousty’s guy mbind stands next to the main gate to Baïty, Mame Tierno Birahim’s large compound which also harbors his mausoleum and those of his lineage. Next to it is the Mawlid Hall, where poems in honor of the Prophet Muhammad are recited every Monday night (the night from Sunday to Monday).
A guy mbind stands next to the entrance to Baïty, Mame Tierno Birahim's compound in Darou Mousty. The Mawlid Hall is to the right. (ph. Eric Ross)
Another of Darou Mousty’s guy mbind stands in the second court of the Baïty necropolis. This is the yard that houses two memorial “stations,” kiosks called Maqâmat Ibrâhim and Dâr al-Kâmil which locate moments of transcendence in the spiritual career of Mame Tierno Birahim Mbacké. That these moments happened in the midst of great baobabs is not lost on the observer.
A guy mbind standing next to the Dâr al-Kâmil in Baïty. The gate behind them leads to the court containing the mausolea of Mame Tierno Birahim Mbacké and members of his family. (ph. Eric Ross)
Mosquée Gouye Mouride in Dakar
The ongoing saga of the new Murid mosque in Dakar constitutes the final entry for this post on Murid baobabs. Murids have been a part of Dakar society since the 1940s, but they had never expressed their presence monumentally. About 10 years ago Murid associations in Dakar decided to lobby for the building of a new Friday Mosque able to accommodate ‘ayd worship (Korité and Tabaski). The original plan was to use a lot in Niary Tally neighborhood which had been ceded to Serigne Abdoul Ahad by the Senghor government for the use of Dakar’s Murids. The lot, which is dominated by a great baobab tree, has been used for several decades for ‘ayd prayers, and had come to be known as the Mosquée Gouye Mouride. In 2005 Serigne Saliou gave the go-ahead to build a large Friday Mosque on the site. An innovate plan, a five-pointed star with the mihrab in one of the points, was adopted for the mosque.
Since then though the project has been plagued by crises and twisted denouements of all kinds. I have not exactly been keeping up with events but, at various points, there was a rival claim by another Sufi order to ownership of the site, an attempt to transfer the mosque project to an entirely different site in order to turn the original site over for high density commercial/residential development, and the project has had multiple directors, appointed by three successive calif generals in Touba. The plans for the building have been changed many times as well. I have never been to the site. How the old baobab which originally stood there has fared through all of this, I do not know.
This downloadable Google Earth (kmz) file locates many of the trees discussed in this and the previous post.
Further reading
Azad, Ghulam Murtaza. “Isrâ’ and Mi‘râj: The Night Journey and Ascension of Allah’s Apostle Muhammad (S.A.W.S.).” Islamic Studies vol. 22 (2) (1983): 63-80.
Bencheikh, Jamal Eddine. Le Voyage nocturne de Mahomet. Paris: Editions de l’Imprimerie nationale, 1988.
Brosse, Jacques. Mythologie des arbres. Paris: Plon, 1989.
Budge, Ernst A. Wallis. Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. New York: Dover Publications, 1973 (first published 1911).
Cissé, Ousseynou. Mame Thierno Birahim (1862-1943): Frère et disciple de Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001.
Cook, Roger. The Tree of Life: Image for the Cosmos. London/New York: Thames & Hudson, 1992.
Corbin, Henry. L’Imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn ‘Arabi. Paris: Flammarion, 1958.
Diop, Cheikh Anta. Civilisation ou barbarie : anthropologie sans complaisance. Paris: Présence africaine, 1981.
Hajjaj, ‘Abd Allah. The Isrâ’ and Mi‘râj: The Prophet’s Nigh Journey and Ascension into Heaven. Huda Khattab trans. London: Dar Al Taqwa Ltd., 1989.
James, E. O. The Tree of Life: An Archeological Study. Lieden: E. J. Brill, 1966.
Lane, Edward William. Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. London: East-West Publications, 1989 (first published 1836).
Mbacké, Ahmadou Bamba. Silk al-Jawâhir fî Akhbâr al-Sarâ’ir (Strings of Jewels in Matters of Consciences). Touba: Maktabah Shaykh al-Khadîm, 1977.
Pâques, Viviana. L’Arbre cosmique dans la pensée populaire et dans la vie quotidienne du nord-ouest africain. Paris: Institut d’ethnologie, 1964.
Zouanat, Zakia. Ibn Mashîsh : maître d’al-Shâdhilî. Casablanca: Imprimerie Najah El Jadida, 1998.
Shajarat al-Kawn, attributed to Ibn ‘Arabi. I know of two translations:
Gloton, Maurice. L’Arbre du Monde d’Ibn ‘Arabî. Paris: Les deux océans, 1990.
Following on my post about çinar trees at Turkish mosques and shrines, one reader, none other than my brother-in-law Ryan, suggested I post about Senegal’s baobab trees, and I am delighted to oblige.
Professor of Anthropology John Shoup standing near a well-known baobab tree on National Road #2 near Kébémer (ph. Eric Ross)
Baobabs (Adansonia digitata, guy in Wolof, boki in Pulaar, baak in Sereer, sito in Mandinka) are extraordinary in many regards. Their most distinctive attribute is their enormous girth. Their massive trunks can grow to circumferences of 25 meters or more. Their second distinctive feature is great longevity. Baobabs live well over a thousand years as attested by radio-carbon dating. There is every reason to believe that certain baobabs are far older still, but these ancient trees are invariably hollow – the oldest wood at the center having disintegrated to create a cavity – so their age is impossible to determine by carbon dating or dendrochronology.
The cavity of the baobab near Kébémer faces the road. (ph. John Shoup)
The cavities within the trunks of old baobabs are as large as rooms and, depending on how they are configured, people put the space to a variety, using them as shrines, altars, and tombs as well as roadside kiosks and workshops.
Due to their size and longevity, baobabs are important landmarks in Senegal’s dry savanna plain, which generally lacks other types of natural spatial markers such as hills or streams. Some ancient baobabs are true historical landmarks in that they predate human settlement as recorded in oral histories. Their presence on the land has been permanent and they have proper names. In oral histories such baobabs are cited as loci of battles, or as marking borders between states.
In addition to baobabs, kapok trees (Ceiba pentandra, bénténe in Wolof, mbudaay in Sereer), cola trees (Cola cordifolia, or taba in Wolof and Mandinka), acacias (Acacia albida, kàdd in Wolof) and mbul trees (Celtis intergrifolia), have also played historical roles in the construction and maintenance of settlements with strong collective identities. Specific trees of a variety of species actualized notions of the community’s foundation-creation, duration-continuity and harmony-order, in both the cosmic and temporal realms. Kings could be crowned beneath a tree, parley with envoys beneath another, and administer justice beneath a third. Warriors might take oaths of allegiance at one tree while priest offered sacrifices at another. In effect, a variety of monumental trees marked the configurations of Senegal’s most important pre-colonial settlements, its royal capitals. These included coronation trees, constitution trees, tree altars and tree cemeteries, and, most importantly, palaver trees (pénc in Wolof), trees which mark the central public squares of polities. Many of these historic trees still stand today and, at last count, sixteen of them have been classified as historic monuments by the Ministry of Culture. At the end of this blog post readers will find the list of these classified arboreal monuments. The complete list of monuments can be found on this tourism information website.
During a session of field work ten years ago (December 2001-January 2002) I attempted an inventory of historic and monumental trees, mostly baobabs, in some of Senegal’s principal pre-colonial capitals. In the company of Prof. John Shoup and research assistant Cheikh Oumy Mbacké Diallo, I visited Mboul, Lambaye, Diakhao and Kahone, as well as a few of other historic sites in the Wolof-Sereer heartland.
Senegambia ca. 1800
Wherever possible, we interviewed the most senior local informants, members of old political lineages and local officials, and we did so as close as possible to the actual historic trees.
This Google Earth (kmz) file locates the places, and sometimes the specific trees discussed in this and the next post. Unfortunately, in 2001-2002 (before Google Earth) I did not yet have access to high-resolution satellite images and had only 1:50 000 scale topography maps to play with. I was not able to accurately map the places we visited or to precisely locate the various trees. More serious research on the history of these capitals would require partnership with an oral historian and an archaeologist. Any takers?
Mboul
According to recorded oral tradition, Mboul, Kayor’s first capital, was founded in the second half of the 16th century when a Muslim cleric named Amadi Dia, at the behest of Amari Ngoné Sobel damel (king) of Kayor, attached a talisman to a pigeon and set it loose. The first tree on which the pigeon alighted was designated as the palaver tree at the center of the public square of the new capital. The bird landed on an mbul tree, and the capital was named Mboul. Mboul is now a very small village and the original mbul tree no longer exists, but the spot where it stood, in the former capital’s central square is still known to residents.
The first public square (pénc) of Mboul is now occupied by the mound in the foreground. (ph. Eric Ross)
During our brief visit, the wife of the Chef de village provided a guided tour of Mboul’s historic trees.
The wife of the Chef de village standing beneath Mboul's Guy Werugën, used during coronation ceremonies. (ph. Eric Ross)
The Guy Werugën was used during coronation ceremonies to measure the height of the new damel. Its trunk still caries numerous incised marks consisting of vertical and oblique strokes and aligned dots.
The inscribed trunk of the Guy Werugën in Mboul, showing incisions. (ph. Eric Ross)
The use of baobab trunks to support arcane inscriptions is common throughout Senegambia. Such trees are known generically in Wolof as guy mbind (baobab of writing) and are discussed below.
Another great baobab in Mboul whose trunk is incised with horizontal strokes is the Guy Sanar Akanan, or “idol baobab,” which was used by traditional priests. When she showed it to us, the wife of the Chef de village kept well away from this tree, and so did we.
The Guy Sanar Akanan, or “idol baobab,” was used by traditional priests. (ph. Eric Ross)
The Ndiangou Kàdd Laye-Laye still stands in Mboul’s first Muslim neighborhood, now abandoned. (ph. Eric Ross)
The Ndiangou Kàdd Laye-Laye gets its name from the Muslim recitation “Allâhu Allâhu” and is commonly referred to in French by local residents as l’arbre du marabout.
We were not shown the acacia beneath which damels were crowned, the Kàddou Pallou Kaye mentioned in published sources.
Lambaye
Lambaye was the capital of the kingdom of Baol from the 16th to 19th century. It is now a large complex of villages, each of which marks a neighborhood of what was once the capital area. During our visit Dame Diaw, the Chef de village, showed us many of its historic trees.
Two ancient baobabs, one collapsed, occupy Lambaye’s first pénc. A famous battle later took place on this spot. (ph. Eric Ross)
The Guy Ndëng is one of two great baobabs – the second has collapsed from the weight of age – still marking the capital’s oldest public square. Its trunk is incised with many short vertical and horizontal strokes.
Incised trunk of the Guy Ndëng, Lambaye. (ph. Eric Ross)
Lambaye’s second public square, now also abandoned, is marked by a baobab called the Guy Pénc, while another large baobab nearby marks the location of the former royal compound.
Baobab in the former royal compound, Lambaye. (ph. Eric Ross)
Another tree, the Ngiicie Bàkku (a Ziziphus mauritiana), was where nobles and soldiers took oaths before departing for battle.
Several other baobabs in Lambaye are associated with the activities of the priests and griots attached to the court. The Guy Tan was where priests left sacrifices for vultures. It has a large inner cavity which is accessible at ground level through a high open “doorway,” quite Gothic.
A kid grazes at the base of the Guy Tan, the Vultures’ Boabab, in Lambaye. (ph. Eric Ross)
Further a-field, the Guy Bateñ marks the neighborhood where the griots lived, while another baobab, the Guy Géwél, was their shrine.
The cavity of the Guy Géwél, the Griots’ Baobab, in Lambaye is configured like an absid or an iwân. (ph. Eric Ross)
Lambaye’s Guy Géwél has an inner cavity with a wide opening creating a semicircular architectural space which might have been conducive to the performance of rituals. Its trunk is incised with numerous vertical strokes.
Diakhao
Diakhao was the capital of the kingdom of Sine from the 16th century to the onset of colonial rule. Diakhao is still the administrative center for an arrondissement (or county) and its original pénc is still the town’s principal public square. It is Dieng Sarr, a village elder, who showed us the central pénc and the royal compound. Originally, four mbul trees stood on the pénc and symbolized political continuity during coronation ceremonies. Only one of these trees still stands.
Only one of the original mbul trees (right) still stands on Diakhao’s pénc. (ph. Eric Ross)
Senegal’s Ministry of Culture has also classified as historic Diakhao’s Guy Kanger, a secluded baobab outside of town where the kings of Sine offered libations. We were not taken to see this tree. We were however taken to the royal compound which stands on the west side of Diakhao’s pénc to pay a courtesy visit to Mme. Hadi Diouf, daughter of Mahecor Diouf the last king of Sine (d. 1969). This is why I love field work.
Kahone
Kahone, on the north bank of the Saloum River, was established as the capital of the kingdom of Saloum in the 16th century. It was a great tree, venerated by the local Sereer, which is purported to have given its name to the city. Today Kahone is an industrial suburb of Kaolack, the city that has replaced it as administrative capital of the Saloum region. During our visit El Hadj Malik Sarr, Farba of Kahone and member of its Municipal Council, granted us a tour of the old capital.
El Hadj Malik Sarr, Farba of Kahone, and young aide stand under an ancient tree on Kahone’s pénc. (ph. Eric Ross)
Kahone’s original central square retains its function today. It harbors the remnant stump of an old shade tree, one limb still living, and the mausoleum of the last Buur Saloum. The former royal compound, on the south side of the square, is entirely abandoned.
The mausoleum of Fodé Ngouye (d. 1969), the last king of Saloum. (ph. Eric Ross)
Two historic baobabs stand outside of the current settlement, to the east. The Guy Géwél, or “ Griot’s Baobab,” is truly huge and towers over the landscape. Its large inner cavity can only be reached through narrow apertures some eight meters above ground and, because of this, it may have served as burial chamber for griots. This practice was widespread. The special status of griots in society extended to their burials. Feared and respected for the manner in which they could affect destinies, griots were not buried in the earth lest they render it infertile. Instead, ancient baobabs with small, difficult apertures were turned into arboreal mausolea. Many generations of griots could be buried in the same tree and such trees can be found in many historic localities.
Kahone’s Guy Géwél, or “Griot’s Baobab,” may have been used as a sepulture by griots. (ph. Eric Ross)
Further south, across National Road #1 and nearer to the bank of the Saloum River, the enormous Guy Njulli sprawls behind a protective fence. The main trunk of this ancient tree towers skywards while several great limbs grow horizontally along the ground for some distance before rising.
Kaohone’s Guy Njulli, or “Baobab of Circumcision,” is a national monument. (ph. Eric Ross)
El Hadj Malik Sarr, Farba of Kahone, sits on a limb of the Guy Njulli while recounting its story. Standing by the trunk is Cheikh Oumy Mbacké Diallo. (ph. Eric Ross)
In the old days the Guy Njulli was the locus of a great annual festival called the gàmmu. Representatives of all the kingdom’s provinces would come to this tree to pledge their loyalty to the king. The festivities would go on for days.
Diourbel
Though never a royal capital, Diourbel was an important political center and has many historic trees. Two of Diuourbel’s historic baobabs, the Guy Sambaye Karang and the Guy Woté, are classified national monuments. And, according to tradition, a large kapok tree named Doumbe Diop was the focal point of a festival. We did not see these trees but were taken instead to the baobab called Fekh Bah, behind the hospital. Its trunk bares many incisions.
Diourbel’s huge Fekh Bah baobab stands among smaller specimens. (ph. Eric Ross)
Another of Diourbel’s ancient baobabs, the Guy Kodiouf of Ndounka ward, was the object of a scholarly controversy between the great Senegalese intellectual Cheikh Anta Diop and Raymond Mauny, a well-known Africanist prehistorian. In the second volume of Nations nègres et culture (1954, p. 352) Diop recounts childhood memories of what he called hieroglyphs (signs of hands and feet, of animal feet and other objects) inscribed into the bark of this tree. Mauny then went to visit this baobab and concluded that the marks were merely graffiti, and not actually glyphs (Notes africaines #89, 1961, p. 11). After returning to the site Diop responded that, though the signs he could make out (a camel, prayer beads, a sword, a goat hide) were not as he had remembered them, the glyphs inscribed on its trunk might be deciphered and thus this tree and others like it constitute important archaeological artifacts. (Antériorité des civilizations nègres, 1967, p. 246).
In the old kingdoms, nobles, priests and griots all used to inscribe certain baobabs with religious or political markings in what may well have been secret scripts known only to initiates. As we have seen above, such guy mbind (baobabs of writing) feature in every important historic settlement. But, to the best of my knowledge, half a century after the Diop-Mauny debate no study of these trees and of the messages inscribed on their trunks has yet been undertaken. Though the secrets of these trees are now lost, and the priests and the nobles of olden days are now gone, local people still treat these trees with great respect. No harm is allowed to come to them and their stories are still told.
Fadiout
Fadiout and its lagoon were the subject of a previous post. One of the monuments in this historic town is the Baak no Maad, the King’s Baobab, which dominates the town square in the northern part of the island. When I visited Fadiout in 1988 I didn’t own a camera, so I have no picture of my own to show. The one bellow was downloaded from this tourist information site.
The Baak no Maad, or King’s Baobab in Fadiout (ph. Francoise Rolland)
Dakar
The baobab remains something of a national symbol in Senegal, figuring for instance on official stamps. The trunk of one splendid baobab in the nation’s capital, on the Corniche Est just south of the Presidential Palace, has been painted with two patriotic images: a lion (another national symbol) and map of African unity.
One graffiti artist has added an expression of skepticism to the image of African Unity painted on the north face of Dakar's Corniche Est baobab. (ph. Eric Ross)
The painting of the Senegalese Lion, on the south face of the Corniche Est baobab has almost disappeared. (ph. Eric Ross)
When I first visited this painted baobab, in 1988, it stood in a little village. Perhaps the authorities considered it a squatter settlement. The tiny village beneath the President’s Palace has been removed.
Publishing the research
My research on Senegal’s historic trees was presented and published twice. I first presented it at the annual conference of the African Studies Association in New Orleans, Louisiana, in November 2004. The following month I was able to present the work in Senegal, in Saint-Louis to be exact, at an international conference in honor of Belgian archaeologist Guy Thilmans (1922-2001). The article was published in the ensuing conference proceedings:
“Le Pénc : élément du patrimoine et modèle d’aménagement urbain,” in Sénégalia: Études sur le patrimoine ouest-africain, Hommage à Guy Thilmans, edited by Cyr Descamps & Abdoulaye Camara, Saint-Maure-des-Fossés, Éditions Sépia, 2006.
The English version presented in New Orleans-before-Katrina appeared in an edited volume:
“Palaver Trees Reconsidered in the Senegalese Landscape: Arboreal Monuments & Memorials,” in African Sacred Groves: Ecological Dynamics & Social Change, edited by Michael J. Sheridan & Celia Nyamweru, James Currey & Ohio University Press, 2008.
Trees listed as historic monuments
Baobabs
the Guy Sambaye Karang, Keur Yéli Manel Fall ward, Diourbel
the Guy Woté, Ndiodione ward, Diourbel
the Guy Tékhé and Guy Ziarra, Touba (more on these in the next post)
the Guy Ndëng, on the Sanghay Battlefield, Lambaye
the Kanger baobab, Diakhao
the Guy Géwel, Toukar, sous-préfecture of Tataguine
the Guy Géwel, Senghor, sous-préfecture of Tataguine
the Guy Njulli, Kahone
the Front Bone baobab, Boutoupa Camaracounda, arrondissement of Niaguis
the Palm Baobab, Baligname, Département of Bignona
Kapok trees
Dialang Bantang, a women’s shrine, Niéfoulène, Ziguinchor
ancient kapok in Sindian, Département of Bignona
ancient kapoks of Kagnout, Département of Oussouye
Acacias
Kadd Gui, across from the train station, Louga
Species unspecified
Jab Ndeb, sacred tree in Ndiaye–Ndiaye, Fatick
Gagnick Godjil fetish trees, Département of Gossas
Many other historic and monumental trees in Sereer lands, not on the national monument list, have been inventoried by Charles Becker:
Martin, V. & Charles Becker, “Lieux de culte et emplacements célèbres dans les pays sereer”, in Bulletin de l’IFAN (série B), vol. 41, #1, 1979.
This year’s winter intercession corresponds rather well with the Touba’s Grand Magal (18 Safar 1433) and the lead up to it. It was my good fortune to have been invited to contribute to the event in an academic capacity.
This year, for the first time, the Organizing Committee of the Grand Magal decided to internationalize the event and to strengthen its intellectual dimension. It organized an itinerant conference that met first in Milano (3 Dec.), then in Montréal (10 Dec.) before moving on to Dakar (23-25 Dec.). The theme of the Dakar conference, to which I was invited, was “The Response of Sufism to the Global Crisis.” The conference, presided over by Sëriñ Bassirou Mbacké Abdoul Khadre, the Khalif-General’s official spokesperson, convened at the very swank Hôtel Méridien Président.
Among the international participants were Islamic scholars from Egypt, Syria and Morocco, and academics from the United States and France. For details, follow this link.
Civic monument in a traffic roundabout in front of Touba’s Great Mosque. (ph. Eric Ross)
On the 26th of December the participants were taken to Touba for the closing session and were received by the Khalif-General, Cheikh Sidy Mokhtar Mbacké. This being the academic intercession, and having a few weeks of free time, I decided to stay on in Touba to conduct some field work. It turned out, however, that the timing was not appropriate. 26 December corresponded to 1 Safar, the official kick-off of the city’s preparations for the Grand Magal. Everyone from the top sheikhs down was busy with tasks. Proper field work such as site visits and interviews would have constituted an added burden on people, so I opted for discrete observation instead, trying very hard to keep out of everybody’s way. That said, I did manage an informal interview with Mouhamadou Tafsir Guèye, Director of the Greater Touba urban planning division, and I did undertake a side trip to Khourou Mbacké, where Ahmadu Bamba lived as a child and where many members of his immediate family are buried (subject of this future post).
Being in Touba in the weeks leading up to the Grand Magal allowed me, for the first time, to observe how the city is readied for the event. Given the general low level of mechanization, much of the work is labor intensive. Taalibes and Baye Fall, women as well as men, contribute to the effort with great enthusiasm.
A group of women sweep up after a pile of rubbish has been removed from a street in their neighborhood. (ph. Eric Ross)
First, there is the physical clean up of the city. Mounds of garbage that have accumulated on certain streets and in empty lots are loaded onto trucks and taken to dumps outside the city. Much of the rest of the work is less visible, but it relates to both public spaces as well as private homes.
Public health is a major issue during the Grand Magal as the city of about 600 000 inhabitants swells with well over a million pilgrims. Cholera in particular is of major concern. Past Magals have experienced serious outbreaks of the disease—incidents of cholera were already being recorded in the area around Touba two weeks prior to this year’s event. The Ministry of Health works closely with Murid officials to implement preventative measures. One of these measures consists of emptying all the city’s septic tanks prior to the arrival of pilgrims. Touba has no sewers. Houses are equipped with septic tanks instead. Though, as it is destined to continue to grow, Touba will eventually have to install sewer mains, the septic tank system works fairly well in normal times. The soil beneath the city is very sandy and therefore quite permeable. However, having upwards of two million people generate liquid waste over a period of a few days stretches this system beyond its limits. All the tanks are therefore emptied in advance to create the necessary capacity (I will spare readers of the blog post pictures of this particular activity). Moreover, rows of mobile toilet booths are set up near the main shrines, where crowds are greatest during the Magal.
The provision of clean safe drinking water is the second pillar of the cholera prevention strategy. Touba’s water distribution network is barely sufficient to cover ordinary needs. Water pressure in the mains is very low. In order for water to reach the upper floors of buildings, it has to either be pumped up (electric or diesel pumps) or carried up in buckets (girls are assigned this heavy work). During the Grand Magal the city’s water pipes simply run dry most of the day. Houses are therefore equipped with reservoirs (concrete chambers in the basement or plastic containers on the roof). All of these need to be filled prior to the Magal. And before this is done they are all emptied and disinfected. Again, all this work is done by hand. Furthermore, large plastic water reservoirs, replenished by tanker trucks, are set up at many points near the main shrines and along the main thoroughfares.
A plastic reservoir on the roof of this house provides its residents with a reliable supply of water. Other elements of roofscapes common across the continent include cellular telephone towers and satellite TV dishes. (ph. Eric Ross)
Another aspect of preparation for the Grand Magal, though less official in nature, is the rush to complete construction projects. Many houses in Touba are more-or-less in a perpetual state of construction. People add rooms and floors to their houses as finances allow, and as families grow in size. There are no hotels or hostels in Touba. During the Grand Magal, most pilgrims stay with family members who live in the holy city, though many wealthier Murids who live elsewhere build a second home in Touba especially for this purpose. Every available bed, sofa, foam mattress and plastic floor mat is needed. Tents are erected in courtyards and in the streets to accommodate the overflow from houses. Home-owners are therefore anxious to complete any on-going construction ahead of the Magal. Masons, plumbers and electricians are in high demand. Many come from other cities to work in Touba a month or so prior to the event.
These construction workers added a floor to this house in just one month, working almost around the clock. The new rooms will not however be ready in time for the Grand Magal. (ph. Eric Ross)
There is an official side to the Grand Magal which cannot be ignored. Hundreds of dignitaries are invited to the event. These include: representatives of other Sufi orders from across Senegal and Mauritania, government officials, senior civil servants, politicians and representatives of political parties (presidential elections are scheduled for February 2012), as well as ambassadors from numerous Muslim countries. They all have to be hosted by the Khalif-General. The Kër Sëriñ Touba facing the Great Mosque, erected in the 1970s especially for this purpose, is now far too small to accommodate all these guests. A new Kër Sëriñ Touba is currently being built in Darou Marnane, at the main entrance to the city, parts of which may be completed in time for this year’s Grand Magal.
Construction of the new Kër Sëriñ Touba in Darou Marnane nears completion. The Mosque has received its first coat of paint. The four-story residential building to the left looks like it may be ready in time for pilrims. (ph. Eric Ross)
As you might expect, many hundreds of thousands of motor vehicles flooding into the city from elsewhere creates something of a traffic problem. Touba’s urban planners have always taken the Grand Magal into account, and even at the height of the Grand Magal the traffic in Touba is nowhere nearly as congested as it is on even an ordinary day in Dakar. Nonetheless, efforts are still being made to improve the holy city’s street network. Many secondary streets have been paved over the past four years, a policy initiated by El-Hadj Bara Mbacké during his brief caliphate.
A street in Gouye Mbinde neighborhood being readied for paving. (ph. Eric Ross)
Also, and importantly, Touba now has a public transit system. Tata minibuses (of Indian manufacture) now ply the city’s main avenues, stopping at designated bus stops.
A bus stop on a main thoroughfare. (ph. Eric Ross)
One of the new Tata minibuses along route #2. (ph. Eric Ross)
Most passenger transportation however still relies on taxis (more expensive), private back-loading minibuses (less expensive), and donkey carts (cheapest of all).
Donkey carts still provide essential transportation for both passengers and goods. (ph. Eric Ross)
I will not actually be in Touba the day of the Grand Magal (18 Safar=12 January) as I have to return to Morocco. I wish everyone a successful event, after all this hard work!
The mosque in Gouye Mbinde neighborhood is festively decorated with strings of colored lights ahead of the Grand Magal. (ph. Eric Ross)
Bursa is an industrial center of about two million inhabitants, one of whom is a former student of mine who now works for a cookie and candy manufacturer. It is famed for its hot springs, glazed chestnuts, and karagöz shadow puppet theater. Mostly though, Bursa has many great works of early Ottoman architecture. Like other heritage sites across Turkey, these monuments are scrupulously well maintained and open to the public. What follows is a photo and map write-up based on a two-day visit in March 2010. By downloading this Google Earth (kmz) file, the reader will be able to view the sites discussed in this post from 200 km up.
Calligraphy panel developing an architectural motif in the Ulu Cami, Bursa. "Mash Allâh" is configured as a mosque. (ph. Eric Ross)
Bursa was the first capital of the Ottomans. Even after the capital was officially moved to Edirne, on the European side of the straits, the sultans continued to invest in the city… and to be buried there. Only when its attention turned to rebuilding Istanbul as the imperial capital did Bursa stop receiving the adornments of the Ottoman court. Since that time, Bursa has been rock by more than its fair share of destructive earthquakes. Consequently, its various 14th and 15th century monuments have been more or less extensively rebuilt and they exhibit some architectural styles and techniques of later eras. Nonetheless, Bursa remains the best open-air museum of Ottoman architecture before the empire.
At the time of its capture by the Ottomans in 1326, ancient “Prusa” was a small hillside fortress, the hisar, built on a spur on the lower slope of the Ulu Dağ. Upon capturing the city, Orhan Gazi (reigned 1326-1359) moved his court into its existing citadel and transformed its church into a mosque. He and his father Osman (reigned 1288-1326) were both buried next to the mosque. This first dynastic complex was destroyed by the 1855 earthquake. Only the two royal türbes (mausolea) were rebuilt. The rest of the site is now a public park and affords views over the city below.
Map of Bursa locating the mosque complexes discussed below.
The bazaar district
After moving to Bursa, Orhan Gazi began construction of a new city center outside the walls of the hisar, at the foot of its eastern gate. The new center consisted of his mosque complex—only the Orhan Camii survives—the Emir Hani (wholesaling center/hostels for merchants) and pazars (covered retail shopping streets).
Map of center of Bursa, showing mosques and commercial buildings.
View of the porch of the Orhan Camii (built 1339). An ancient çinar, still alive beneath its protective plaster cast, stands in front of it. (ph. Eric Ross)
Interior of the Ulu Cami (built 1400). 19th-century calligraphy panels hang from every wall and pillar. The art of "hurufiye" (esoteric and symbolic use of calligraphy) flourished in Ottoman lands in the second half of the 19th century. (ph. Jeremy Gunn)
One of two old çinars standing on a terrace in front of the Ulu Cami, Bursa. (ph. John Shoup)
The early sultans were successful in boosting Bursa’s commerce. Many hans were specialized in the wholesaling of silk, both in its raw form and as fine manufactures.
An ancient çinar, some life still in it, stands in front of a gate to a bazaar. The dead parts of the trunk, subject to cavities, have been sealed with cement. Metal braces help support the dead weight. (ph. Jeremy Gunn)
Beautifully restored, the Koza Han (built 1492) is a great place to buy silk garments and accessories, and to have a coffee. The octagonal mosque in the center is built above the şardivan (ablution fountain). (ph. Eric Ross)
Calligraphy panel in the Ulu Cami, Bursa (ph. Eric Ross)
The early Ottoman sultans also expanded the city by building mosque complexes (külliye) on spurs and hilltops both east and west of the hisar. Whereas the later imperial mosque complexes of Istanbul are enormous, their prototypes in Bursa are much smaller and are configured in a far less formal manner. I propose to visit them here in chronological order.
The Hüdavendigar complex
The westernmost külliye in Bursa is the Hüdavendigar complex, built by Murad I (reigned 1361-1389).
Plan of the Hüdavendigar complex, Bursa.
The complex is unique in that the mosque and the medrese (law school) consist of a single building, with the medrese arranged around the Mosque’s second floor rather than standing as a separate building. The medrese floor is not open to visitors.
Front façade of the Hüdavendigar Mosque (built 1385). The medrese gallery is above the porch. (ph. Eric Ross)
Next to the mosque-medrese are the imaret (kitchen-dinning hall), the hamam (bath house) and Murat’s türbe. The spur on which Murat I built his complex is very narrow. Major streets skirt it closely on three sides. Yet the yard in front of the mosque and türbe manages to retain peace and dignity despite the hubbub of traffic below.
The Yıldırım complex
The Yıldırım complex was built by “Yıldırım” (“Thunder & Lightning”) Beyazit I (reigned 1389-1402).
Plan of Yıldırım complex, Bursa (built 1399-1406)
The mosque is built on the crest of the spur. The medrese and Beyazit’s türbe share a terrace below it. The medrese now serves as a local health center. It has a very pretty garden court which is open to visitors.
View of the türbe and the medrese on the terrace below the mosque. (ph. Eric Ross)
Roofscape of the medrese. (ph. Eric Ross)
Courtyard of the medrese. (ph. Eric Ross)
A çinar and benches on the terrace of the mosque, above the türbe. (ph. John Shoup)
The Yıldırım complex originally stood in front of Beyazit’s palace, though he ruled mostly from Edirne. Only one gate to the palace compound, north of the Yıldırım complex, survives. The small hamam attached to the Yıldırım endowment lies on a side street just off the southern limit of the map (Sorry for this omission. I goofed while selecting the area of the satellite image to be digitized).
The Emir Sultan complex
Western approach to the Emir Sultan Mosque and cemetery complex. The cyprus trees compliment the minarets. (ph. Eric Ross)
The Emir Sultan complex was built by Şemseddin Mehmed Ali. He was an advisor to Yıldırım Beyazit and married one of his daughters, Hundi Hatun. Strictly speaking then, it is not a royal complex, yet Şemseddin Mehmed’s closeness to the sultan meant that his endowment was built on a grand scale. Subsequent Ottoman in-law grandees would do likewise in Istanbul.
Plan of the Emir Sultan complex, Bursa.
The Emir Sultan complex consists of a mosque and a medrese which share a single courtyard. These were completely rebuilt in the baroque style following the complex’s destruction in the 1766 earthquake.
The çinar next to the east minaret of the Emir Sultan Camii is surely a survivor of the 1766 earthquake. Which is more baroque? The mosque or the tree? (ph. John Shoup)
A large cemetery occupies the slopes of the spur below the medrese. The complex’s large hamam was built across the square from the mosque. Vehicular traffic has been routed under this square, a brilliant 20th century urban design device quite appropriate to this hilltop sit.
The Yeşil complex
Tile-work on the portal of the Yeşil türbe. (ph. Eric Ross)
The Yeşil complex, Bursa’s most famous, was built by Mehmet I (reigned 1413-1421). The complex gets its name from the green tiles used to decorate the outer walls of the türbe as well as the interiors of both the türbe and the mosque. Turkey at this time did not yet produce fine architectural ceramics, so Mehmet I had the tiles imported from Tabriz, in Iran, along with the master masons necessary for their installation.
Plan of the Yeşil complex, Bursa (built 1419-1421)
In the Yeşil complex it is the green tile-clad türbe that dominates. It stands on an artificial mound above the plateau where the mosque and imaret (recently rehabilitated but not yet open) were built. Beyond these the terrain slopes steeply.
The Yeşil Türbe rises above the other buildings of the complex. (ph. Eric Ross)
Other components of the Yeşil complex include the hamam and the medrese. The medrese stands at a lower level than the mosque. It now houses the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art (there are some gorgeous manuscripts in its collection). As in Emir Sultan, traffic has been routed beneath and around the Yeşil complex.
Calligraphy engraved marble on the Yeşil Cami. (ph. Eric Ross)
Craftsmanship at the Yeşil complex is excellent throughout. The white marble outer surfacing of the mosque has sculpted calligraphy and green tile inlay, while the octagonal türbe reverses the scheme; there, white marble trims the window openings against the background of green tile walls.
Green ceramic trims white marble on the window panels of the Yeşil Cami. (ph. Eric Ross)
White marble window panels are set against the green tile surfacing of the türbe. The türbe's exterior tiles are not original. They date from the restoration following the 1855 earthquake. (ph. Eric Ross)
The calligraphy-covered cenotaph of Mehmet I, inside his türbe, is a masterpiece of 14th-century "cuerda seca" ceramic work. Like those on the walls and mihrab behind it, the tiles were imported from Tabriz. (ph. John Shoup)
Calligraphy panels in the Ulu Cami, Bursa. (ph. Eric Ross)
The Muradiye complex
The last and largest of Bursa’s royal complexes, the Muradiye, was built by Murad II (reigned 1421-1451).
Plan of the Muradiye complex, Bursa (built 1425-1451)
The Muradiye complex consists of a mosque (completed in 1426) and a medrese aligned on one side of a street. The medrese now houses a sanatorium and is not open to the public.
The Muradiye Camii is surrounded on three sides by the cemetery. (ph. Eric Ross)
Mausolea in the Muradiye cemetery. (ph. Eric Ross)
The cemetery behind the mosque and medrese contains some large türbes, including that of Murad II and that of his son Şehzade Mustafa (d. 1473) and grandson Cem (Cem died in exile in Naples in 1495 but his body was repatriated to Bursa for burial here). The cemetery is also home many mature çinar trees (see previous post for a discussion of these trees).
The trunk of a great çinar lies, protected, where it fell. Muradiye cemetery. (ph. John Shoup)
The Muradiye endowment includes a hamam and an imaret. The latter has been restored to its original function and serves culinary delights every evening.
Connected to the Muradiye complex, though not part of its endowment, is the Ahmet Paşa Medrese. Originally a müderris (professor of law), Ahmet Paşa (d. 1497) served Mehmet II first as kadiasker (chief justice of the army) and then as vizir (minister of state). His türbe stands next to his recently restored medrerse.
Adjacent to the Muradiye complex and Ahmet Paşa’s medrese is a 17th -century house that has been turned into a museum (“müse” on the plan above). The multi-storey bourgeois house has a small garden and exhibits a kind of sober avant la lettre modernity I have always associated with traditional Japanese domestic architecture. Inside, you will find typical 17th-19th century domestic furnishings.
Exterior of the Ottoman house museum, Bursa (ph. Eric Ross)
Garden façade of the Ottoman house museum, Bursa (ph. Eric Ross)
Once again, I wish to acknowledge, and to praise, the care that the Turkish authorities, national and municipal, take of heritage sites and the resources they allocate to their maintenance and management. In may 2012 I hope to return to Bursa with Professor John Shoup, who will be leading an AUI class on a field seminar to the imperial capitals of Turkey. More delights on the way!
A covered bridge spans the stream that separates the Yeşil neighborhood (to the right) from the center of the city (left). (ph. Eric Ross)
Calligraphy panel based on the terminal letter "sîn" in the Ulu Cami, Bursa (ph. Eric Ross)
Recommended reading
The best guide to early Ottoman architecture is Gönül Öney’s Genése de l’art ottoman: l’héritage des émirs, part of a Spanish series on the Islamic architecture of the Mediterranean basin (Musée sans frontières: L’art islamique en Méditerranée) published in numerous languages. The French version I have is published by Edisud (2002). I don’t know who published the English version. While the photographs and architectural plans in this guide are very effective, the site plans and city plans are not. The plans posted above are intended to complement the book.
