Chapter VIII: Jenne--Yesterday and To-Day

During the miseries of the three centuries following upon the Moorish conquest Gao disappeared. The Touaregs swept through it, and left behind them a mere fraction of the grandeur and civilisation, the customs and ancestral traditions, of the Songhoi capital. Barth was fortunate in finding even the site of the city remaining. A massive tower (such as we see at Timbuctoo), representing both the ruin of the grand mosque and the tomb of Mohammed Askia, was, with the exception of a few native huts, all that he found there.

Jenne, most happily, has reached us nearly intact. So complete is this town that we can trace the thoughts and life of the Songhoi people in it better than we could ever have done at Gao. By what miracle has it been preserved? By none, but simply by the exceptionally privileged position of the town and its surrounding country. The land here marvellously resembles that of Egypt, and the emigrants were evidently struck by the similarity, realising that their peculiar qualities would best thrive in this place.

What more could they ask than this vast plain, periodically inundated by the united rise of the Niger and its confluent the Bani. The Kouakouru, a curious and important channel, connects these rivers with Jenne. From July to November the stream flows from the Bani to the Niger, for the four succeeding months it flows from the Niger to the Bani, and during the rest of the year it has no current at all. This alternation has been remarked by the natives, and recorded in the following naïve observation: ‘Our country is watered by two great rivers that marry at Mopti. The Bani is the male, and the Niger is the female element. At first the Bani fills the Niger, but some time afterwards the Niger, grown great, returns its fulness to the Bani.’

The scientific explanation of this phenomenon is simple. The Niger and the Bani pursue an almost parallel course, and are enlarged at the same period of the year by the same rains. The course of the Niger is impeded, however, by great natural dams, and it has in addition to fill the Pools of Dia and Bourgoo, while that of the Bani is free, and augments no reservoirs. Inasmuch as the waters of the Niger are more considerable, the two rivers do not overflow at the same time of the year. The Bani rises first, and as it encounters no obstacle, and suffers no diminution, it can by means of the Kouakouru, transfer its superabundance to the Niger. The larger river attains its fullest height later on, and it is then the Niger that flows into its diminished confluent. The immense plain is flooded from September to October, and during this period the waters of the Bani are at their highest. This is not the case with the Niger, but its mass is nevertheless greatly augmented, and forms a barrier against the rapid currents of the Bani at Mopti. The level of the latter, owing to this dam of water, begins to rise. The Pool of Kouakouru and the various channels rise also, and the surrounding country, owing to the absence of protective dykes, is flooded. At this period the appearance of the region closely resembles that of the valley of the Nile in times of inundation. The villages of the Songhoi agriculturist emerge from the sheet of water like those of the Fellahs. They are built of the same light grey clay upon mounds more or less artificial, and are interspersed with the same feathery tufts of palm-trees. The roads and the banks of river, channels, and pools have entirely disappeared, canoes being the only means of communication remaining to the villagers. The great plain has become a great sea strewn with grey islands crested with green.

The waters subside in November, and rice (the principal cereal of this region), having been planted in the first rains, is then harvested. The soil being moist and easily worked, a second harvest of millet or maize is prepared. The wonderful fertility of the ground is such that two closely consecutive harvests may be obtained from it.

‘Fortune has showered its gifts upon Jenneri,’ says the old chronicle; ‘its markets are held every day of the week, and its populations are very numerous. Its seven thousand villages are so near to one another that the chief of Jenne has no need of messengers. If he wishes to send a command to Lake Debo, for instance, it is cried from the gate of the town, and repeated from village to village, by which means it reaches its destination almost instantly.’

The meeting of many channels in this golden land severs an island from the plain, and that island is Jenne.

Was it chance, or was it intention resulting from inquiry, that drew the first Songhois to establish here the frontier town of their empire? It matters very little; inspiration or choice was equally remarkable.

The position was impregnable. If it were attacked in the fall of the rivers, when its girdle of waters was fordable in parts, its banks (from twenty to sixteen feet high), crowned by a ten-foot wall, still presented an inaccessible front. In the floods the enemy would have required special apparatus and instruments of war which were unknown in those days. To starve it into capitulation would have been the work of at least two years; and it would have needed a formidable army to blockade both land and water, for Jenne is defended by its channels, pools, and floods as much as by its walls.

Its inhabitants do not forget to tell you that Jenne, alone among all the cities of the Sudan, was never taken, destroyed, nor pillaged. The _Tarik_ confirms this assertion. When Gao and the rest of the Songhoi empire became the tributaries and vassals of the powerful kingdom of the Mali, Jenne and its people remained independent. ‘There were many battles, nearly a hundred, and the people of Jenne were always victorious. After the last defeat the Malinkas said, “We will come again”; but in this year (1664) in which I write, the hundredth battle has not been fought, and the Malinkas have not returned.’

Proud of its wealth and conscious of its power, was it at the height of the Mali supremacy that Jenne broke loose from the links binding it to the decadent Songhoi empire, and asserted its independence? Most probably it was, inasmuch as, somewhere about that time (fourteenth century), the army of Mossi took Timbuctoo, and separated Jenne completely and effectively from the rest of the empire. When Sunni Ali restored the power of the Songhois, his longest and most obstinately opposed campaign was directed against these people. He invested the town, and, according to some, he devoted seven years, seven months, and seven days to the siege; others allow only four years. However that may be, his entire army was collected in the country for so long a period that his soldiers turned farmers. Jenne being suddenly threatened with famine, the chief of the town proposed peace, and Sunni Ali, wearied out on his side, hastened to accord the most honourable terms. So far from humiliating it in the day of its capitulation, he seated his former enemy on his right hand, married his mother, and, most important of all as far as we are concerned, he respected the town.

Thus returned to the bosom of the Songhoi empire, Jenne supported her lot with resignation. In the Moorish conquest she compounded with the victors, as she did later with the Foulbes, and again a hundred years after with the Toucouleurs. She would have spontaneously opened her gates to Colonel Archinard had it not been for Alpha Moussa, the commander of the Toucouleur garrison.

Jenne possesses another advantage in its insular position, from an archæological point of view. The town, being built in a comparatively limited space, could not invite the settlement of foreign elements in any numbers sufficient to influence her appearance and customs. In another situation the city would have enlarged into suburbs, which, being incorporated with the town, would, by degrees, have modified its earlier aspect, as was evidently the case at Gao. But Jenne in her island has remained as completely herself as if she had been enclosed in a tower of ivory.

* * * * *

We know that the palaces and temples of the Pharaohs were raised by blows of the lash, and the fathers of the Songhois probably laboured under them. The builders of these edifices were themselves content with modest earthen dwellings; and if the construction of houses in the new country had been a matter of quarrying and shaping blocks of stone, they would have been satisfied with the primitive native hut, and I should not have seen a city of the Pharaohs existing to this day. Fortunately the Songhois discovered a suitable material for the building of their town, which was neither the granite nor sandstone of Egyptian monuments, but was merely a clay, plentifully found in the island and its neighbourhood. Humble as it was, to these new-comers it must have been inestimably precious, since it replaced that mud which the negro is obliged to solidify by mixing with gravel, manure, or any filth that comes to hand before he can build with it. It was not the wretched _banco_ that makes Segu so unhealthy when the deluges of the winter season soak into the infected sponges that represent its houses, but was a good stiff clay, solid, resisting, and wholesome.

They were enabled to make regular bricks from it, flat, long, and rounded at the ends like those of ancient Egypt. Except in the Songhoi countries, the negro does not proceed thus, but is content to fashion his _banco_ into irregular balls as he uses them. These bricks, being baked by the fierce Sudanese sun, are set in the walls with mortar, and finally receive a special rough-casting. Dwellings thus constructed are of great durability, and have all the appearance of being cut from one enormous block of stone. They defy the heaviest tornadoes of rain and wind in an astonishing manner, and with some repairing, which consists entirely of renewed rough-casting, they last for centuries.

These clay bricks are admirably suited to the massive and simple lines of Egyptian architecture, and the Songhois could build on as large a scale with them as could the Pharaohs with their great blocks of stone. Owing to their being enabled to work quickly and easily with this clay, the town could be begun and completed while the memory of their native country was still vividly before them.

Above all, the houses of Jenne display that essential characteristic of Egyptian art--the pyramidal form, which represented solidity to those ancient architects. The walls of the oldest constructions have a slight inward inclination, and possess no windows, or only the roughest sketch of them. Light and air enter through openings cut in the ceiling or roof. In all the negro habitations the roofs are rounded to carry off the terrible deluges of winter, but here they are flat, like those of the valley of the Nile, where rain is scarce. The Songhois knew no more how to construct an arch than did the Egyptians. The summits of their dwellings are ornamented by those triangular battlements which may be seen on the palaces of Rameses Meiamoun. The pylon, which is another characteristic of Egyptian architecture, gives access to the dwellings of Jenne, and forms, too, a motive of decoration, the façades of the houses being adorned with great buttresses of pylonic form. You would suppose these buttresses were intended to give additional support to the edifice, but interrogation of the local architects convinces you that they are merely ornamental adjuncts. Moreover, they are only to be found in the houses of the wealthy, though the poorer dwellings are no less solidly constructed. On certain buildings two of these pylons are united at their summit by a projecting plinth, recalling the ancient propylon. In short, the effect of the whole, its harmonious proportions, the symmetrical distribution of its ornamental motives, and its massiveness, unmistakably proclaim the art of Egypt.

If we refer to the antique bas-reliefs which reproduce the principal features of the ancient Egyptian habitations, and to the works of the orientalists, we shall find they agree in every particular with the buildings of Jenne. ‘The private houses were simple, and were not constructed of stone nor granite, as were the temples and palaces, but of rough bricks. The walls were plastered within and without, and enclosed a suite of rooms which were not uniformly disposed, but were divided according to the taste of the proprietor. They consisted of a ground floor and a second floor surmounted by a terrace. The approaches to the wealthiest houses were adorned with pylons and obelisks. The summits and angles of the clay walls were finished by a kind of framework of reeds held together by transverse bands. The roof was flat, and formed by placing planks across the length and breadth of the house; branches and rushes were strewn upon them, and the whole was covered by a thin layer of earth reduced to the consistency of mud. This covering slightly projected from all sides of the wall.’

The same methods of construction are pursued in the buildings of Jenne; all these details are to be found, with others that are veritably stupefying when seen in the heart of a negro country. A system of baked pipes is established in every dwelling to carry away the household water, and latrines, with perfectly constructed drainage, are established on all the terraces.

The survival, through all those ages, of this method of building is due, not only to the fact that the town has never been destroyed, but also to the great durability of the houses. I was shown some which were three or four hundred years old, their age being proved by the fact that their ground floors were about three feet below the level of the street outside. Centuries of layers have raised these roads as they have those of Jerusalem, which stands to-day fourteen or sixteen feet above its original level. Successive generations always possessed, therefore, some models of ancient times, and their types have been handed down to the present day. The great pent-houses with which some are supplied form their chief digression. This addition to the principal doors was provoked by the torrents of rain which threatened to flood the ground floors. They are massively designed, somewhat resembling the mantles of our ancient fireplaces, and are in nowise out of harmony with the façades. One or two courts are arranged inside the dwellings, and the few openings for air and light in the latter are embellished with slabs of terra-cotta, ornamentally designed, and set in the walls. The Moors, who installed themselves at Jenne after the conquest, introduced the use of windows with wooden shutters in the Arabian style, the only growth of their art they succeeded in engrafting. Moreover, these windows were not manufactured in Jenne, but were imported whole from Timbuctoo.

The Egyptian originality of the town must have been greatly jeopardised by the Moorish arrival, for the new-comers, impregnated as they were with Arabian art, would assuredly attempt other innovations. Thanks to its precious clay, however, Jenne remained unspoiled, for this substance did not lend itself to the construction of little columns and colonnades, and Moorish arcades, nor was it suitable for arabesques and all that slenderness of detail that have caused Fez and Marrakesh to resemble Cairo and Algiers. Some adaptations would doubtless be attempted, but they would crumble away in the first rains, and thus the city has remained faithful to its ancient traditions, preserving through twelve centuries indubitable proofs of its origin.

* * * * *

Although private houses are numerous, the type of monumental edifice is lacking. It did exist, however. The domicile of the governor of Jenne was of much greater dimensions than those of the ordinary dwelling; his rank, and the custom of maintaining a numerous retinue, would require it. His house, which was called the Madou, would have supplied us with the missing example of the Songhoi palace, but unfortunately in the eleventh century an event occurred which swept away this monument. ‘The town remained pagan,’ reports the _Tarik_ and popular tradition, ‘until the fifth century of the Hegira (1050). At that period it followed the example of its chief Koumbourou, and adopted Islamism. The chief convoked all the ulemas of the country, and more than four thousand obeyed the summons. Koumbourou, having shaved his head in their presence and announced his conversion, asked the ulemas to address the following prayer to God in favour of the town: That any person who should arrive there, having quitted his country from poverty and an inability to live in it, should receive from God such abundant and easy means of life that he should forget his native land. That Jenne should become a great centre of commerce, and that its inhabitants should be overwhelmed with wealth.’ This the ulemas did, and the prosperity of the town is a proof that God heard their prayers.

‘On becoming a Mussulman Koumbourou destroyed his palace and built a mosque upon its site. He lived to see its completion, but it was his successor who surrounded it with walls.’

The zeal of the neophyte has thus robbed us of the sight of an ancient Songhoi palace. The fact is the more lamentable that the various Sudanese chronicles give no compensating description of the building. The temple that was built to the new God somewhat attenuates these regrets, however, for the grand mosque of Jenne was long famous in the valley of the Niger, being considered more beautiful than the Kasbah of Mecca itself.

It was an enormous block, rigidly square, its sides measuring one hundred and eighty-three feet long by thirty-nine feet high. Besides the usual pylonic adornments, three groups of buttresses were distributed on each façade. Every group was composed of three deep ridges, possessing a projection of nine feet at the base, which diminished as they rose. The first of these groups was thirty-two feet from the angles of the building, and they were separated from one another by an interval of about twenty-six feet. The walls were crowned with triangular battlements separated by the terminating ridges of the buttresses, which were of similar form, but greater in height. The building was oriented with each façade towards one of the cardinal points, but the sides were not absolutely uniform with one another.

The north and south façades displayed two rows of windows.[6] The north gave admission to the faithful through two doors, the south through one only. The eastern (which was the sacred side, that looked towards Mecca), was uninterrupted by either door or window, and its surface was only broken by pylonic adornments and the three groups of buttresses. The western side was also without a door.

The double rows of windows might lead one to suppose that the interior of the edifice was composed of two stories. It was nothing of the kind; they lighted a closed gallery which ran round the square. Opposite the sacred eastern side was a row of nine triforiums.[7] Their dimensions were analogous to those of the gallery which formed the veritable body and sanctuary of the edifice. The interior was softly gloomy, its only light being admitted through some openings in the high ceiling, by reflections grudgingly let in by the two passages, by some windows in the great gallery, and by the two doors opening on to the court of the mosque. This latter occupied a wide space in front of the ninth triforium, and measured one hundred and fifty feet long, by sixty-five wide.

In the centre of the building, between the seventh and ninth triforiums, rose a quadrangular tower, of which two sides measured twenty-six feet at the base. Steps were cut in it, and it opened on to the terraced roof by means of an edicule, from which a marabut called the faithful to the five daily prayers. Another of these edicules was placed in the centre of the eastern side.

A low wall ran round the building at a distance of sixteen feet from it, widening respectfully to sixty-five feet before the sacred façade, and forming there a spacious parade. This was the holy ground in which the venerated marabuts, together with the scholars and people of importance, reposed in their last sleep. It was their Pantheon, and this chosen cemetery harmonised with the high wall that looked towards the Kasbah. With its ridged buttresses alternating with pylons, and with no doors nor windows to break its uniform grandeur by a note of life, this eastern façade gave a very forcible impression of a mausoleum.

The mosque was built on rising ground in the south of the town. A great excavation at its feet provided the materials for its construction, and served to further separate it from the town, so that it stood out from the surrounding fortifications and houses, soaring above them like a castle.

Is it necessary to refer once more to the Egyptian atavism revealed in its massive dimensions, in the plan and symmetry of its construction? Is it not better to dwell upon the fact that the only materials employed by its architects were clay and wood, and yet, in spite of that, their work lasted eight centuries?

It still survived sixty years ago, and would have lasted many centuries longer if Cheikou Ahmadou, the great Foulbe conqueror, had not commanded its destruction in 1830.

For a long time this command remained inexplicable to me. How came a prince, a well-known fanatic, to destroy a mosque? ‘Because there were so many mosques,’ said one. ‘Because it claimed to be more beautiful than that of Mecca,’ said another, with greater probability. Priestly _amour-propre_ caused them to conceal the true reason, and it was a priestly jealousy that revealed it to me.

I was holding a _séance_ of human documents one day, and among its members were three marabuts; two of them were natives of Jenne, and the third was from Segu. In this religious society I did not fail to return to the question of the destruction of the mosque. Quite in vain; the two natives reiterated the same imbecile reasons I had already heard, while the third sat silent, obstinately studying his sandals.

It did not occur to me that there had been any special significance in this attitude, until I saw him mysteriously reappear very early next morning. After rapidly examining my dwelling upon all sides, he entered, and closing the door, he assumed the attitude of the evening before, saying, ‘You asked us why Cheikou Ahmadou destroyed the old mosque. I know the reason, but the history of it is unpleasant to Jenne, and the marabuts naturally do not care to repeat it. That is why I did not tell it to you yesterday. I will do so now, and you shall go to them, saying, Is this true?’

Which I did; and the two marabuts confirmed the story, pretending to have learned it in the interval.

* * * * *

Part of Cheikou Ahmadou’s youth had been spent in Jenne. He was sent there by his parents to acquire learning from the numerous marabuts and scholars of the place. As his family was neither rich nor powerful, the young man was forced to lead the life of a poor student, and the alms of wealthy merchants were his sole support. The town was prosperous, and the Sudan was enjoying its last years of comparative tranquillity. Plenty of amusements went on in Jenne, and strangers lived a joyous life there, thanks to the laxity that prevailed in manners and matters of religion.

Young Ahmadou, who, like most of the Foulbes, was austere both from necessity and a rigid faith--Ahmadou, who was destined to take the title of Emir of the True Believers, conceived a great horror of all this depravity. The special quarters of the corruption were none other than the precincts of the old mosque. The centre of debauch was just opposite that sacred eastern wall which should have recalled the image of the Kasbah to the minds of the faithful, and dances were held there to the sounds of tom-tom and bafalon. Owing to its numerous foreign elements, the town could supply the whole repertoire of the lascivious dances of the Sudan. The neighbouring huts sold an intoxicating drink (a kind of beer called dolo), which was naturally forbidden to Mohammedans. An evening thus begun often terminated in low houses erected close to the west wall of the mosque, and even more frequently the dancers sauntered about the galleries of the mosque itself. Already full of ambitious plans, Cheikou Ahmadou swore to put an end to these scandals on the day that God should put the power in his hands.

Twenty-five years later, having destroyed the power of the Roumas and taken Timbuctoo and Jenne, he kept his word. He also forbade idolatrous strangers to enter the town, as he considered them the first cause of the corruption. In order to still further punish Jenne, he founded a new capital on the right bank of the Bani, calling it El-Lamdou-Lillahi (To the praise of God), the Hamdallai of to-day. Finally, to purify the quarter in which the dancing and drinking had taken place, he built the new mosque, which, simple, bare, and commonplace, marks the spot to this day. When it was completed he ordained his son and successor, Ahmadou Cheikou, his grand Iman, and then--he commanded the destruction of the old mosque (1830).

All that now remains of it is a heap of ruins, surrounded and preserved by their enclosing walls. The interior of the edifice has disappeared, the triforiums, the ceiling, the galleries, and the two towers are totally effaced. The great walls offered more resistance to the destroyers, and are only partially broken through. With the assistance of these, and the memories of the old men, my work of reconstruction was easy enough. The rows of windows are fairly distinguishable, so are the indented lines of the terrace and the positions of the great buttresses. Guided by these indications it was not difficult to trace the walls of the triforiums, the minarets, and the extent of the court. The only consolation left for its destruction lies in the fact that it is now possible to verify the great antiquity of the monument. This is easily done by a method resembling that of the woodman, who determines the age of a tree by the concentric circles of its trunk. From the great walls of the façade, whose normal thickness was three feet, I removed a layer of rough-casting not less than thirty-five inches thick. According to the old houses, the masons allowed about four inches a century, which would take us back to the eleventh century, and this date would correspond with that given by the _Tarik_.

The venerated tombs were the only things respected by Cheikou Ahmadou, and they now form a cemetery, or rather a charnel-house, in which I spent many hours of research. I had no idea that I was in a place of tombs and corpses the first time I saw it. The surface of the earth was pierced here and there by terra-cotta pipes similar to those employed in the household drainage of the town. Here, planted vertically in the soil, you would take them for the chimneys of troglodyte dwellings. But on looking down these supposed chimneys you find them full of earth; they are connected with subterranean dwellings, however, for this is the abode of the dead, and these pipes mark their tombs.

In some places the earth had fallen through, and I could distinguish piles of skeletons that were only separated from one another by thin layers of earth. The dead sleep so closely to one another that in a short time there will be more human dust than earth in this little place. One seldom sees the living in this spot, but there is life here, of a sort, that is very intense and active, and is produced by the dead lying below the red tubes.

Eagles and crows, hovering overhead, swoop suddenly down upon the dogs and rats that dig up the tombs. Legions of red and yellow lizards frisk unconcernedly about in this world of worms and insects. Goats and their kids make pretty spots of white and red against the sombre tones of the ruined walls. They too find a living in this dead heap; the grass must be savoury here, and they can enjoy such delightful climbs among these ruins. But the kings of the place are the enormous iguanas--green, and large as crocodiles; the daintiest morsels of the charnel-house are for them, and they have traced long passages from drain to drain. They find many a feast there--corpses, and worms that they snap up with their long double tongues, rats, lizards, scorpions, and others. The ground is littered with the remains of its inhabitants: tibias and shoulder-blades here, femurs there, with occasional shreds of intestines. There are no skulls. Is it possible that the animals consider as inferior that part which man values most?

All this is not in the least sad or gloomy. At the foot of the ruins, from town, market, and crowd, mount the great sounds of life. The sun pours its floods of intense light and gaiety upon this double death; upon those mounds where the works of God and the works of man are done with, and are crumbling away together.

‘Jenne is one of the greatest commercial towns of Islam. The salt of Thegazza and the gold of Boundou are sought there, and its inhabitants have acquired great riches. Good fortune is in its soil, and on account of this blessed city men come to Timbuctoo from all parts.’

So says an old Sudanese chronicle of the sixteenth century. How did such a commercial centre come about? and why at Jenne rather than any other town? The reason is to be found in the wealth and configuration of this part of the Sudan.

The wonderful fertility of the soil yields, as we know, a profusion of exchangeable produce, and the hydrographic system, which gives such exceptional irrigation to agriculture, also offers means of transport which is all that could be desired. These great advantages are not peculiar to Jenne, however, but are common to all the towns above and below her. Moreover, if her insular position was an excellent one from point of view of security, it was a serious drawback where communication was concerned. Segu and Sansanding on one side, and Mopti, Korienza, Sa, and Sarafara on the other, possessed the advantage of being situated on the Niger itself; yet Jenne was the town that attained the greatest celebrity. She not only ranked above Timbuctoo, but took her place among the great commercial centres of Islam. And why?

Because, among all the towns of the Niger, Jenne alone was a Songhoi city. Because her inhabitants bore within them the germs of the great Egyptian civilisation. Because, from the midst of the gloom of barbarity which covered the whole of the valley, Jenne stood out as the luminous point in which the cultured man appeared. Because this culture gave Jenne conceptions, and the means for executing them, that were unknown to her rivals.

In place of the primitive barter between village and village, and market and market, she created a true commerce. Her inhabitants formulated ‘business firms,’ in the European sense of the word, which were provided with a routine and staff similar to our own. They established representatives in important centres and opened branches at Timbuctoo. They sent out travelling agents who received so much per cent. on the business they accomplished, and were, in fact, no other than our ‘commercial travellers.’ The staff was composed of relatives and slaves, or free men who were obliged to earn their living. Among their numbers there were occasionally, as with us, certain indelicate members who disappeared with the merchandise that had been intrusted to them.

Thus organised, Jenne drains the whole of the Sudan in general, and the south of the valley in particular, through the medium of the markets of Baramandougou, San, and Bla. The ground floors of its large houses serve as spacious bonded warehouses by means of which their merchandise is not exposed to the rain and numerous parasites, as is the negro’s. These storehouses are filled with cereals, great sacks of rice and millet, jars full of honey, blocks of karita covered with leaves and bound with rushes, arachides, spices, onions, cakes of indigo, baskets of kola nuts, neta flour, monkey-bread (the fruit of the baobab), and bars of a wonderful iron brought from Karaguana (a country near Mossi), packets of ostrich feathers, ivory, virgin gold, civet musk; lead from the mountains of Hombouri and marble bracelets from the same place (ornaments greatly affected by the inhabitants of Nigerian countries); antimony, used by the negresses to darken the orbits of their eyes and increase their brilliancy--the blonde among them (for there are fair negresses) using it to darken their complexions; native fabrics, fine linen and woollen textiles, long white lengths of stuff from which the ample garments of these people are made, _pagnes de Segu_ for the women, and superb large draperies artistically patterned in yellow, black, copper-colour, and blue. I must not forget to mention another kind of merchandise, warehoused in the same place and as much in demand as any of the preceding, namely, slaves.

There is no specialisation of trade. Every one sells everything: textiles, human flesh, cereals, metals, and spices. These merchants do not carry on their real trade in the market--they merely send thither agents provided with a small stock; their true business is done in the penumbra of their large Egyptian dwellings.

With this abundance of products, the means of assembling, and shops to shelter them, there still remains the problem of transport. It was Jenne that taught the Sudanese the art of commercial navigation. Its boats could be compared with the aboriginal pirogue as little as the town could with a native city or its houses with the native huts. The negro’s canoe is a mere sketch of a boat, hollowed out from the trunk of a tree, and at the mercy of the least of the Niger’s breezes. It can only carry the smallest of cargoes, and, in order not to capsize it, the occupants are obliged to sit motionless as a Buddha in a Hindu temple or practise the agility of a Japanese equilibrist.

But the people of Jenne built regular vessels that were large and steady. The framework or body is not formed of regular planks adjusted and nailed to the keel, as one would expect, but is made of irregular blocks of Kaïcedra ebony or cedar-wood. These blocks are pierced with holes, then juxtaposed like pieces of Mosaic, and held together by strong hempen cords; the recipe apparently being: Take holes and surround them with rope and wood. They are finally made sufficiently water-tight by means of straw, tow, and clay; this method of construction imparting to them an elasticity that is highly desirable in view of the frequent groundings encountered on the sandbanks of the river.

Not being limited to the size of a tree-trunk, the Songhois construct boats measuring between fifty-eight and sixty-five feet long by ten broad, and able to carry from twenty to thirty tons. To convey the same weight by land would necessitate a caravan of a thousand porters, or two hundred camels or three hundred bullocks. Instead of any one of these costly methods, a single vessel, with from six to ten boatmen, is all that is required, which clearly proves the superiority of Jenne to the surrounding country.

Its great merchants have their own boats devoted exclusively to transport. The less wealthy have fleets of regular fly-boats at their disposal, which carry merchandise and passengers at a fixed tariff. Bars of iron, blocks of karita, jars, anything, in short, that water cannot damage, are stored in the hold, and upon these are piled sacks of cereals and the more delicate merchandise. A compact mass is thus obtained which forms the deck, and upon this the passengers lie or squat, protected by an awning from the sun. A space is left in the middle of the hold for baling out and cooking purposes. These fly-boats travel all day, and only stop at sunset for the evening meal; when there is a moon the journey is resumed as soon as it rises. For a consideration of 1500 cowries (2 frs. 50 c.) you can go to Timbuctoo (a twenty days’ journey), or for three francs you can send thither a hundredweight of goods.

Other towns, such as Sansanding, Korienza, and Sarafara, learned how to construct these large boats, which, wherever they may have been built, are invariably called ‘Jenne boats.’ Little by little an active commercial movement was diffused among the labyrinths of the Niger. But Jenne still retained her position as metropolis, owing partly to the superiority of her inventive resources, and partly to her isolation, which protected her from the sudden cataclysms and destructions to which the other cities were subject.

By means of her numerous fleets, her more civilised manners, progress and architecture spread throughout the western valley, even penetrating to Timbuctoo and the Kong country. After leaving Bammaku I found adaptations of her architecture everywhere: in the façades of the royal dwellings of Segu and in the town gates. All the mosques, though of more modest proportions, are built in the style of the old mosque at Jenne.

The sole point of contact between these vast regions and the Songhoi world, Jenne had morally dominated them long before they were actually conquered by the kings of her race. With this supremacy augmented by her fabulous wealth, it is small wonder that she was enabled to hold her own in ‘nearly a hundred battles’ against the Mali kings, who were practically the masters of the valley. Her work of civilisation continued uninterruptedly through centuries. Slowly she prepared the Western Sudan for that sudden and brilliant flight revealed by history in the great century of the Askias (1500-1600).

This civilising _rôle_ would be a title in itself to a place in the memories of mankind, but she possessed another of equal importance: she could claim to be the foundress of Timbuctoo.

Her commercial attention must have been fixed from the first upon that inestimable commodity which the Sudan lacked, viz. salt. The caravans bringing it from the Thegazza mines returned by the interior, instead of diverging to the east towards the river. Their precious burden would thus be rapidly diffused among the wealthier towns (notably Oualata), and but a costly fraction of it would reach the banks of the Niger.

Jenne would therefore take especial pains to assure a regular salt-market from which she could provide herself with large quantities at a fair price. This would naturally lead her to the discovery of the admirable geographical position of Timbuctoo, which was situated at the very doors of the Mali people and on the confines of her frontier. Caravans could go there direct from the mines, and the merchandise be secured at first hand; Jenne’s great vessels, her most valuable auxiliaries, would now enter upon the scene, and the new market would thus be established.

Timbuctoo (as we shall see later) could hardly be said to exist until the merchants of Jenne settled there, and brought all that the wealth of the Sudan could offer to the indigent starvelings of the desert in exchange for their loads of salt. The traders of Morocco and Tuat followed in her train, and in this way Jenne, although she did not actually create, undoubtedly founded Timbuctoo, for she was the means of transforming the poor hamlet into a great commercial centre of universal renown.

The Sudanese express this idea in their saying: ‘Jenne and Timbuctoo are two halves of the same city.’ It is, in fact, a portion of Jenne that lies out there on the threshold of the desert; her great merchants have homes and agents in the town, and during several months of the year they personally direct operations there. But in spite of this, the parts played in the Sudanese commerce by these two halves are in no way homogeneous. Jenne’s is the active, preponderating, and most interesting share; she represents the producer, the great merchant who settles in the centre of a country to utilise all its powers and resources. The character of Timbuctoo, on the other hand, is passive; she is the counting-house, the branch, a mere _dépôt_. Her inhabitants are brokers, intermediaries, and innkeepers, and she has always been inferior to Jenne both in wealth and commercial importance. This is why the old chronicle speaks of Jenne, and not Timbuctoo, as being one of the most considerable towns of Islam, adding, ‘It is on account of the blessed city of Jenne that men come to Timbuctoo from all sides.’

How comes it, then, that Timbuctoo has acquired notoriety all over the world while Jenne has remained comparatively unknown? The distinct characters of the two towns will explain this injustice. The caravans of North Africa, Morocco, Tuat, and Tripoli, which made the renown of Timbuctoo, never went beyond that city, and knew nothing of the Western Sudan. They had no need to prolong their journey into the south so long as Timbuctoo offered in great quantities all the merchandise they had come to seek. Even if it had occurred to the more enlightened among them that they would obtain these goods at cheaper rates in the country of their production, the paths thither were encumbered by considerable difficulties.

Nature, in creating, at the immediate south of Timbuctoo, a land that was a network of tributaries and channels and was periodically submerged, had closed the doors of the Sudan against the caravans of northern Africa. Their camels, admirably adapted to the passage of the desert, would have been totally useless in such a country, and would soon have perished from the excessive moisture. The north, therefore (at that time Europe’s sole source of information concerning the interior), totally ignored the Sudan proper; they only knew, and could only know, Timbuctoo. This crushing preponderance is far from obtaining in the Sudan, however, where the name of Jenne is known to every one, while Timbuctoo is frequently ignored.

The renown of the Songhoi town extends to the Kong country in the south, and to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. She sends merchandise to the sea-coast; and when the first Europeans trading between Banin and Cape Palmas asked where the gold and produce offered them for sale came from, the natives answered ‘from Jenne.’ Her name was thus given to the Gulf of Guinea, and, indirectly, to an English coin, the guinea, so called because the first pieces were struck from gold coming from there.

* * * * *

Of all the great cities of the Niger, Jenne was the one to suffer least from the long period of anarchy that the history of the Sudan has revealed to us. Signs of violence are not visible at first sight as they are at Nyamina and Sansanding. It was, nevertheless, cruelly used under the Toucouleur dominion. ‘We suffered nothing but vexation and pillage,’ an old chief told me. ‘El Hadj Omar was a brigand, and his sons and generals have carried on his trade. Little by little the town has been emptied of its original inhabitants. Thou wilt find more of the people of Jenne in the surrounding country than in the city itself. It was time for the French to come. Colonel Archinard has done very wisely. When he came before our walls he respected the merchant quarter, and bombarded only that Toucouleur citadel which is now your fort.

‘I will not disguise from thee that, in spite of all we suffered from the Toucouleurs, the arrival of your people was disagreeable to us. The Toucouleurs were at least Mussulmans, and we were afraid of the dominion of the Christian. We had been told of many misdeeds committed by you. But now we are very satisfied. You allow us to make our prayers, and you do not despoil us as the Toucouleurs did, nor do you force impious practices upon us, and make us eat and drink unclean things, as we were told you would. When you have collected the tax you do not demand more, and you pay for all you want. We can resume our trades in safety and with greater profit, for the three tolls we had to pay upon the Niger before reaching Timbuctoo have been removed. This is why the former inhabitants are returning to us from all sides.’

In fact, during my stay there many old houses became reinhabited and new ones were built, and these latter afforded me the opportunity of observing those Songhoi methods of construction which had been brought from so far, and were so different from those I had hitherto noticed among the negroes. The general physiognomy of the town is not less striking. Its thresholds are no longer encumbered by sleepers and idlers, nor are its streets obstructed by loafers, as is the custom elsewhere. A bright energy and an unusual gaiety and elasticity of movement are astir in the town from early morning. The people hurry busily about, driving donkeys and carrying burdens, and all are working to attain some end. I must admit that all this energy is only relative. In Paris or London I should call it indolence, but in the Black Continent, under a blazing sun, it does not do to be too particular. The precincts of the great merchant dwellings are particularly busy, their doors being literally besieged. A crowd of clients, in the Roman and commercial sense of the word, are awaiting their turn of audience. Some fill the streets with a sound of noisy discussion, while others, preoccupied by their affairs, meditatively crack and peel kola nuts. Here and there in front of the eastern rampart, where the bank slopes gently to the commercial gate, slaves load and unload the vessels which are incessantly coming and going. At the four cross-roads you see low straw huts (the improvised stalls of the itinerant vendor) looking conspicuously out of harmony with the large houses. A few women keep a stall before their door; sometimes they leave their goods with piles of cowries beside them indicating the prices, while they themselves are busy about the house. Thus, instead of confining her trade to the market-place, as is the case in other towns, Jenne cries ‘Commerce! commerce!’ at every step of the way.

The market does not present the accustomed haphazard appearance of its negro counterpart, with merchandise strewn about here, there, and everywhere. It occupies a large square in the centre of the town, and is regularly intersected with paths for the buyers and raised places for the sellers. Rows of shops border three of its sides, and the fourth opens upon the Mosque, as if in reminder that honesty and good faith should preside over all its transactions. Sitting surrounded by calabashes and potteries, the women sell vegetables, milk, fish, animal butter (salt or fresh), karita, spices, soap, and faggots of wood. There are three erections formed by square posts in the centre of the market-place, with a shop between every two posts, in which men sell the choicer goods--native and European textiles principally, with salt, kola nuts, slippers, boxes of matches, mirrors, pearls, knives, etc. The money-changer is stationed here also, with his black face showing out from between little mountains of cowries. For native gold (in rings like the moneys of the Pharaohs) and silver coins, varying from five-franc pieces to fifty centimes, he gives and takes hundreds and thousands of these little shells. Our gold pieces are not rated, because--well, because they are not very well known there just yet.

The butchers’ shops are the most characteristic and picturesque of all. Dead shrubs, retaining only their principal branches, are planted before the posts, and the joints of meat are suspended from them, while live sheep await their turn of cutlets and chops. Primitive furnaces are established in their near neighbourhood, upon which you may roast your purchase free of charge, if you buy your fuel from the wood-seller next door. It is just like a London grill-room; but instead of the heavy atmosphere and gloom peculiar to the taverns of that city, there is the vast sky for ceiling, the brilliant sun for light, the bright and beautiful decoration of an ancient Egyptian town for background, and a crowd of people clothed in the white draperies of the Songhois for surroundings.

* * * * *

Islamism and Arabian civilisation have been superimposed and so firmly planted in these countries that a great many Egyptian manners and customs have disappeared. The embalming of the dead bodies of their celebrities (one of the most marked characteristics of the peoples of the Nile) is no longer practised. The Mohammedan religion considered the practice impious, but the custom survived among the Songhois for a long time, nevertheless. The old chronicles tell us concerning Ali the Conqueror: ‘The king being dead, his children caused him to be opened and the entrails were taken out and replaced by honey, in order that the body should not become corrupt.’ Unfortunately their documents do not shed as much light upon other subjects. Nothing recalls the ancient hieroglyphic or demotic characters. It is true that thin pieces of a very smooth wood are used instead of paper (which is expensive), to teach writing to the school-children. The Pharaohic scribes were wont to employ the same materials, in order to economise the more costly papyrus. The Arabic writing has entirely obliterated the other, as it has in Egypt, and, for that matter, as the Koran and Arabian jurist have effaced the native judicial customs.

But you have only to enter their houses, and penetrate their private life, to find in manners and customs many very characteristic indications of their origin. Their oral traditions, their chronicles, and their dwellings all betray their Nilotic fatherland. The Songhois resemble a palimpsest on which the first manuscript is dimly decipherable. Fragments are, and always will be, missing, but the omissions are those which it is easy to supply.

Among the favourite divinities of ancient Egypt, the crocodile was especially dear to the priests of Thebes and Crocodilopolis, and the cult is still to be found at Jenne under a form naturally attenuated. The town and its environs are frequented by enormous green iguanas very similar to crocodiles. In Senegal and elsewhere the natives hunt this saurian for the sake of its flesh, which is very fine and delicate--so I am told. The people of Jenne, on the other hand, consider it sacred, and to kill it is to commit sacrilege. ‘The Koran does not forbid its meat,’ replied the marabuts to whom I reported this custom of the negroes, ‘but we venerate the iguanas because our fathers did so.’

The dove, the oracular bird of the temple of Ammon, enjoys similar privileges at Jenne; nests and food are arranged for them in the houses, and they are never by any chance put upon the spit. The respect paid to the dove by these people is known of in Nigerian countries other than Songhoi, where they are called ‘birds of Jenne.’

The same ready sweetness of disposition that has already been ascribed to the Egyptian races forms the psychological basis of the Songhoi character. The chronicler of the _Tarik_, a man of the Sudan but not of this race, has been struck by this. ‘The characteristics of its inhabitants,’ he says, ‘are sympathy, kindness, and generosity.’ They gave me an impression of that goodness and spirit of charity with which the old Egyptian papyri are so strongly imbued. The following was the happy altruism of the old Jenne merchant who said to me (explaining the system of their commission agents): ‘We trust our merchandise to people who have no goods; they sell it for us throughout the country, and part of the profit is theirs. If they have the will they can become merchants in their turn.’ And he concluded, ‘It is a disgrace to beg here, for among us it is possible for every one to earn a living. However poor he may be, a man has but to work to become rich.’

We will now pass to more commonplace comparisons. Contrary to Oriental and Arab usage, but conformably with ancient Egyptian custom, it is the men among the Songhois who weave the textiles, and not the women. The latter do the spinning and dyeing. Moreover, the Nigerian negro knows only one colour, the blue of his indigo, but the Songhoi uses black, yellow, and copper-red vegetable dyes. The ornamental motives employed are severely symmetrical, the most frequently used being that alternation of dark and light squares so often found in the hangings and draperies of the Egyptian frescoes. Among their finer tissues one deserves special attention; it is a luxurious stuff, used for shawls or turbans, and woven with an uneven surface resembling our honey-combed towelling.

Among the artisans we can trace vestiges of a division into companies. Masons and blacksmiths alike are furnished by certain families, the trades descending from father to son. Both occupations recognise the supreme authority of one of their number, who takes his place among those personages of the town who deliberate and control public affairs. Masonry is man’s work here, while in the negro countries it is the women who build the houses.

While Senegalese and Sudanese lean towards blue as the prevailing tint of their garments, the Songhois show a preference for white, like the Nubians; and rice, not millet, is their staple food. Their kuss-kuss is not taken from calabashes, but is served in cups of baked clay similar in every point to those in the scenes of repast depicted upon the Egyptian tombs. The various forms of their numerous potteries also recall the antique specimens of the same land; and they have real wooden bedsteads instead of the lump of earth, covered with skins, that serves the negro as a place of repose....

* * * * *

The last day at Jenne! I have been employed since morning in receiving processions of the friends I have slowly gained among her inhabitants. Oh! very slowly. Our first acquaintance was not made without much hesitation, suspicion even. They could not understand this European, the first they had ever seen, who was neither soldier nor trader. My incessant and entirely unexpected questions bewildered them. They looked at one another and laughed as the interpreter transmitted them, and were obviously thinking, ‘What absurd idea has the white man got into his head? What has all this got to do with him?’ Then, hearing that their most learned marabut was reading the _Tarik_ to me, and that I gathered marabuts about me and blacked sheets of paper as I listened to them, they began to classify me accordingly and called me the ‘marabut-toubab’ (the white marabut), and the nick-name soon became popular. By-and-by I became a subject of much salutation in my walks abroad. The men greeted me in Arabian fashion, with the right hand placed first to the forehead and then to the heart; the women with a gracious movement of the left hand similar to the military salute. I did not deceive myself, however; these demonstrations merely expressed much compassion and indulgence for a harmless lunatic, an inoffensive imbecile, ‘the man with the questions.’ But when I could speak with some knowledge of their ancestors, their epopee, and their little anecdotes: ‘Iho, iho’ (ah, ah!), they triumphantly exclaimed, ‘thou wilt write a Tarik for the whites about the blacks!’ After this they lent me their books willingly enough, and opened their doors to me, even introducing me to the women’s apartments. Thus the monomaniac became, bit by bit, more than a mere acquaintance, and an indulgent contempt was exchanged for a real affection. Their farewell visits (entirely unexpected) revealed this to me, and I discovered that I too had a feeling for some of them which was more than sympathy. They all brought some offering, a small souvenir, a few provisions, and little notes in Arabic, representing letters of introduction. Kindly wishes for the journey were mingled with affectionate questions: ‘Would I come and see them again?’ ‘Should we talk together once more of Dialliaman, the impious Sunni Ali, and the unhappy old age of Askia the Great?’ In order to justify my reputation of ‘marabut-toubab,’ I said to them: ‘Yes, we shall all meet again. Not here, but in a country where there are neither blacks nor whites, in the land of Allah, where you will be white like me.’ Whereat we all laughed together for the last time.

Towards the end of the afternoon, as the hour of the prayer that must be said at sunset approaches, they all withdraw, and I go up to the terrace of my house. From that height the town, the island, and the three channels that join to sever Jenne from the mainland, look as though drawn upon a map. After having pressed the hands of its friendly inhabitants, I wish to take a last look at this country which has so impressed itself upon my imagination.

The plain is scattered with white dots like daisies, but they are moving daisies, all possessed by the same motive and all drawn towards the town as to the sun. On the banks of the river the white dots collect in groups; they are the people hastening to their houses at the close of day, and waiting for the canoe ferry-boat to take them over the water. Dark spots now appear in the distance making for the same point; they are troops of horses returning from pasture. They wait for no ferry-boat, but precipitate themselves into the water that separates them from their stables. Finding no one waiting for them at the gates, they gallop through the town, joyously chasing, kicking, and nibbling each other. The streets are filled with a delightful uproar, cries, laughter, and swirling movements of voluminous white draperies as the foot-passengers start aside from the frolicsome animals. When the latter have had their play out, they go peaceably home in search of the masters who have given themselves no trouble to look for their beasts.

All sounds gradually die away in the town. A marabut has climbed to the terrace of the great mosque, and cries, ‘God is great!’ The surrounding terraces are peopled with white forms, which stand out against the summits of the palm-trees and the green of the baobab. Their backs are turned to the purple splendours of the dying light, for their faces look towards the already darkened east, which is lighted for them by that eternal light in which Mecca is to be found.

The silence is harshly broken by a brazen sound; it is the bugle from the fort sounding the call for rations....

The plain is now a vast desert, phantasmagorically illuminated. Above, the sky flames into every imaginable colour, and the channels, scarcely visible a moment ago, blaze into a reflection of the ardour of the sky, while the rows of ospreys upon their banks look like necklaces of pink pearls. Then all the enchantment is overwhelmed in the sudden darkness of a tropical night.

Farewell, my friends, whose lips are murmuring prayers unknown to mine! Farewell, strange island! Farewell, mother of Timbuctoo, thou Egyptian Jenne to whom I owe the unimaginable joy of having lived, at the end of the nineteenth century, in a city of the Pharaohs!