For most people, when
you talk about African architecture, especially before European
colonisation, you have the pyramids in Egypt and mud huts everywhere
else. It sometimes feels like the only thing rarer than the telling
of the African architectural story is the accurate telling of that
story.
I was on the Southbank
in London very recently where I was offended to see a display by a
well-known global charity encouraging passers-by to 'Step into
Africa', with arrows pointing to some ramshackle huts. There were
also some “African drums” on display. Like Africa's only
contribution to the world were mud huts and drums.
I couldn't bring myself
do more than glance into the huts as I walked past and I have no
doubt that the charity had all the right intentions to help but this
representation of African architecture and the African story in
general needs to stop. It is time for a more balanced telling of the
African story and this is my contribution to that process.
I have put together a
list of five man made structures from different parts of Africa that
I don't think many people would have heard of. All of these edifices
where constructed before European colonisation and are, in my
opinion, are some of the world's greatest wonders.
Benin Moat (or The Walls of Benin)
Referred to by many as
Africa's 'Great Wall of China', the Benin Moat was used as a defense by the historical Benin Empire from neighbouring empires like Oyo and Sokoto. It was considered the largest man-made structure lengthwise
and was hailed as the largest earthwork in the world.
According to Fred
Pearce of the New Scientist, “they extend for some 16,000
kilometres in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected
settlement boundaries. They cover 6,500 square kilometres and were
all dug by the Edo people. In all, they are four times longer than
the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material
than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. They took an estimated 150 million
hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single
archaeological phenomenon on the planet.
Excavations by British
archaeologist Graham Connah in 1960 uncovered a rural network of
earthen walls that, he estimated, if spread out over five dry
seasons, would have required a workforce of 1,000 labourers working
ten hours a day, for seven days a week to construct – a rough total
of 150 million man hours.
The invasion and
subsequent annexation of the Benin Empire by the British led to the
destruction of long stretches of the wall. As a result of this and
poor maintenance by locals, the Benin Moat today lies fallow and
largely forgotten, a pale reflection of its former self.
Rock-Hewn Churches, Lalibela
In a mountainous region
in the heart of Ethiopia, some 645 km from Addis Ababa, eleven medieval monolithic churches were carved out of rock. Their building
is attributed to King Lalibela who set out to construct in the 12th
century a ‘New Jerusalem’, after Muslim conquests halted
Christian pilgrimages to the holy Land.
The churches were not
constructed in a traditional way but rather were hewn from the living
rock of monolithic blocks. These blocks were further chiselled out,
forming doors, windows, columns, various floors, roofs etc. This
gigantic work was further completed with an extensive system of
drainage ditches, trenches and ceremonial passages, some with
openings to hermit caves and catacombs.
The churches are also a
significant engineering feat, given that they are all associated with
water (which fills the wells next to many of the churches) exploiting
an artesian geological system that brings the water up to the top of
the mountain ridge on which the city rests.
Great Mosque of Djenne
The actual date of the
of construction of the mosque is unknown but the Great Mosque of Djenne is acclaimed by many as one of Africa's greatest architectural accomplishments. The first mosque on the site was built in the 13th
century, but the current structure dates from 1907.
The earliest document
mentioning the mosque is al-Sadi's Tarikh al-Sudan which gives the
early history, presumably from the oral tradition as it existed in
the mid seventeenth century. The tarikh states that a Sultan Kunburu
became a Muslim and had his palace pulled down and the site turned
into a mosque. He built another palace for himself near the mosque on
the east side.His immediate successor built the towers of the mosque
while the following Sultan built the surrounding wall.
The walls of the Great
Mosque are made of sun-baked earth bricks (called ferey), and
sand and earth based mortar, and are coated with a plaster which
gives the building its smooth, sculpted look. The walls of the
building are decorated with bundles of rodier palm sticks, called
toron, that project about 60 cm (2 ft) from the surface. The
toron also serve as ready made scaffolding for the annual
repairs. Ceramic half-pipes also extend from the roofline and direct
rain water from the roof away from the walls
Great Zimbabwe
Some have claimed that Great Zimbabwe is the largest medieval city in sub-Saharan Africa. Great Zimbabwe was
constructed and expanded for more than 300 years in a local style
that eschewed rectilinearity for flowing curves. Neither the first
nor the last of some 300 similar complexes located on the Zimbabwean
plateau, Great Zimbabwe is set apart by the terrific scale of its
structure. Its most formidable edifice, commonly referred to as the
Great Enclosure, has dressed stone walls as high as 36 feet (11 m)
extending approximately 820 feet (250 m), making it the largest
ancient structure south of the Sahara Desert. Houses within the
enclosure were circular and constructed of wattle and daub, with
conical thatched roofs.
Gidan Rumfa
The Gidan Rumfa is the palace of the Emir of Kano, located in Kano, Kano State, Nigeria, and
was built by Mohammed Rumfa, who reigned from 1463 to 1499. The
entire palace is embraced by a wall 20 to 30 feet high from the
outside, the height of which never exceeds more than 15 feet from the
inside.
Visitors at the turn of
the twentieth century commented on the wall's durability, which was
said to have been 15 feet thick in some places. It is tapered inward
and surmounted by rounded crenellations. The exterior wall, similar
to the exteriors of the buildings inside the complex, is modestly
decorated with shallow arched grooves traced in the mud plaster. The
eleven mile wall was once surrounded by a moat with a parapeted
bridge to the main south gate.
There are many more
marvellous works of African architecture all over the continent and
it is a shame that out of all of these, the humble mud hut seems to
be synonymous with the idea of ancient African
architecture. Mud huts are an undeniable part of African
architectural heritage but until we begin to acknowledge and
appreciate the other side of the story, we will be telling a
incorrect version of another part of Africa's story
This is a great article thank you
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