Djenné

Djenné's story begins across the water at Djenné-Djenno, a mound settled from about the 3rd century BC, where iron-working, rice growing and long-distance trade were established long before Islam reached the region. The site grew into one of the earliest cities in sub-Saharan Africa, then declined after about 1000 and was abandoned by around 1400, as the population moved to the present town 2.5 kilometres to the north-west.

Djenné itself rose on the southern end of the trans-Saharan trade. Gold from the forests to the south and salt mined at Taghaza in the desert changed hands in its markets, and goods moving in and out of Timbuktu passed through the town; a Songhai-era population of perhaps 40,000 has been estimated. With Timbuktu it became a centre of Islamic scholarship between the 14th and 17th centuries. Sonni Ali of Songhai took the town in 1471, after a siege of about six months, and Moroccan forces arrived after 1591.

Decline followed the sea. Once the Portuguese established trading posts on the Atlantic coast, gold flowed to the shore rather than across the Sahara, and Djenné's position weakened. The Massina and Tukulor states ruled in turn in the 19th century, and after the French conquest Mopti was made the regional capital, leaving Djenné a market town. Its architecture saved it: the Great Mosque was rebuilt in 1907 under the head of the masons' guild, Ismaila Traoré, and in 1988 the old town and Djenné-Djenno were inscribed together as a World Heritage Site.

The town's identity is built around mud. Djenné's masons form a guild with its own hierarchy and knowledge, and they direct not only the houses but the annual replastering of the Great Mosque, in which the whole population takes part: plaster is prepared in pits, women and girls carry water, men climb the building's permanent palm-wood scaffolding to smear it on, and elders who have done it many times watch from a place of honour in the square. The result is a building remade by hand every year.

Learning is the other tradition. Djenné was one of the great centres of Islamic scholarship in West Africa, and Quranic schools still take children through memorisation on wooden tablets. Manuscripts remain in family collections in the town, and efforts have been made to catalogue and preserve them. The population is overwhelmingly Muslim, and the mosque governs the shape of the day and the week.

Bozo fishermen, Fula herders, Bambara and Songhai farmers and Marka traders all meet here, and Monday brings the whole delta into the square. Manners follow the Malian pattern of unhurried greetings, respect for age and the three rounds of green tea; the town is small enough that strangers are noticed immediately, and photography of people is a sensitive matter rather than a casual one.

The commune, which takes in ten surrounding villages as well as the town, counted about 33,000 people at the 2009 census. Djenné lives from the floodplain: rice grown on land that the Bani covers each autumn, millet and onions on higher ground, cattle and sheep with Fula herders, and fish caught by Bozo families and dried or smoked for sale across West Africa. Pottery, weaving and above all building work fill out the local economy.

Everything turns on water. The flood arrives after the rains upstream, turns the plain into a sheet of water dotted with villages and makes Djenné an island in fact as well as in name, then withdraws and leaves grazing and planting behind it. The mud houses need repair every year once the rains have passed, which keeps the masons working and the town's appearance continuous with its past.

Two things weigh on daily life. The first is the loss of tourism, which until 2012 supported guides, guesthouses, restaurants and craftspeople and is now gone. The second is the conflict across central Mali: armed groups operate in the countryside around, roads are dangerous, schools in the wider region have closed and displaced families have moved into the larger towns. Djenné itself has stayed comparatively quiet, but it is cut off from much that once sustained it.

Rice is the staple here, grown on the flooded plain and eaten at the main meal of the day with a sauce — groundnut, tomato and onion, baobab leaf or okra — and often with fish. The delta's fish is the town's other constant: capitaine, the Nile perch, along with catfish and tilapia, eaten fresh when caught and otherwise smoked or dried, a trade that has carried Djenné and Mopti fish across West Africa for centuries.

Millet appears as a stiff porridge eaten with the same sauces, and as moni, a thin breakfast gruel taken with sugar and sour milk. Soumbala, the fermented néré-seed seasoning, and shea butter give the cooking its base notes, and onions grown in the region go into almost everything. Fula households add milk, fresh or soured, and butter.

The market supplies the rest: rock salt from the Saharan mines, dates and dried fruit from the north, mangoes and vegetables from the south, and street food of bean fritters, fried dough and grilled meat. Drinks are water, hibiscus and ginger juices, sour milk and green tea boiled with a great deal of sugar and poured in three rounds.