Côte d'Ivoire: Sudanese-style mosques candidate for UNESCO World Heritage
Audio 02:15
The Sudanese-style mosque of M'Bengue.
© RFI / Sidy Yansané
By: Sidy Yansané Follow
6 min
Côte d'Ivoire wants its centuries-old Sudanese-style mosques added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The file was submitted this year and is awaiting possible validation.
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It is 1 p.m., prayer time, this Friday in the town of M'Bengue, located 75 km north of the town of Korhogo.
The villagers gradually go to a mosque with a very particular style.
Lamine Konaté is the department's vice-president of youth.
He describes the place and explains how it was made: “
It's a Sudanese-style mockery.
There are four minarets which are towards the west side and two, which are on the north and south side.
All of this is made from the ground up.
The earth was gathered like a termite mound, which they crushed and wet for a few days and then they put in the shea butter.
"
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A religious site that is the pride of the inhabitants
It is true that the mud mosque is reminiscent of termite mounds arranged one beside the other, and supported by a structure in korokoro, a local wood known for its longevity.
Islam arrived in Ivorian soil between the 14th and 18th centuries.
The religious site is almost a century old
The building is the pride of the inhabitants and of Lamine Konaté, whose grandfather Balamine was the first imam: “
Since everyone began to be interested in this building, it gave another value, more religious and more spiritual.
It gave another dimension, pride, to our products that our ancestors made, something that has remained in history,
”he says.
A choice of eight mosques among the twenty
The M'Bengue building is one of 20 registered and protected Sudanese-type mosques in Côte d'Ivoire.
But only eight of them have been selected for Unesco World Heritage.
The process has been underway since 2006 alongside other cultural property in the country, and it was last January that the mosques file was finally filed.
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For Doctor Fabrice Aliman, assistant director in charge of restoration at the Ivorian Cultural Heritage Office, “
this set of eight mosques was chosen on the basis of their state of conservation, but also on the communities' attachment to these mosques.
They say that by praying in these Sudanese-type mosques, their wishes and prayers are better answered than in other mosques in the area
, ”he explains.
Côte d'Ivoire is now awaiting the Unesco deliberation next summer.
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