Djenné

Djenné is a town and urban commune in the Inland Niger Delta region of central Mali and the administrative centre of the Djenné Cercle, one of eight subdivisions of the Mopti Region. The commune includes ten surrounding villages and had 32,944 residents in 2009. Its history is closely linked with that of Timbuktu: between the 15th and 17th centuries much of the trans-Saharan trade in salt, gold and slaves passed through it, and both towns became centres of Islamic scholarship. Djenné is famous for its adobe architecture, above all the Great Mosque built in 1907 on the site of an earlier mosque. South of the town lies Djenné-Djenno, one of the oldest known towns in sub-Saharan Africa, and the two together were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. The town sits on the floodplain between the Niger and Bani rivers, 398 kilometres northeast of Bamako, and becomes an island during the annual flood that begins in July and peaks in October.