Recent news stories have reported on the chaos in Mali, as Taliban-based forces have taken over the ancient city of Timbuktu and reportedly begun destroying the famous historical buildings. What these stories are speaking of is the traditional ephemeral architecture in the countries of West Africa known as Butabu, an ethereal architecture built of perishable fired mud brick or adobes: it is these fragile, lovely structures that are being demolished.
Ginna House, Ogol Ley, Sanga, Mali, 1999
Photo Credit: James Morris (c) 1999
For centuries, these complex adobe structures, many of them quite massive, have been built in the Sahel region of western Africa, including the countries of Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. Made of earth mixed with water, these ephemeral buildings display a remarkable diversity of form, human ingenuity, and originality.
Captured only in photographs, Butabu was fated to melt away in a few centuries: with the help of the Taliban, they are disappearing far more quickly. A traveling exhibit of photos of these structures taken by British photographer James Morris took place at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in 2006, and they were kind enough to let me show you a handful of images.
The exhibition of 50 photos has ended, but you can enjoy a few of them in the slide show feature called Adobes of West Africa. Morris's work also appears in a 2003 book called Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa and co-authored with Africanist Suzanne Preston Blier.
- Adobes of West Africa, a slide show of four of the Morris photographs
- Timbuktu, glossary entry
- Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, the book
- The "End Times" for Timbuktu?, Guled Yusuf and Lucas Bento for the New York Times, 31 July 2012.
- Mud, Glorious Mud (Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian reviews the book)
- Architectural Traditions of Mali, an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution
- Home page of James Morris
- Butabu on Archnet (that's ArchitectureNet, where you can find even more of Morris's photographs)
Added 15 October 2010: Sebastian Schutyser just dropped me a line to tell me about his 2003 art book called Banco: Adobe Mosques of the Inner Niger Delta which looks like a terrific introduction to West African Adobes.
Comments
Hi everyone!
I have a reponse to the above article- So what? We have enough evidence of how people lived. So a few huts melt into nothing? Is this alarming or am I really missing the point? We have to stop being so facinated by what we see around us and start searching inside ourselves- they best answers for the human condition are found there. The entire cosmos arrives and departs simultaneously- time is non-existant. Welcome death! Welcome life !Don’t give in to fear mongering and alarmism. In ancient times there was no history because people lived within themselves. I write this today to help spread the message. End fear.
Peace on Earth and in the cosmos!
Mike
See:
While the Mahayana Buddhist within appreciates the philosophical tones of Mike’s post, I find the situation to be a more…um…ontologically complex one. The buildings are not being allowed to rot, or ‘melt away,’ but instead are being hastened to this inevitability by the actions of vituperative and destructive ignorance. These buildings are symbols; the physical manifestations of complex ideas. The extremists are attempting to destroy these complex symbols. I for one, wish to live in a world where ideas are not destroyed, but fostered. If the Lincoln Memorial, in the distant future, melts away into rubble under the abrasive influences of rain and sleet and hail, so be it. But standing aside when the Lincoln Memorial is blown up because the assailants do not approve of the ideas therein symbolized is, in a word, craven. Freedom does not exist is a world such as Mike describes.
In the words of Heinrich Heine “Them that begin by burning books, end by burning men.”
Mike,
You not only missed the point. Obviously, you never had any point.
No need to search inside yourselves. Your interior is empty at all …
And when arrives death – all finishes! No interior, no insight … The men with rich interior do not have need to destroy labor and creativity of others!
Reading Mike’s comment, left me with the feeling that, unfortunately, Mike seems not only to have missed the point, but, to have misunderstood the entire situation. It is not, as he says, a few ‘mud huts melting into nothing’ , it is quite a few (16, I believe) large shrines which have been venerated for generations. They are not melting, but being deliberately destroyed, not by the people who built them, but by outsiders forcing their religious extremism on the people these buildings hold deep meaning for. An analogous situation would be if a group of heavily armed thugs broke into Mike’s home and proceeded to destroy it while holding him at gunpoint. Would he appreciate being told to stop being fascinated by what’s around him, just look inside himself ?
That said, I do feel that, when stability returns to Northern Mali, the shrines can be rebuilt. The earth they were made from is still there, still imbued with the centuries of spirituality absorbed from the people, who are still there, and still carry the bloodlines of the original builders. To a certain extent, this validates some of Mike’s idea, in that, it is not so much the physical structures themselves, but, as trenton honda said ‘ the ideas therein symbolized ‘ which is important. Therefore, we should not focus energy on wishing that the destruction had not happened, but see this as an opportunity for international cooperation, combining the archival records compiled by foreign scholars with the energies of the local people, to restore the legendary aura of the city whose very name, Timbuktu, is synonymous with the remote and exotic.
I am very thankful for the reponses. I am not upset about the passing of things in this world- It’s routine that the “past “seals up itself But lamenting change is optional- and I choose not to suffer. It’s true- being held at gunpoint is not a pleasant thing to ponder. However- I don’t get too upset if someone sees me trip or a mispronounce a word in a meeting. If my best clothes get soiled- oh well! I was raised in “hands on” household, was a paratrooper and boxer. Violent things don’t scare me as a result. Things being stolen from me – oh well- i gotta deal with stuff like that to progress.
These huts disappearing- When men hasten the destruction of things it dosn’t make me too upset. Since these huts rose from dirt- is it not ineveitable that dirt they become? Who among us laments the death of our great, great, great grandfather?
Oh- Thanks you kris for the links to the hindu / Shiva sites! I enjoyed them very much!!