Djinguereber Mosque, Timbuktu

Timbuktu in Mali was once one of the richest, most important cities in all of Africa. Caravans of camels arrived every day carrying gold, salt, books, and travelers from across the desert. And in the middle of it all stood the Djinguereber Mosque.

This mosque was built in the year 1327 by Mansa Musa, an emperor of Mali who is still called the richest man who ever lived! When he went on Hajj to Makkah, he gave away so much gold along the way that the price of gold dropped in Egypt for years.

The mosque is special because it is made entirely of MUD! Yes — mud bricks mixed with palm wood and straw, smoothed flat. Every spring, the people of Timbuktu come together to add a fresh layer of mud and keep the walls strong. It is almost 700 years old and still standing.

Around the mosque grew a huge city of scholars. There were 25,000 students studying Qur'an, science, and astronomy at one time. The libraries of Timbuktu still hold hundreds of thousands of handwritten old Islamic books.