superb statue - njenne style - Mali (No reserve price)

Djenné-Jeno style. Terracotta architecture of Mali

Djenné, the capital of the Cercle of the same name, located 130 km southwest of the regional capital Mopti and about 570 km northeast of the national capital Bamako, is one of the oldest cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Inhabited since 250 BCE, the site of Djenné developed to become a market and an important city for trans-Saharan gold trade. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the city was a center of the diffusion of Islam. Characterized by an intensive and remarkable use of earth, particularly in its architecture, the city is famous for its mosque, its civil constructions, its monumental houses with façades carefully composed, and its urban fabric. Its traditional dwellings, adapted to seasonal floods, are built on small hills, the annual flood of the Niger and its tributaries being an essential natural phenomenon, both in the Djenné region and throughout the interior of the delta.