Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
October 2000
The Inland Niger Delta is located between the Bani and Niger Rivers in present-day southwestern Mali. These waterways have provided the region with a fertile floodplain and a natural thoroughfare for trade, both of which helped secure the area’s central position in the economic, social, and urban histories of the western Sudan.
Jenne-jeno (“Old Jenne”; Djenne-jeno), site of the oldest known city of sub-Saharan Africa, was populated as early as 250 B.C. and expanded to become a major urban center by 850 A.D. Archaeologists have determined from slag deposits that the original inhabitants of Jenne-jeno worked iron from the earliest days of the site’s occupation. This iron industry is among the earliest known in sub-Saharan Africa, antedated only by that of the Nok culture.
In addition to its importance as an ironworking center, Jenne-jeno was the region’s first known significant trading crossroads. Food surpluses such as dried fish, staple grains, and oil were likely exchanged for items of trans-Saharan trade such as stones and salt. Abandoned by 1400, Jenne-jeno left behind tells (settlement mounds) containing the remains of a once-thriving city, including funerary pots and a multitude of buried statuary. Since the vast majority of the statues have been unearthed from sites without documentation or regard for their burial content, the age and significance of these objects is not well understood.
The town of Jenne (Djenne) was founded near Jenne-jeno between 800 and 1250 A.D. and grew to become an even more significant trans-Saharan trading center than its neighbor. By the fourteenth century, gold, kola, and slaves from the southern savanna, salt and manuscripts from the Sahara, and the staple foods of the Inland Niger Delta were bartered here in an extensive web of trade reaching as far as northern Africa and Europe. By the sixteenth century, Jenne had become one of the foremost market centers on the African continent.
Ideas as well as goods were exchanged at Jenne and, with its trading partner Timbuktu 220 miles to the north, the city became an important site of Islamic religion and scholarship. The city’s first Islamic king, Koi Konboro, constructed its first Great Mosque, of adobe, in the thirteenth century. Although the original structure no longer stands, a remarkable adobe mosque was rededicated in its place around 1906–7.
Because of its strategic location as a trading crossroads, the Inland Niger Delta has been contested and conquered by a succession of empires throughout its long history, including the Mali empire, the Songhai empire, the Bambara of the Ségou kingdom, the theocratic Fulani state of Cheikhou Amadou, the Tukulor empire, and finally the French in 1893. The country of Mali achieved independence from colonial rule on September 22, 1960.
Citation
Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Inland Niger Delta.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ind_1/hd_ind_1.htm (October 2000)
Further Reading
Bourgeois, Jean-Louis. "The History of the Great Mosque of Djenne." African Arts 20, no. 3 (May 1987), pp. 54–63, 90–91.
Phillips, Tom, ed. Africa: The Art of a Continent. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Prestel, 1995.
Prussin, Labelle. Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Additional Essays by Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “La Venta: Sacred Architecture.” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “La Venta: Stone Sculpture.” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Monte Albán.” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Monte Albán: Sacred Architecture.” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Monte Albán: Stone Sculpture.” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Teotihuacan: Mural Painting.” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Teotihuacan: Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon.” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Valdivia Figurines.” (October 2004)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Hopewell (1–400 A.D.).” (October 2002)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Indian Knoll (3000–2000 B.C.).” (October 2003)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Poverty Point (2000–1000 B.C.).” (October 2003)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “African Rock Art.” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “African Rock Art: Tassili-n-Ajjer (?8000 B.C.–?).” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “African Rock Art: The Coldstream Stone.” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Apollo 11 (ca. 25,500–23,500 B.C.) and Wonderwerk (ca. 8000 B.C.) Cave Stones.” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “The Monumental Stelae of Aksum (3rd–4th Century).” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Tikal.” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Tikal: Sacred Architecture.” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Tikal: Stone Sculpture.” (October 2001)
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- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Great Zimbabwe (11th–15th Century).” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Ife Pre-Pavement and Pavement Era (800–1000 A.D.).” (October 2001)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Foundations of Aksumite Civilization and Its Christian Legacy (1st–8th Century).” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Ife (from ca. 6th Century).” (originally published October 2000, last revised September 2014)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Lydenburg Heads (ca. 500 A.D.).” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Nok Terracottas (500 B.C.–200 A.D.).” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “The Empires of the Western Sudan.” (October 2000)
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- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Ancient American Jade.” (October 2001)
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- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “The Empires of the Western Sudan: Mali Empire.” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “The Empires of the Western Sudan: Songhai Empire.” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “The Trans-Saharan Gold Trade (7th–14th Century).” (October 2000)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Trade and the Spread of Islam in Africa.” (October 2001)
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- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Great Serpent Mound.” (October 2002)
- Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “Cave Sculpture from the Karawari.” (October 2003)
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Related Essays
- The Birth of Islam
- The Empires of the Western Sudan: Mali Empire
- The Empires of the Western Sudan: Songhai Empire
- Trade and the Spread of Islam in Africa
- The Trans-Saharan Gold Trade (7th–14th Century)
- African Rock Art
- African Rock Art of the Central Zone
- African Rock Art of the Northern Zone
- African Rock Art of the Southern Zone
- African Rock Art: Game Pass
- African Rock Art: Tassili-n-Ajjer (?8000 B.C.–?)
- African Rock Art: The Coldstream Stone
- Apollo 11 (ca. 25,500–23,500 B.C.) and Wonderwerk (ca. 8000 B.C.) Cave Stones
- Arts of the San People in Nomansland
- The Fulani/Fulbe People
- Ife (from ca. 6th Century)
- Ife Pre-Pavement and Pavement Era (800–1000 A.D.)
- Ife Terracottas (1000–1400 A.D.)
- Monumental Architecture of the Aksumite Empire
- The Monumental Stelae of Aksum (3rd–4th Century)
- Nok Terracottas (500 B.C.–200 A.D.)
- San Ethnography
Chronology
Map
Keywords
- 10th Century A.D.
- 11th Century A.D.
- 12th Century A.D.
- 13th Century A.D.
- 14th Century A.D.
- 15th Century A.D.
- 16th Century A.D.
- 17th Century A.D.
- 18th Century A.D.
- 19th Century A.D.
- 1st Century A.D.
- 1st Century B.C.
- 20th Century A.D.
- 21st Century A.D.
- 2nd Century A.D.
- 2nd Century B.C.
- 3rd Century A.D.
- 3rd Century B.C.
- 4th Century A.D.
- 5th Century A.D.
- 6th Century A.D.
- 7th Century A.D.
- 8th Century A.D.
- 9th Century A.D.
- Africa
- Architectural Element
- Architecture
- Bozo Art
- Death
- Europe
- Food
- Funerary Art
- Iron
- Islam
- Islamic Art
- Lower Niger Bronze Industry
- Mali
- Mosque
- Religious Art
- Ruler
- Trade
- Western Africa
- Western and Central Sudan