DIOULASSOBA MOSQUE

A remarkable construction, the very beautiful Dioulasso-Bâ mosque, called the old mosque because it is the first mosque in Bobo, is a vast Sudanese inspired building built in 1880. The building, which rests on buttress walls, is punctuated by a colonnade surmounted by kinds of pinnacles that protrude from the flat roof. The cone-shaped minarets are sifted with wooden reinforcements which, while being decorative, ensure the solidity of the structure and, as scaffolding, allow maintenance work to be carried out on the earthen building. The small metal buckets piled up at the entrance are used for ablutions prior to prayer. Friday, Good Friday for Muslims, is a good day to visit because you can see the practitioners go to worship and pray in front of the mosque, provided you exercise discretion. For the record, when, towards the end of the 19th century, King Tiéba attacked the city, the King of Sya asked Sakidi Sanou, a Muslim religious leader, to help him stop enemy armies. In return for his help, Sakidi Sanou asked the King of Sya for his cooperation in the construction of a mosque. Thus was concluded this agreement, which allowed both the king of Sya to defeat his enemy and the religious leader to consolidate Islam in Sya. This mosque of Dioulasso-Bâ would have been built on the site of an old animist temple. The two religions still coexist there in a peaceful way. This is how we can observe, in the square surrounding the religious building, the removal of masks. The mosque is entirely built in Banco.