Hombori is a small town and rural commune in the Cercle of Douentza in the Mopti Region of

Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali ...

. The commune contains 25 villages and in the 2009 census had a population of 23,099. The town lies just to the north of the

Hombori Tondo Mount Hombori (Hombori Tondo) is a mountain in Mali's Mopti Region, near the town of Hombori. At 1,155 meters, it is the highest point in Mali. Biodiversity Mount Hombori is an important location for biodiversity in the Sahel, with 150 diff ...

mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by ...

on the R15 highway linking

Mopti Mopti ( Bambara: ߡߏߕߌ tr. Moti) is a town and an urban commune in the Inner Niger Delta region of Mali. The town is the capital of the Mopti Cercle and the Mopti Region. Situated 630 km northeast of Bamako, the town lies at the conflue ...

and

Gao Gao , or Gawgaw/Kawkaw, is a city in Mali and the capital of the Gao Region. The city is located on the River Niger, east-southeast of Timbuktu on the left bank at the junction with the Tilemsi valley. For much of its history Gao was an impor ...

Humburi Senni Songhay Humburi Senni, or Central Songhay, is a variety of Southern Songhai spoken in the Hombori region, straddling the Burkina–Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄� ...

and

Fulfulde Fula ,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh also known as Fulani or Fulah (, , ; Adlam: , , ), is a Senegambian language spoken by around 30 million people as a set of various dialects in a continuum that stre ...

are spoken in Hombori. There is a large Tuesday weekly market in the town.

Climate

Hombori lies on the border between a

hot arid climate The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk''), is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in desert ...

(

Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Bernd Köppen (born 1951), German pianist and composer * Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan * Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author and ...

''BWh'') and a

hot semi-arid climate A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi-ar ...

(''BSh''). Almost all the rainfall occurs between late June and the middle of September.. The mean annual rainfall in the period 1950 to 2007 was but there are large year-to-year variations. The mean air temperature is with the highest average occurring during May afternoons () and the lowest during January mornings (). The provision of drinking water in the commune is difficult as there is no continuous aquifer which can be tapped by deep wells.

Sites and fame

The town is known for its

vernacular architecture Vernacular architecture is building done outside any academic tradition, and without professional guidance. This category encompasses a wide range and variety of building types, with differing methods of construction, from around the world, bo ...

of rock-built houses with narrow alleyways and tunnels. The area around Hombori features

rock formation A rock formation is an isolated, scenic, or spectacular surface rock outcrop. Rock formations are usually the result of weathering and erosion sculpting the existing rock. The term ''rock formation'' can also refer to specific sediment ...

s similar in appearance to those in the more well known

Monument Valley Monument Valley ( nv, Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii, , meaning ''valley of the rocks'') is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of sandstone buttes, the largest reaching above the valley floor. It is located on the Utah-Arizona s ...

and includes the Needles of Gami, a popular

rock climbing Rock climbing is a sport in which participants climb up, across, or down natural rock formations. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a usually pre-defined route without falling. Rock climbing is a physically and ...

location.

Mount Hombori Mount Hombori (Hombori Tondo) is a mountain in Mali's Mopti Region, near the town of Hombori. At 1,155 meters, it is the highest point in Mali. Biodiversity Mount Hombori is an important location for biodiversity in the Sahel, with 150 diff ...

, Mali's highest point at 1153 meters, is nearby.

History

Hombori is an ancient town of the

Dogon people The Dogon are an ethnic group indigenous to the central plateau region of Mali, in West Africa, south of the Niger River, Niger bend, near the city of Bandiagara, and in Burkina Faso. The population numbers between 400,000 and 800,000. They spe ...

; its exact age is unknown. After the invasion of the Moroccan

Saadi dynasty The Saadi Sultanate (also rendered in English as Sa'di, Sa'did, Sa'dian, or Saadian; ar, السعديون, translit=as-saʿdiyyūn) was a state which ruled present-day Morocco and parts of West Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was l ...

in 1591, one part of the royal family of

established themselves in Hombori. The Songhai, now the majority population, later followed the royal refugees to this area. Hand der Fatima

Hombori remains a focus of

Songhai Empire The Songhai Empire (also transliterated as Songhay) was a state that dominated the western Sahel/Sudan in the 15th and 16th century. At its peak, it was one of the largest states in African history. The state is known by its historiographical ...

traditions but was also a strategic point for the conquest of southern Mali by the Songhai successor states. Those local villages deeper in the hills (for example Tabi, 30 km away) were never conquered or directly colonised, and retain their traditional cultures. The Songhai leadership were largely coopted by the French Colonial administration upon their arrival around 1900, while much of the Dogon community fled to nearby mountains, a process that had earlier begun to escape

Moorish The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinct or se ...

slave raids. The religion of the community is Islam by a vast majority.

Sufism Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, r ...

and

Shiism Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, most ...

are the dominant belief systems in the area. Some sequences of Souleymane Cissé (film director), Souleymane Cissé's film, ''Yeelen'', were shot in Hombori.

References

External links

*. *. * Project Hombori
/span> {{Communes of the Mopti Region Communes of Mopti Region