480 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. LXVIII. 
front of the mosque of Yahia, called Tumbutu-bot- 
tema. 
Small as it is, the city is tolerably well inhabited, 
and almost all the houses are in good repair. There 
are about 980 clay houses, and a couple of hundred 
conical huts of matting, the latter, with a few ex- 
ceptions, constituting the outskirts of the town on 
the north and north-east sides, where a great deal of 
rubbish, which has been accumulating in the course 
of several centuries, is formed into conspicuous 
mounds. The clay houses are all of them built on 
the same principle as my own residence, which I 
have described, with the exception that the houses of 
the poorer people have only one courtyard, and have 
no upper room on the terrace. 
The only remarkable public buildings in the town 
are the three large mosques : the Jmgere-ber, built by 
Mansa Musa; the mosque of Sankore, built, at an 
early period, at the expense of a wealthy woman ; 
and the mosque Sidi Yahia, built at the expense of a 
kadhi of the town. There were three other mosques : 
that of Sidi Haj Mohammed, Msfd Belal, and that of 
Sidi el Bami. These mosques, and perhaps some 
little msid, or place of prayer, Caillie must have in- 
cluded when he speaks * of seven mosques. Besides 
these mosques, there are at present no distinguished 
public buildings in the town ; and of the royal palace, 
or Ma-dugu, wherein the kings of Songhay used to 
* Caillie, Travels to Timbuctoo, vol. ii. p. 56. 
