The eight Sudanese-style mosques locat­ed in Ten­grela, Kouto, Soroban­go, Sama­tigu­ila, Nam­bi­ra, Kong, and Kaouara are char­ac­ter­ized by earth­en con­struc­tion, pro­ject­ing frame­works, ver­ti­cal but­tress­es crowned with pot­tery or ostrich eggs, and high or low minarets in the form of a trun­cat­ed pyra­mid. They present an inter­pre­ta­tion of an archi­tec­tur­al style that orig­i­nat­ed between the 12th and 14th cen­turies in the city of Djenne, which was then part of the Mali Empire and whose pros­per­i­ty came from the trade of gold and salt across the Sahara to North Africa. It is espe­cial­ly from the 15th cen­tu­ry that this style spread south­wards, from the desert regions to the Sudanese savan­nah, adopt­ing low­er forms with stronger but­tress­es, to meet the require­ments of a more humid cli­mate. These mosques are the best pre­served of the twen­ty that have sur­vived in Cote d‘Ivoire, out of sev­er­al hun­dred that still exist­ed at the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry. The Sudanese style that char­ac­ter­izes these mosques, and which is unique to the savan­nah region of West Africa, devel­oped between the eleventh and nine­teenth cen­turies, when Islam­ic mer­chants and schol­ars spread south­ward from the Mali Empire, extend­ing the trans-Saha­ran trade routes into the wood­lands. The mosques are not only very impor­tant phys­i­cal evi­dence of the trans-Saha­ran trade that fos­tered the expan­sion of Islam and Islam­ic cul­ture, but are also a tan­gi­ble expres­sion of the fusion of two archi­tec­tur­al forms that have endured over time: the Islam­ic form prac­ticed by the Arab-Berbers and that of the indige­nous ani­mist com­mu­ni­ties.