In the warming Sahara, this mosque has a blueprint for cool

Can a 500-year-old mosque, made almost entirely of mud bricks, offer a way to deal with climate change? In Agadez, a city in the heart of Niger that is often called the gateway to the Sahara, Amma Attouboul certainly thinks so.

Better known by the title Sarkin Magina (“King of the Builders”), Mr. Attouboul was appointed by the region’s sultanate to take care of the mosque, which consists of an 89-foot-tall minaret surrounded by several prayer chambers. Every two years or so, the entire structure is caked with a fresh layer of banco: a muddy mixture of water, soil, and straw that dries in open air. “These walls are exceptionally heavy,” Mr. Attouboul says as his wrinkled hands gently tap the thickset walls. “Because of this, sunlight struggles to penetrate. And inside the mosque, the chambers stay cool and comfortable.”

In the Sahel region, a semiarid belt of land stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, temperatures are expected to rise 1 1/2 times faster than the global average, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cool nights are becoming increasingly rare, and blazing-hot days are lasting longer. A revival of traditional mud-brick houses could help protect Agadez and its people, resident Abdourahman Ibrahim notes.

On the outskirts of town, Mr. Ibrahim is overseeing the construction of a residential compound entirely built out of mud bricks. “This is a modern site,” he says while laying row after row of the bricks, all freshly baked under the desert sun. “There’s electricity and a water connection. I think we should keep building our houses like this, for our culture and for the climate. ... We are still living here like our ancestors did. And hopefully, our children will do the same.”

For more visual storytelling that captures communities, traditions, and cultures around the globe, visit The World in Pictures.