**Larabanga Mosque** is Ghana's oldest mosque and one of the most sacred and photographed buildings in West Africa — a whitewashed, Sudanese-style mud-and-stick structure in the small Gonja town of Larabanga, in the Savannah Region, just about 5 km from the gates of Mole National Park. **What it is.** Built in the Sudanese architectural style — a pyramidal, earth-plastered form with timber poles (toron) jutting from the walls that serve as permanent scaffolding for the annual re-plastering — Larabanga is often called the "Mecca of West Africa." It is traditionally dated to **1421**, which would make it the oldest extant mosque in Ghana and one of the oldest in the sub-region, predating the better-known mud mosques of Djenné and Timbuktu's Sankore in age of foundation. It has four entrances and a minaret, and its interior is a forest of thick wooden posts supporting the roof. **The legend.** Local tradition holds that a wandering Muslim trader named **Yidan Barimah Bramah** was directed by a dream to build the mosque on that exact spot. When he threw a spear and it landed where the mosque now stands, he began construction — and the building is said to have completed itself overnight. The same tradition credits him with planting the sacred baobab beside it, and with bringing the **Larabanga Quran** — an ancient manuscript kept in the town and treated as a protective relic. The mosque is guarded by the **Larabanga community**, who hold it as a shrine as much as a place of worship. **Why it matters.** Larabanga is the clearest surviving evidence of the trans-Saharan trade routes that carried Islam, scholarship and architecture into the savannah belt of what is now Ghana — long before the colonial era. It is a **UNESCO World Heritage tentative-listed** site (part of the "Trade and pilgrimage routes of the western Sudan" nomination) and a **Ghana Museums and Monuments Board** protected property. **Visiting it.** It sits on the road into **Mole National Park**, so most visitors combine the two — Mole for elephants, antelope and the famous walking safari, Larabanga for the mosque and the mystic stone. Practical notes: modest dress is required, women should cover their heads, and you should ask permission before entering or photographing. A small donation to the caretaker is customary. The best time to go is the dry season (roughly **November to April**), when the roads to Damongo and Mole are passable and the wildlife is concentrated at the waterholes. **The conservation problem.** Because it is built of mud, bat droppings, termites and rain have repeatedly threatened the structure; a controversial restoration in the 1970s and later repairs have altered some of the original fabric, and there have been long-running disputes between the community, the Monuments Board and outside funders over who controls and restores it. It remains, for now, standing — but it is a fragile monument. As the Akan say, *"Se wo were fi na wosan kofa a, yenkyi"* — there is no shame in returning to fetch what you left behind. Larabanga is exactly that: a piece of Ghana's deep past that the country keeps going back to, and a place worth the detour on any Mole trip.