The First Muslim City of the Maghreb

Kairouan was founded in 670 as a garrison inland from the coast, chosen so that it could not be raided from the sea, and it became the base from which Muslim armies moved across North Africa and eventually into Iberia. The name simply means camp. Tradition surrounds the founding with a story of water miraculously discovered when a golden cup lost years earlier in Mecca surfaced in a spring at the site, which is the kind of account a new city acquires when it needs a charter.

The Great Mosque as it stands is essentially the rebuilding of 836. Its prayer hall is carried on columns taken from Roman and Byzantine buildings, its square minaret is the oldest still standing anywhere, and its interior holds a carved wooden pulpit of the ninth century made from imported teak, the oldest minbar surviving in place, together with a screened enclosure for the ruler. The forms worked out here, the square minaret and the wide hypostyle hall, set the pattern for mosque building across the Maghreb and al-Andalus.

The Aghlabid rulers also built the enormous open reservoirs outside the walls that made a city of that size possible in that landscape, which is a reminder that religious capitals are engineering problems before they are anything else.