Zaytuna Mosque

Al-Zaytuna Mosque (Arabic: جامع الزيتونة‎, literally meaning the Mosque of Olive) is a major mosque in Tunis.

The mosque is the oldest in the Capital of Tunisia and covers an area of 5,000 square metres (1.2 acres) with nine entrances. It has 160 authentic columns brought originally from the ruins of the old city of Carthage. The mosque is known to host one of the first and greatest University in the history of Islam. Many Muslim scholars were graduated from the Al-Zaytuna for over a thousand years. From Ibn 'Arafa, one of the greatest scholars of Islam, Imam Maziri, the great traditionalist and jurist to the famous Tunisian poet Aboul-Qacem Echebbi and countless others all taught there.

History

Al-Zaytuna was the second mosque to be built in Ifriqiya and the Maghreb region after the Mosque of Uqba in Al-Kairouan. The exact date of building varies according to source. Ibn Khaldun and Al-Bakri wrote that it was built in 116 Hijri (731 C.E.) by Obeid-Allah Ibn Al-Habhab. A second source states that the Umayyad Hisham Ibn Abdel-Malek ordered the building while Ahmed In Abu Diyaf and Ibn Abi Dinar attributed the order to Hassan Ibnu-Noauman who led the conquest of Tunis and Carthage. Most scholars agreed that the third possibility is the strongest by evidence as it is unlikely that the city of Tunis remained a long time without mosque after its conquest in 79 Hijri. Thus the closest date is 84 Hijri (703 C.E) and what Al-Habhab did was in fact enlarging the mosque and improving its architecture.

Scholarship and the University

For centuries, Al-Qayrawan was the early center of learning and intellectual pursuits in Tunisia and North Africa in General. But starting from the 13th century, Tunis became the capital of Ifriqiya under the Hafisid dynasty. This shift in power helped al-Zaytuna to flourish and become one of the major centers of Islamic learning, and Ibn Khaldun, the first social historian in history was one of its products. The flourishing university attracted students and men of learning from all parts of the known world at the time. Along theology; mainly the Qur'an, the university taught jurisprudence, history, grammar, science and medicine. When it comes to books and libraries, Al-Zaytuna libraries were the richest among North African counterparts. It had several collections totaling in the tens of thousands of books, one of its libraries, al-Abdaliyah included a large collection of rare and unique manuscripts. The manuscripts covered almost all subjects and sciences, including grammar, logic, documentations, etiquette of research, cosmology, arithmetic, geometry, minerals, vocational training etc.

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