Zaytuna mosque (Tunis, Tunisia)
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[1]. It has 160 authentic columns brought originally from the ruins of the old city of Carthage[2]. The mosque is known to host one of the first and greatest universities in the history of Islam[3]. 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
Al-Zaytuna was the second mosque to be built in Ifriqiya and the Maghreb region after the Mosque of Uqba in Al-Kairouan[4]. 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[2][4][6]. A second source states that the Umayyad Hisham Ibn Abdel-Malek ordered the building[4] while Ahmed In Abu Diyaf and Ibn Abi Dinar attributed the order to Hassan Ibnu-Noauman who led the conquest of Tunis and Carthage[4][6]. 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[2][4][6]. 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[4].
