Al-Zaytuna Mosque
| Great Mosque of El-Zituna | |
|---|---|
Interior courtyard and minaret
|
|
| Basic information | |
| Location |
 Tunis, Tunisia
|
| Affiliation | Islam |
| Status | Active |
| Architectural description | |
| Architect(s) | Fat'h-Allah under the direction of the Abbasid caliph, al-Nasir |
| Groundbreaking | 698 CE. |
| Specifications | |
| Minaret(s) | 1 |
| Minaret height | 43 meters (141 ft 1 in) |
Ez-Zitouna Mosque or Ezzitouna Mosque or Mosque of El-Zituna (Arabic: جامع الزيتونة, literally meaning the Mosque of Olive) is a major mosque in Tunis, Tunisia.
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 universities 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.
Ez-Zituna was the second mosque to be built in Ifriqiya and the Maghreb region after the Mosque of Uqba in Kairouan. The exact date of building varies according to source. Ibn Khaldun and El-Bakri wrote that it was built in 116 Hijri (731 C.E.) by Ubayd Allah ibn al-Habhab. A second source states that the Umayyad Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik ordered the building; however, Ahmed In Abu Diyaf and Ibn Abi Dinar attributed the order to Hasan ibn al-Nu'man 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 a mosque, after its conquest in 79 Hijri. Thus the closest date is 84 Hijri (703 CE), and what El-Habhab did was in fact enlarge the mosque and improve its architecture.
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