page_title: Fatima al-Fihri
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Fatima al-Fihri / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Karaouine Mosque and University
context_page_description: Fatima bint Muhammad Al-Fihriya Al-Qurashiya was an Arab woman who is credited with founding the al-Qarawiyyin mosque in 859 CE in Fez, Morocco, from which developed the oldest existing continually operating madrasa in the world. In 1963, the madrasa became the University of al-Qarawiyyin. She is also known as "Umm al-Banayn". Al-Fihri died around 880 AD.
  Her story is told by Ibn Abi Zar' in The Garden of Pages as founding the Qarawiyyin Mosque. Since she was first mentioned many centuries after her death, her story has been hard to substantiate, and it has been speculated it might be ahistorical.
context_section_description: Fatima was born around 800 AD in the town of Kairouan, in present-day Tunisia. She is of Arab Qurayshi descent, hence the name "al-Qurashiyya", 'the Qurayshi one'. Her family was part of a large migration to Fes from Kairouan. Although her family did not start out wealthy, her father, Mohammed al-Fihri, became a successful merchant. Little is known about her personal life, except for what was recorded by 14th century historian Ibn Abi-Zar’. This may be partly due to the fact that the Al-Qarawiyyin's archives suffered a large fire in 1323. Al-Fihri was married, but both her husband and father died shortly after the wedding. Her father left his wealth to both Fatima and her sister, his only children. She and her sister Maryam were well-educated and studied the Islamic jurisprudence Fiqh and the Hadith, or the records of Prophet Muhammed. Both went on to found mosques in Fes: Fatima founded Al-Qarawiyyin and Maryam founded Al-Andalus.
  The historicity of this story has been questioned by some modern historians who see the symmetry of two sisters founding the two most famous mosques of Fes as too convenient and likely originating from legend. Ibn Abi Zar is also judged by contemporary historians to be a relatively unreliable source. Moreover, one of the biggest challenges to this story is a foundation inscription that was rediscovered during renovations to the mosque in the 20th century, previously hidden under layers of plaster for centuries. This inscription, carved onto cedar wood panels and written in a Kufic script very similar to foundation inscriptions in 9th-century Tunisia, was found on a wall above the probable site of the mosque's original mihrab (prior to the building's later expansions). The inscription, recorded and deciphered by Gaston Deverdun, proclaims the foundation of "this mosque" (Arabic: "هذا المسجد"‎) by Dawud ibn Idris (a son of Idris II who governed this region of Morocco at the time) in Dhu al-Qadah 263 AH (July-August of 877 CE). Deverdun suggested the inscription may have come from another unidentified mosque and was moved here at a later period (probably 15th or 16th century) when the veneration of the Idrisids was resurgent in Fes and such relics would have held enough religious significance to be reused in this way. However, Chafik Benchekroun argued more recently that a more likely explanation is that this inscription is the original foundation inscription of the Qarawiyyin Mosque itself and that it might have been covered up in the 12th century just before the arrival of the Almohads in the city. Based on this evidence and on the many doubts about Ibn Abi Zar's narrative, he argues that Fatima al-Fihri is quite possibly a legendary figure rather than a historical one.
caption: Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University
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