Raqqāda ( ar, رقّادة) is the site of the second capital of the 9th-century

dynasty A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family,''Oxford English Dictionary'', "dynasty, ''n''." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1897. usually in the context of a monarchical system, but sometimes also appearing in republics. A ...

Aghlabids The Aghlabids ( ar, الأغالبة) were an Arab dynasty of emirs from the Najdi tribe of Banu Tamim, who ruled Ifriqiya and parts of Southern Italy, Sicily, and possibly Sardinia, nominally on behalf of the Abbasid Caliph, for about a cen ...

, located about ten kilometers southwest of

Kairouan Kairouan (, ), also spelled El Qayrawān or Kairwan ( ar, ٱلْقَيْرَوَان, al-Qayrawān , aeb, script=Latn, Qeirwān ), is the capital of the Kairouan Governorate in Tunisia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city was founded by th ...

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

. The site now houses the National Museum of Islamic Art.

History

In 876, the ninth Aghlabid emir Ibrahim II ibn Ahmad (875-902) felt the need to change residence from

al-Abbasiyya Al-Abbasiyya ( ar, العباسية, al-Abbāsiyya, the Abbasid place), also known as Qasr al-Aghaliba (, 'the Aghlabid palaces') and al-Qasr al-Qadim (, 'the old palace'), was the first palace city and capital of the Aghlabid dynasty, which ruled I ...

to find a quiet place away from city noise. The new city is provided with several palaces and a mosque. The Aghlabids founded a factory of textile and paper to supply the House of Wisdom and Science (Bayt al-Hikma). At a time, Raqqada became even larger than Kairouan. In 909,

Abdullah al-Mahdi Billah Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh/ʿUbayd Allāh ibn al-Ḥusayn (), 873 – 4 March 934, better known by his regnal name al-Mahdi Billah, was the founder of the Isma'ili Fatimid Caliphate, the only major Shi'a caliphate in Islamic history, and the ...

, founder of the dynasty of the

Fatimids The Fatimid Caliphate was an Isma'ilism, Ismaili Shia Islam, Shi'a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD. Spanning a large area of North Africa, it ranged from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the ea ...

, who had moved to Kairouan, finally settled in Raqqada. He chose another capital and founded the town of

Mahdia Mahdia ( ar, المهدية ') is a Tunisian coastal city with 62,189 inhabitants, south of Monastir and southeast of Sousse. Mahdia is a provincial centre north of Sfax Sfax (; ar, صفاقس, Ṣafāqis ) is a city in Tunisia, located ...

. He proclaimed himself as the Imam in 909. The 7 July 969, the troops of the fourth Fatimid Caliph

Al-Muizz Lideenillah Abu Tamim Ma'ad al-Muizz li-Din Allah ( ar, ابو تميم معد المعزّ لدين الله, Abū Tamīm Maʿad al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh, Glorifier of the Religion of God; 26 September 932 – 19 December 975) was the fourth Fatimid calip ...

entered

Fustat Fusṭāṭ ( ar, الفُسطاط ''al-Fusṭāṭ''), also Al-Fusṭāṭ and Fosṭāṭ, was the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule, and the historical centre of modern Cairo. It was built adjacent to what is now known as Old Cairo by ...

in Egypt. The caliph founded a new city

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

, which was now to be the capital. Raqqada was demolished after the construction of Cairo. After 1960, a presidential palace was built on a site of twenty acres, some remains of which are still visible, it houses since 1986 the National Museum of Islamic Art Raqqada.Caroline Gaultier-Kurhan, ''Le patrimoine culturel africain'', éd. Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris, 2001, p. 151
/ref> Excavation campaigns initiated in the early 1960s on the site of ancient palaces have yielded abundant fragments of pottery to glaze, including shards and tiles with a metallic sheen with floral and plant ( vine leaf stylized) and carefully decorated cuts (cutting the bird dating from the second half of the 9th century).

National Museum of Islamic Art

The museum specializes in medieval Islamic art and includes works from Kairouan and Raqqada sites and Al-Mansuriya, a former princely city built in the Fatimid period. Admission is vested in the Great Mosque of Kairouan and presents a reproduction of its mihrab and a model of the monument.Musée des arts islamiques de Kairouan (Musée sans frontières)
/ref> The next room contains collections of ceramics dating from the times when Raqqada was occupied (9th and 10th centuries). Another room contains collections of

numismatic Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, medals and related objects. Specialists, known as numismatists, are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, but the discipline also includ ...

coins from different eras that illustrate the economic history of the

Ifriqiya Ifriqiya ( '), also known as al-Maghrib al-Adna ( ar, المغرب الأدنى), was a medieval historical region comprising today's Tunisia and eastern Algeria, and Tripolitania (today's western Libya). It included all of what had previously ...

for more than six centuries.Musée national d’art islamique de Raqqâda (Patrimoine de Tunisie)
/ref> The largest collection is that of Korans of exceptional calligraphy and a collection of manuscripts and pages belonging originally to the library of the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Among the gems of this collection, are the leaves of the Blue Koran dating from the 10th century.

References

{{Islamic museums Archaeological sites in Tunisia Museums in Tunisia Art museums and galleries in Tunisia Kairouan Governorate Islamic museums 876 establishments Populated places established in the 9th century 9th century in Ifriqiya Aghlabids