Fatima al-Fihri
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Fatima bint Muhammad al-Fihri al-Quraysh ( ar, فاطمة بنت محمد الفهري القرشية) was an
Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
woman who is credited with founding the al-Qarawiyyin mosque in 857–859 AD in
Fez Fez most often refers to: * Fez (hat), a type of felt hat commonly worn in the Ottoman Empire * Fez, Morocco (or Fes), the second largest city of Morocco Fez or FEZ may also refer to: Media * ''Fez'' (Frank Stella), a 1964 painting by the moder ...
,
Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...
. She is also known as "Umm al-Banayn". Al-Fihri died around 880 AD. The Al-Qarawiyyin mosque subsequently developed into a teaching institution, which became the University of al-Qarawiyyin in 1963. Her story is told by Ibn Abi Zar' (d. between 1310 and 1320) in '' The Garden of Pages (Rawd al-Qirtas)'' as founding the Qarawiyyin Mosque. Since she was first mentioned many centuries after her death, her story has been hard to substantiate and some modern historians doubt she ever existed.


Life


Story according to traditional accounts

Little is known about her personal life, except for what was recorded by 14th century historian Ibn Abi-Zar’. Fatima was born around 800 AD in the town 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 ...
, in present-day
Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...
. She is of
Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
Qurayshi descent, hence the
nisba The Arabic word nisba (; also transcribed as ''nisbah'' or ''nisbat'') may refer to: * Nisba, a suffix used to form adjectives in Arabic grammar, or the adjective resulting from this formation **comparatively, in Afro-Asiatic: see Afroasiatic_lang ...
"al-Qurashiyya", 'the Qurayshi one'. Her family was part of a large migration to Fez from Kairouan. Although her family did not start out wealthy, her father, Mohammed al-Fihri, became a successful merchant. When he died, this wealth was inherited by Fatima, and her sister Maryam. It is with this money that they went on to leave their legacy. 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 the Al-Andalusiyyin Mosque. This idea was spurred on by the fact that due to all the Muslims fleeing like Fatima and her family, they were all gathering immigrants that were devout worshippers keen on learning and studying their faith. With as many immigrants as there were, there was overcrowding and not enough space, resources, or teachers to accommodate them.


Historicity

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. Historian Roger Le Tourneau doubts the truth of the traditional account of Fatima building the Qarawiyyin mosque and her sister Maryam building the Andalusiyyin Mosque. He notes that the perfect parallelism of two sisters and two mosques is too good to be true, and likely a pious legend.
Jonathan Bloom Jonathan Max Bloom (born April 7, 1950) is an American art historian and educator. Bloom has served as the dual Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College, along with his wife, Sheila Blair. Career Bl ...
, a scholar of Islamic architecture, also notes the unlikelihood of the parallelisms. He states that the traditional story of the founding of the mosque belongs more "to the realm of traditional collective imagination that the discipline of history" and points out that no part of the mosque is older than the tenth century. One of the biggest challenges to the traditional 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 Kufic script () is a style of Arabic script that gained prominence early on as a preferred script for Quran transcription and architectural decoration, and it has since become a reference and an archetype for a number of other Arabic scripts. It ...
very similar to foundation inscriptions in 9th-century
Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...
, was found on a wall above the probable site of the mosque's original ''
mihrab Mihrab ( ar, محراب, ', pl. ') is a niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the ''qibla'', the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca towards which Muslims should face when praying. The wall in which a ''mihrab'' appears is thus the "qibla w ...
'' (prior to the building's later expansions). The inscription, recorded and deciphered by Gaston Deverdun, proclaims the foundation of "this mosque" () by Dawud ibn Idris (a son of
Idris II Idris bin Idris ( ar, إدريس بن إدريس) known as Idris II ( ar, إدريس الثاني) (August 791 – August 828), was the son of Idris I, the founder of the Idrisid dynasty in Morocco. He was born in Walīlī two months after the de ...
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, scholar 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 The Almohad Caliphate (; ar, خِلَافَةُ ٱلْمُوَحِّدِينَ or or from ar, ٱلْمُوَحِّدُونَ, translit=al-Muwaḥḥidūn, lit=those who profess the unity of God) was a North African Berber Muslim empire fo ...
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.


Founding of Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque

According to Ibn Abi Zar', Fatima used the money inherited from her father to build the Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque, named for the immigrants from her city. When Fatima's community outgrew the mosque, she purchased a mosque built around 845 AD under the supervision of King Yahya ibn Muhammad and rebuilt it, doubling its size. The construction project was supervised by Fatima herself. As Tunisian historian Hassan Hosni Abdelwahab noted in his book ''Famous Tunisian Women:'' "She committed to only using the land she had purchased. She dug deep into the land, unearthing yellow sand, plaster, and stone to use, so as not to draw suspicion from others
or using too many resources Or or OR may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television * "O.R.", a 1974 episode of M*A*S*H * Or (My Treasure), a 2004 movie from Israel (''Or'' means "light" in Hebrew) Music * ''Or'' (album), a 2002 album by Golden Boy with Miss ...
. The mosque took 18 years to construct. According to Moroccan historian
Abdelhadi Tazi Abdelhadi Tazi (June 15, 1921 – April 2, 2015) was a scholar, writer, historian and former Moroccan ambassador in various countries. Early life Tazi was born in Fes, Morocco, and attended primary and secondary studies in his hometown. Sinc ...
, Al-Fihri fasted until the project's completion. When it was finished, she went inside and prayed to God, thanking him for his blessings. She named it after the immigrants from her hometown of Kairouan. According to tradition, Fatima's sister, Mariam, also founded a similar mosque in the district across the river around the same time (859–60), with help from local
Andalusian Andalusia is a region in Spain. Andalusian may also refer to: Animals *Andalusian chicken, a type of chicken *Andalusian donkey, breed of donkey *Andalusian hemipode, a buttonquail, one of a small family of birds *Andalusian horse, a breed of ho ...
families, which became known as the Al-Andalusiyyin Mosque (Mosque of the Andalusians).


References


Further reading

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Al-Fihri, Fatima 9th-century Arabs People from Fez, Morocco People from Kairouan 880 deaths University of al-Qarawiyyin 9th-century women Fihrids 9th-century people from the Abbasid Caliphate