The Kairouan Synagogue ( he, בית הכנסת של קירואן) is a former Tunisian

synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...

located in

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 , ...

History

The city of

had a large Jewish community, which was formed when the city was founded. Kairouan is indeed the seat of the yeshiva of Kairouan, considered as the first important talmudic academy in

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

and which was closely linked to the yeshivot of Babylonia. However, the community left Kairouan for other towns in Tunisia following its expulsion by 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 mid 1100s, after many Jews who refused to convert to Islam were killed. Under the dominance of the

Hafsid dynasty The Hafsids ( ar, الحفصيون ) were a Sunni Muslim dynasty of Berber descentC. Magbaily Fyle, ''Introduction to the History of African Civilization: Precolonial Africa'', (University Press of America, 1999), 84. who ruled Ifriqiya (western ...

in the late 1200s, the situation of the Jews in Kairouan improved notably, but it did not have the same splendor of its golden age.The Jewish Community of Tunis

Beit Hatfutsot ANU - Museum of the Jewish People, formerly the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, is located in Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – � ...

The Jewish community of Kairouan was formed again during the

French Protectorate of Tunisia The French protectorate of Tunisia (french: Protectorat français de Tunisie; ar, الحماية الفرنسية في تونس '), commonly referred to as simply French Tunisia, was established in 1881, during the French colonial Empire era, ...

, and it was not until 1920 that the city returned to have its vibrant Jewish past with the inauguration of a new synagogue located on the Salah-Souissi street. Motivated by the desire to assert its presence, the city's Jewish community chose in 1910 to acquire a plot of land in the heart of the

hara Hara may refer to: Art and entertainment * Hara (band), a Romanian pop-band * ''Hara'' (film), a 2014 Kannada-language drama film * ''Hara'' (sculpture), a 1989 artwork by Deborah Butterfield * Goo Hara (1991-2019), South Korean idol singer ...

to build its main religious building. Around the 1970s, with the departure again of the Jewish community after the country's independence and the

Six-Day War The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states (primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, S ...

, the synagogue was made available by the Tunisian authorities in order to be used as a

madrasa Madrasa (, also , ; Arabic: مدرسة , pl. , ) is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, secular or religious (of any religion), whether for elementary instruction or higher learning. The word is variously transliterated '' ...

.L'ancienne synagogue de Kairouan va être restaurée

History

References

See also