Tunisia: Kairouan – Great Mosque of Uqba

Kairouan is a city in central Tunisia, well off the main tourist path and is one of the holiest sites in Islam, often called the “fourth holiest city” after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. Founded around 670 AD, it served as a key center for Islamic learning, spreading Arab culture across all of North Africa. Its Great Mosque of Uqba, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a masterpiece of Aghlabid architecture, featuring a vast courtyard, a 9th-century minaret, and intricate tilework. The three-tiered minaret, standing about 31.5m tall, is one of the oldest surviving minarets in the world, built in 836 AD. Its fortress-like design influenced later North African minarets. The mosque is one of the oldest and most significant mosques in the Islamic world. As a center for Islamic scholarship, the mosque housed one of the earliest universities, and it remains a major pilgrimage site, with a tradition that seven visits to Kairouan equal one hajj to Mecca.