This Tunisian city was founded by the Umayyads around 670 in the period of Caliph Mu’awiya. The city of Kairouan is the first Muslim city founded in the Maghreb. Kairouan played a leading role in the evolution of the history and the spread of Arab- Muslim civilization. It represents a testimony of this civilization’s first centuries and the development of its architecture and urbanism. It remained the capital and one of the most brilliant centers of Arab-Muslim culture in the Maghreb for five centuries.
The city of Kairouan includes the Great Mosque, with its marble and porphyry columns, and the 9th-century Mosque of the Three Gates. It includes as well the famous Medina of Kairouan which is still a real living museum of Arab Muslim art and architecture through its monuments (more than a hundred), its souks, houses and alleys which still remain a convincing testimony of its glorious past. The medina is made of juxtaposed dwellings divided into districts separated by narrow and winding streets; it is surrounded by ramparts which extend over more than three kilometers.
The Great Mosque of 135 meters by 80 meters consists of, to the south, a hypostyle prayer hall with seventeen naves supported by a multitude of marble and porphyry columns and, to the north, a vast paved courtyard lined with interrupted porticoes, in the axis on the small north side, by the massive form of a three-story square plan minaret.
