Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Kamran Scot Aghaie, ed., The Women 

of Karbala: Ritual Performance and Symbolic Discourses 

in Modern Shii Islam (Austin: University of Texas Press, 

2005); Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and 

Public Piety in Lebanon, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 2006).

Zaytuna Mosque

The oldest and largest 

mosqUe

 in Tunis, t

Uni

-

sia

, the Zaytuna was completed by the Aghlabid 

amir Ibrahim bin Ahmad in the 860s, building 

upon the site of an earlier Umayyad mosque 

constructed in 732. Building materials, including 

some 200 marbled columns, were taken from the 

nearby ruins of Carthage. Over the centuries, the 

mosque was expanded by the Zirids, who built 

the galleries, the crypt, and the dome in the 10th 

century; the Hafsids, who constructed the library 

in the 15th century; and the Ottomans, who built 

the current minaret in the 19th century.

The Zaytuna mosque served as the central 

structure in the old medina of Tunis, around 

which 

sUqs

  and guild-shops were constructed. 

The mosque included a 

University

, which pro-

vided an advanced 

edUcation

 in the religious 

sciences and related subjects by some of the lead-

ing local 

Ulama

. Many well-known scholars and 

administrators of the premodern era studied at 

the Zaytuna, which became a focal point of debate 

between Westernizing reformers and traditional 

ulama in the 19th century. With the establishment 

of the French protectorate in 1881, the Zaytuna