KairouanPrayer Times in Kairouan

Kairouan was founded in 670 CE by the Umayyad general Uqba ibn Nafi as the first Arab garrison and administrative center in North Africa, and served as the capital of Ifriqiya under the Aghlabids in the ninth century. Its Great Mosque of Kairouan (Mosque of Uqba), with its massive square-shafted minaret of around 836 CE, is among the oldest mosques and one of the earliest standing minarets in the Islamic world; its prayer hall preserves marble columns reused from Roman and Byzantine sites and one of the finest carved-wood maqsuras of the medieval Islamic Mediterranean. Kairouan was the principal center of early Maliki jurisprudence, where Sahnun ibn Sa'id compiled the Mudawwana around 850 CE, transmitting Imam Malik's teaching across North Africa. The city remains a regional pilgrimage destination, traditionally regarded by some as the fourth holiest city of Sunni Islam, with active Friday congregations and an annual mawlid commemorating the Prophet's birth.