The mosque, university and library Al Quaraouiyine was built in 857 on the Quairouanaise bank of Fez el-Bali by the rich heiress Tunisian Fatima Al Fihri during the reign of Idrissides.

The Quaraouiyine which is the first university in the Arab world (some say the world tout court), was the scientist and scholar of the Muslim civilization crossroads. Famous thinkers, intellectuals and scholars have stayed. One can quote the historian Ibn Khaldoun, the poet and writer Ibn Al Khatib, the philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd), the explorer and traveler Leo Africanus (the thinker Hassan), etc. The university hosted over 300 students taking courses taught by renowned professors at the time, and this in different disciplines such as notaries, justice, grammar, theology, astronomy, etc. From the tenth century, the university has a library of over 30,000 books, including 10,000 manuscripts.

Nowadays Quaraouiyine the world-renowned in the medina of Fez.

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