Fatima al-Fihriya

Little is known about her personal life, except for what was recorded by 14th century historian Ibn Abi-Zar’.[9] Fatima was born around 800 AD in the town of Kairouan, in present-day Tunisia.[5] She is of Arab Qurayshi descent, hence the nisba "al-Qurashiyya", 'the Qurayshi one'. Her family was part of a large migration to Fez from Kairouan. Although her family did not start out wealthy, her father, Mohammed al-Fihri, became a successful merchant.[5] When he died, this wealth was inherited by Fatima, and her sister Maryam. It is with this money that they went on to leave their legacy. Al-Fihriya was married, but both her husband and father died shortly after the wedding. Her father left his wealth to both Fatima and her sister, his only children. She and her sister Maryam were well-educated and studied the Islamic jurisprudence Fiqh and the Hadith, or the records of Prophet Muhammed.[6] Both went on to found mosques in Fes: Fatima founded Al-Qarawiyyin and Maryam founded the Al-Andalusiyyin Mosque.[12] This idea was spurred on by the fact that due to all the Muslims fleeing like Fatima and her family, they were all gathering immigrants that were devout worshippers keen on learning and studying their faith. With as many immigrants as there were, there was overcrowding and not enough space, resources, or teachers to accommodate them.

The historicity of this story has been questioned by some modern historians who see the symmetry of two sisters founding the two most famous mosques of Fes as too convenient and likely originating from legend.[10][9][11] Ibn Abi Zar is also judged by contemporary historians to be a relatively unreliable source.[9] Historian Roger Le Tourneau doubts the truth of the traditional account of Fatima building the Qarawiyyin mosque and her sister Maryam building the Andalusiyyin Mosque. He notes that the perfect parallelism of two sisters and two mosques is too good to be true, and likely a pious legend.[10] Jonathan Bloom, a scholar of Islamic architecture, also notes the unlikelihood of the parallelisms. He states that the traditional story of the founding of the mosque belongs more to myth than to academic history and points out that no part of the mosque today is older than the tenth century.[11]

One of the biggest challenges to the traditional story is a foundation inscription that was rediscovered during renovations to the mosque in the 20th century, previously hidden under layers of plaster for centuries. This inscription, carved onto cedar wood panels and written in a Kufic script very similar to foundation inscriptions in 9th-century Tunisia, was found on a wall above the probable site of the mosque's original mihrab (prior to the building's later expansions). The inscription, recorded and deciphered by Gaston Deverdun, proclaims the foundation of "this mosque" (Arabic: "هذا المسجد") by Dawud ibn Idris (a son of Idris II who governed this region of Morocco at the time) in Dhu al-Qadah 263 AH (July–August of 877 CE).[13] Deverdun suggested the inscription may have come from another unidentified mosque and was moved here at a later period (probably 15th or 16th century) when the veneration of the Idrisids was resurgent in Fes and such relics would have held enough religious significance to be reused in this way.[13] However, scholar Chafik Benchekroun argued more recently that a more likely explanation is that this inscription is the original foundation inscription of the Qarawiyyin Mosque itself and that it might have been covered up in the 12th century just before the arrival of the Almohads in the city.[9] Based on this evidence and on the many doubts about Ibn Abi Zar's narrative, he argues that Fatima al-Fihriya is quite possibly a legendary figure rather than a historical one.[9]

According to the widely circulated narrative, the school linked with al-Qarawiyyin ultimately became the focal point of the present-day University of al-Qarawiyyin. The assertion that the university was founded by Fatima al-Fihri alongside the mosque is shrouded in myth rather than reality.[14] The university library, linked to Fatima's story, was restored and reopened in 2016, gaining attention from influential sources such as The Guardian, Smithsonian, TED, and Quartz that claimed that the library was the world's oldest continuously operating library, and that it was founded by Fatima herself. According to Ian D. Morris, a historian of early Islamic societies, there is no empirical evidence to support claims that Fatima founded the library.[15] The lack of historical sources and consultation with historians by commentators, including think-tanks, NGOs, social scientists, journalists, and bloggers, has resulted in numerous "sourceless, baseless" iterations of the Fatima story. As the story is useful to present-day discourses about women and sciences in Islamic history, Morris concludes that the speculation repeated by modern writers "says more about the current value of Fatima as a political symbol than about the historical person herself."[15]