Fatima al-Fihriya

Fatima bint Muhammad al-Fihriya al-Qurashiyya , known in shorter form as Fatima al-Fihriya or Fatima al-Fihri, was an Arab woman who is credited with founding the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque in 857–859 CE in Fez, Morocco. She is also known as ("Mother of the Children"). Al-Fihriya died around 880 CE.' The al-Qarawiyyin Mosque subsequently developed into a teaching institution, which became the modern University of al-Qarawiyyin in 1963. Her story is told by Ibn Abi Zar' (d. between 1310 and 1320) in The Garden of Pages (Rawd al-Qirtas)'' as founder of the mosque. Since she was first mentioned many centuries after her death, her story has been hard to substantiate and some modern historians doubt her existence. She is said to have been the daughter of a wealthy merchant. When Muhammad al-Fihri died, his daughter Fatima inherited his wealth. The mosque went on to become the most important congregational mosque in Fez and one of the foremost intellectual centers in Islamic North Africa.

According to the story reported by Ibn Abi Zar', Fatima did not participate in commerce herself and wished to devote the fortune she inherited from her father to a pious act. She therefore purchased a property in the center of Fez at high cost, where she laid the foundations for the mosque on the first day of Ramadan in the year 245 of the Islamic calendar (859 CE). Fatima fasted until the project's completion, after which she went inside and prayed to God, thanking him for his blessings.

According to the same tradition, Fatima's sister, Mariam, also founded a similar mosque in the district across the river around the same time (859–60), with help from local Andalusian families, which became known as the al-Andalusiyyin Mosque (Mosque of the Andalusians).

Historicity 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. Ibn Abi Zar is also judged by contemporary historians to be a relatively unreliable source. 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. 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. 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."