Qualla: Great Mosque of Sfax https://qualla.com/great-mosque-of-sfax en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:30 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/p/t/great-mosque-of-sfax-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Great Mosque of Sfax https://qualla.com/great-mosque-of-sfax Great Mosque of Sfax: Introduction https://qualla.com/great-mosque-of-sfax/ Photo credit Wael Ghabara, CC BY-SA 3.0. Look closely at the eastern facade of the Great Mosque of Sfax and you will find, set into the wall above a window, a marble panel carved with two peacocks facing each other against a background of foliate motifs. Above them runs a Greek inscription, partly chiseled away at some unknown date, that appears to invoke God, Christ, or the Virgin Mary. A Christian artwork, with figural imagery, embedded prominently on the exterior of a mosque. The incongruity is the point. This building has been accumulating contradictions and absorbing civilizations since the Aghlabid dynasty built it in the mid-ninth century, and it wears every one of them on its walls.

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Image: Wael Ghabara | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/p/t/great-mosque-of-sfax-wp/snpt-great-mosque-of-sfax-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Great Mosque of Sfax: Heart of the City, Heart of the Faith https://qualla.com/great-mosque-of-sfax/ Photo credit Josep Renalias Lohen11, CC BY 4.0. The mosque occupies the precise center of the old city of Sfax, a positioning that scholars have compared to the layout of Kufa, one of the earliest planned Islamic cities. From the moment of its construction, commissioned by the qadi Ali ibn Aslam al-Jabanyani, a student of the ...

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Image: Josep Renalias Lohen11 | CC BY 4.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/p/t/great-mosque-of-sfax-wp/snpt-great-mosque-of-sfax-heart-of-the-city-heart-of-the-faith.mp3 0:06 2 full Great Mosque of Sfax: Renovations That Rewrote the Plan https://qualla.com/great-mosque-of-sfax/ Photo credit Noomen9, CC BY-SA 4.0. The mosque that stands today is not the one the Aghlabids built. In the tenth century, the Zirids, vassals of the Fatimid caliphs, reduced the building's size by suppressing its western half, leaving the minaret stranded at the corner of the courtyard rather than at the center of...

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Image: Noomen9 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/p/t/great-mosque-of-sfax-wp/snpt-great-mosque-of-sfax-renovations-that-rewrote-the-plan.mp3 0:06 3 full Great Mosque of Sfax: A Minaret That Remembers Kairouan https://qualla.com/great-mosque-of-sfax/ Photo credit Houssem Abida, CC BY-SA 4.0. The minaret is the building's most distinctive feature, a thick cuboid tower roughly twenty-five meters tall that the Zirids built around the original, much smaller Aghlabid minaret. Its design consciously evokes the ninth-century minaret of the Great Mosque of Kairouan rather th...

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Image: Houssem Abida | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/p/t/great-mosque-of-sfax-wp/snpt-great-mosque-of-sfax-a-minaret-that-remembers-kairouan.mp3 0:06 4 full Great Mosque of Sfax: The Peacocks and the Prayer https://qualla.com/great-mosque-of-sfax/ Photo credit Youssefbensaad, CC BY-SA 4.0. The eastern facade remains the mosque's most enigmatic element. Decorative horseshoe-arch niches frame doors and windows, some containing Arabic inscriptions. Scholars including Lucien Golvin and Georges Marcais have attributed this facade to the Zirid period, though its unusual ...

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Image: Youssefbensaad | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/p/t/great-mosque-of-sfax-wp/snpt-great-mosque-of-sfax-the-peacocks-and-the-prayer.mp3 0:06 5 full