An Old, Old Mosque

It’s Eid!!! Eid Mubarak! Selamat Hari Raya! 4 days off work! How nice? Now, let’s see what the wife has up her sleeves… Spring cleaning? Time for the annual curtains wash? Get the kids in shape for their exams? Some home maintenance maybe? But definitely more exercises and stretches to tax the poor ol’ bones of yours truly? Nah, just kidding, it’s good fitness fun, haha!


The Great Mosque of Kairouan (Mosque of Uqba), Kairouan, Tunisia

Anyway for Eid, here’re some photos of an old, old mosque, for your pleasure - the austere looking Great Mosque of Kairouan, aka the Mosque of Uqba in Tunisia. It was built in friggin AD 670, …let’s see, 1,350 years ago! It is one of the oldest places of worship in the Islamic world, and a model for the later mosques of the Maghreb (North West Africa – namely Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco). Here goes.


The mosque looks like a castle from the outside, with thick walls, buttresses and …cannons!








The streets around the great mosque are like something out of the Aladdin movie – Don’t believe me? Ask the kids. … HEY KIDS! BEHAVE!!!


The southern façade, Mosque of Uqba, Kairouan, Tunisia


Anu and the Minaret




Fooling around the walls of the Great Mosque, Kairouan

And here’re some photos of our journey between Sidi Bou Said to Kairouan…


The Zaghouan Aqueduct – from the car


I think this is Zaghouan Town


That, far off on the hill, should be Takrouna Village


Driving southwards past Takrouna, Tunisia

That’s all for now folks! Eid Al Fitr Mubarak! Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri! Happy Holidays!!!