Woman Portrait 43 Fatima Al Fihri T-Shirt

Fatima al-Fihri, was an Arab woman who is credited with founding the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque in 857–859 AD in Fez, Morocco. She is also known as Umm al-Banīn ("Mother of the Children"). 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 she ever existed