Shamma'iya Madrasa
Madrasa in Tunis, Tunisia
The Shamma'iya Madrasa (Arabic: مدرسة الشماعية, romanized: Madrasa ash-Shamma'iya) is a historic madrasa of the Medina of Tunis. Founded by the Hafsids in the 13th century, it was the first madrasa to be built in the Maghreb.
Location
It is located in Al Madrasa Ech Chamaiya alley near souk Echammaine, which later became Souk El Blaghgia.
History
The Shamma'iya Madrasa was the first madrasa to be built in the whole Maghreb region. It was constructed between 1236 and 1249 on the orders of the first Hafsid sultan Abu Zakariya Yahya. Ali ibn Mohamed ibn al-Kacem was the one in charge of construction works.
The madrasa had a very important role in the society. Most of its students later became imams of Al-Zaytuna Mosque.
The madrasa was renovated in later periods. It was restored by Shaykh Abu al-Rayth al-Kashash in the 17th century, and its current form is the result of a restoration ordered by Ahmed Khuja, who was Dey of Tunis between 1640 and 1647.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shamma'iya Madrasa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.