Islam's fourth holy city — aghlabid pools and almond pastries
Kairouan is the holiest city in North Africa and one of the founding cities of the Islamic world — established in 670 AD and home to the Great Mosque of Uqba, the oldest mosque on the continent. Seven pilgrimages to Kairouan were once considered equivalent to one Hajj to Mecca. Today it is famous for two things: the ancient medina's carpet souks and makroudh, deep-fried semolina pastries stuffed with date paste that are among the best street sweets anywhere.
Founded by Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi in 670 AD as the first Islamic city in the Maghreb, Kairouan served as the capital of the Aghlabid dynasty in the 9th century — a period of extraordinary architectural achievement that produced the Great Mosque and the Aghlabid Basins (enormous cisterns still intact today). The city was the intellectual centre of Islamic learning in the medieval Mediterranean, producing scholars in theology, medicine, and mathematics, and its carpet-weaving tradition dates back to the same era.