The white mosque at the top of Chenini's ridge is the village's most recognisable landmark, visible from the plain far below long before you reach the base of the hill. It is a simple whitewashed structure, as mosques in southern Tunisia tend to be, but its position — alone on the crest against the sky — gives it an otherworldly quality.
The mosque is dedicated to the Ashab al-Kahf, the Companions of the Cave, known in the Christian tradition as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. In the Quranic account, a group of young believers fled Roman persecution by hiding in a cave, where God caused them to sleep for some 300 years. The legend puts the cave in several places worldwide; Chenini is one of the sites associated with it. Non-Muslim visitors are generally welcome to enter the courtyard and, if decently dressed, the mosque itself. The interior is cool and quiet, and the views from the terrace are extraordinary — the Dahar escarpment dropping away toward the Sahara to the south.