Great Mosque of Mahdia

The Great Mosque was founded in 916 by the first Fatimid caliph, Abdullah al-Mahdi, and is one of the oldest mosques in North Africa. Its austerity is the point. There is no minaret, no decoration, just a vast white courtyard and a deep prayer hall — a deliberate statement against the showy religious architecture of Abbasid Baghdad.

Non-Muslims may enter the courtyard outside prayer times but not the prayer hall. The plain facade with its single arched gateway is the iconic image of Mahdia.

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The mosque was the prototype for North African religious architecture: a plain rectangular hall with no minaret, fronted by a monumental projecting entrance modelled on Roman triumphal arches. Almost everything you see today is a 1965 reconstruction — the original collapsed and was rebuilt stone by stone from old descriptions and photographs.