Fatima al-Fihri

Hello. My name is Fatima al-Fihri, and I want to share my story with you. I was born a very long time ago, around the year 800, in a city called Kairouan. I had a wonderful family, and my sister's name was Maryam. Our father, Mohammed al-Fihri, was a merchant, and he made sure we both had a good education. Learning new things was my favorite thing to do. When I was a young woman, my whole family moved to a busy and beautiful city in Morocco called Fes.

Life in Fes was very exciting. But after some time, my father and my husband passed away. It was a very sad time for me and my sister. Our father left us a lot of money, and I knew I wanted to use my share to do something special for our new city. Fes was growing quickly, and I saw that people needed a big, beautiful place to pray. More importantly, they needed a place to learn. I had an idea to build something that would help everyone in our community.

In the year 859, I started my big project. I decided to build a mosque, which is a place for prayer, but I wanted it to be a school, too. A school like this is sometimes called a 'madrasa.' I named it the Al-Qarawiyyin Mosque, after my old hometown of Kairouan. I watched over the builders every single day to make sure everything was perfect. Soon, it became a place where people could learn about everything from science and math to astronomy, which is the study of stars. It was a place for anyone who wanted to fill their mind with knowledge.

I lived a full life and passed away around the year 880. But my story doesn't end there. The school I built so long ago is still standing in Fes today. It grew and grew and is now known as the University of Al-Qarawiyyin. Many people say it is the oldest university in the world that has been open since the day it was built. I am so happy that my idea to help my community created a place where people have been learning and dreaming for more than a thousand years.