Bear with me for a single paragraph while I give a thumb-nail sketch of Kairouan’s history, which is the history of Arab rule in North Africa. Twelve years, then, after the camel-driver of Mecca who became the Prophet had gone to join the houris in the Moslem paradise, his son-in-law Othman ibn Affan (his son-in-law twice over, in fact, for he had married two of Mohammed’s daughters) was elected Khalifa, or Successor. To him fell the congenial task of carrying on the work of invasion and conquest which had been prosecuted with such success by the preceding khalifas, Abou Bekr and Omar, who, having subjugated the decaying empires of Byzantium and Persia, had turned their attention to the Maghreb—“the West.” When, in 644, Othman assumed the green mantle of the Prophet, Egypt had already been conquered by the Arab armies under Amr ibn al Asi, who, by way of celebrating his victory, destroyed the Alexandrine library, which contained the finest collection of books and manuscripts in the world. He gave as a reason for this utterly inexcusable act of vandalism—an act which at one stroke wiped out unique and authentic records of the ancient world covering many hundreds of years—the naïve explanation, “If these books contradict the Koran, they are false; if they agree with it, they are useless.” In the year of Othman’s succession, Amr ibn al Asi occupied Tripolitania, and three years later the Arab hosts poured through the south of Tunisia into Ifrikya and drove out the Byzantines. The administration of the new province was intrusted by the khalifa to that fiercest of all Moslem warriors, Okba ibn Nafi, better known as Sidi Okba, who, in the year 670, founded the city of Kairouan, which became in time the capital of all the Moslem possessions in the Maghreb, and, by virtue of the sanctity conferred upon the place by the saints who were buried there, a religious focus which drew pilgrims all the way from Egypt to Morocco. By getting an early start from Tunis, one can lunch at Kairouan, spend the afternoon in visiting the principal mosques, and sleep that night in the really comfortable hostelry at Sousse. For the casual traveler this is perhaps the best plan, for the accommodations at Kairouan, though tolerable enough, are remarkable neither for cleanliness nor comfort, the Hôtel Splendide—named with a singular lack of appropriateness—being one of those cold, gloomy little hotels, so common in North Africa, where the sheets, table-cloths, and napkins are always damp, and where, between courses, the guest produces a fictitious warmth by sitting on his hands.