By far the most interesting and important of all the religious edifices of Kairouan is the Djamaa Sidi Sahab, more usually referred to as the Mosque of the Barber. In it rests, within a richly decorated catafalque, the body of Sidi Sahab (the Companion), or, to give him his own sonorous name, Abou-Zamat Obeid Allah ibn Adam el Beloui, who earned his title by being one of the original ten disciples of Mohammed. Mortally wounded during the storming of Sbeitla in 656, he found his last resting-place in the soil of Kairouan. The frequently repeated assertion that El Beloui was the Prophet’s barber is absurd, as every student of Islamic history knows, for his nearest approach to the tonsorial trade was in shearing off the heads of unbelievers when he took part in the conquest of Egypt and the invasion of Ifrikya. Here is how the ridiculous legend arose. (It is Mr. Cyril Fletcher Grant who tells the story.) At the last solemn interview when the Prophet bade farewell to his Sahabs—his Knights of the Round Table—he gave El Beloui three hairs from his beard, that by them he might be recognized on the Day of Judgment. El Beloui directed that the precious relics should be buried with him, one to be laid on his lips, one on his heart, and one under his right arm, in token that his eloquence, his love, and his strength had all been devoted to the service of his adored master. And, as his reward for a loyalty which reached beyond the grave, he is to-day referred to as a barber! “But,” exclaimed the American flapper whom we met in the hotel in Kairouan and to whom I repeated the story of El Beloui, “I always supposed that the mosque was named after the Barber of Seville. I thought he was one of those Moors who were driven out of Spain by Queen Elizabeth. But history is so hard to remember, isn’t it?” The architectural glories of the Djamaa Sidi Sahab I shall leave to those who are better qualified than I am to describe them, and lead you straight through the bewildering series of tiled atria, colonnaded courts, and marble cloisters to the holy of holies itself, the shrine in which the Companion lies sleeping. He rests beneath a splendid catafalque covered, as is the Moslem custom, with magnificent shawls, brocades, and embroideries. Crossing the floor one’s slippered feet sink deeply into the soft mellow-toned carpets with which it is overlaid, and for the manufacture of which Kairouan is famous. The tomb is surrounded with an elaborately wrought iron grille on which tiny lamps, ostrich-eggs, glass balls, and little sacks of earth from the sacred soil of Mecca have been hung by the pious. From above droop, in folds of red and green, dozens of religious banners, sent by the rich and powerful from all corners of the Moslem world in tribute to this great Islamic hero.