the _Imám_, interpreter and apostle of the Koran, has never found himself in the presence of a minister of the Gospel of Christ, Kairwán has been effectually closed against Christians from the time of its foundation.” The existence of the city sprang originally from the necessities of conquest. The Berbers of the first century adopted towards their invaders the same tactics as the Bedouins of to-day: they either submitted to or fled before the armies of Islam, but revolted as soon as the troops of the Caliph withdrew. Okhbah himself describes the _raison d’être_ of Kairwán: “When the Mussulman generals enter Africa, the inhabitants protect their lives and property by a profession of the faith of Islam. When our armies retire, they again fall into infidelity. We must therefore build a city which will serve as the camp and the ramparts of the faith of Muhammed.” Although the original site selected was abandoned for another two miles off during the temporary absence of its great founder, the first care of Okhbah on his return to Africa in A.D. 684, was to restore and enlarge his favourite city. Tradition associates with the original foundation of Kairwán a legend almost identical with those of St. Patrick and St. Hilda. At the word of Okhbah wild beasts and reptiles alike withdrew from its neighbourhood. The etymology of its name has been a matter of dispute. According to Shaw, Kairwán is only the equivalent of _Caravan_, a place of meeting; while others contend it was so called after Käyrawán or Cyrene, the capital of Cyrenaïca. The most plausible explanation is, that the name signifies simply _Kahira_ or victory. Kairwán is the Cairo of Tunis and its adjacent provinces. During the year of his return to power (A.D. 684), Okhbah carried the victorious banner of Islam to the shores of the Atlantic; but he never lived to return to the “camp and ramparts of the faith of the Prophet.” Slain in an ambush by a Berber king, he was buried thirty miles from Biskera in Algeria, where his tomb, covered by a comparatively humble _kouba_, is still the object of reverence and pilgrimage. Upon this subject Mr. Rae (the only European traveller who has even attempted anything like a complete survey of Kairwán) falls into a curious mistake. Speaking in his “Country of the Moors” (p. 237) of the Great Mosque of Kairwán, he describes it as “the shrine _and tomb_ of its founder, Okhbah Ibn Aghlab—the spot chosen, from its sanctity, as the last resting-place of the kings of Tunis.” Mosques are rarely if ever used as places of interment. The kings of Tunis sleep under the Green Cupola of the Turba, in the political capital of the Regency, and Okhbah the Victorious rests in the Algerian Sahara.