Although everyone knows that the first library that was created was in Alexandria in the XNUMXrd century BC. Did you know that it was a woman who built the world's first library almost a thousand years later? Yes, it was a Muslim woman, specifically, Fatima Al-Fihri, who used all his part of his father's inheritance (he was a very rich and important merchant in the area) to create an entire knowledge center that housed a library, a university and a mosque, all in one place.
It happened in the A.D. 854 and has currently been restored by the architect Aziza Chaouni. According to the architect herself, Fátima Al-Fihri broke with the typical macho and old-fashioned cliché at that time: How does a XNUMXth century woman inherit that large amount of money, donate it and also spend a large part of her life supervising the construction of that center of knowledge?
Fatima Al-Fihri, when she planned this immense and cultural construction, she did not have in mind that this complex was only important for Morocco, but that it would be a great advance for everything Middle East.
The architect Aziza Chaouni, with dual Moroccan-Canadian nationality, began to restore this library in 2012, to which many things unite her: her great-grandfather studied in that library, she grew up in that town until she was 18 years old, but was never able to enter her because it was not open to the public.
Said library today conserves more than 4000 books, having most of them 1200 years. One of the "anecdotes" of the restoration project is that architecture had to deal with many sexist comments because it was not understood how they had not chosen a Moroccan architect instead of a woman for that work. According to her, the most gratifying thing is that the inhabitants of Fez can go to the library to study, among whom is her own son.