Fatima al-Fihriya

[6] According to Ibn Abi Zar', the father was named Muhammad al-Fihri al-Qayrawani and he came to Fez as part of a larger migration of families from Kairouan during the early Idrisid period.

[15] According to the story reported by Ibn Abi Zar', Fatima did not participate in commerce herself and wished to devote the fortune she inherited from her father to a pious act.

She therefore purchased a property in the center of Fez at high cost, where she laid the foundations for the mosque on the first day of Ramadan in the year 245 of the Islamic calendar (859 CE).

[12] All the materials for the mosque are said to have been quarried on-site during construction and water was drawn from a well also dug directly on the site, so that no doubt could be cast on the legitimate origins of the resources used for the project.

[20] Deverdun suggested the inscription may have come from another unidentified mosque and was moved here at a later period (probably 15th or 16th century) when the veneration of the Idrisids was resurgent in Fes and such relics would have held enough religious significance to be reused in this way.

[9] Based on this evidence and on the many doubts about Ibn Abi Zar's narrative, he argues that Fatima al-Fihriya is quite possibly a legendary figure rather than a historical one.

[22] The lack of historical sources and consultation with historians by commentators, including think-tanks, NGOs, social scientists, journalists, and bloggers, has resulted in numerous "sourceless, baseless" iterations of the Fatima story.

As the story is useful to present-day discourses about women and sciences in Islamic history, Morris concludes that the speculation repeated by modern writers "says more about the current value of Fatima as a political symbol than about the historical person herself.