Although the Henchir-Tebel area had been settled by Berber, Phoenician and Greek communities, the town itself was founded by the Romans and they called it Luperciana.
There was a Jewish community in the Kairouan region during the Early Middle Ages and was considered a center of Talmudic learning.
The only bishop known from antiquity is Pelagian, who took part in the Council of Carthage (256) which was called by St. Cyprian to discuss the question of the Lapsi .
The bishopric effectively ceased to function with the arrival of Islam in the 7th century, but was re-established, under the French, in 1933 as a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church.
[8][9] Luperciana was centered in the heartland of the Donatist movement of the 4th century and during the Vandal Kingdom the official religion would have been Arianism.