- Kairouan
- Kairouan, her home city in what is now Tunisia, before she moved to Fez
- Fez
- the Moroccan city she moved to, where she built her mosque
- al-Qarawiyyin
- her mosque and school, which has carried learning for eleven centuries
- 859
- the year the mosque was built, under the Idrisid rulers
- UNESCO
- the world body that counts her school the oldest still-running university
- Ibn Khaldun
- the great historian of the Muqaddima, who studied at al-Qarawiyyin
- Ibn Rushd
- the philosopher whose memory the school and her city keep
- Maimonides
- the great Jewish philosopher the accounts remember beside her school and her city
- jurisprudence
- the science of law that was taught in her school
- astronomy
- the science of the heavens her students learned in the school
- 880
- the rough year of her death, after her achievement was complete
- the fast
- the fast she is remembered to have kept until the building was finished
