Before its catastrophic destruction at the hands of the Banū Hilāl in 1057, Qayrawān was hailed as the unmatched metropolis of the Islamic West. In the eyes of its admirers, if there existed a city that matched theirs, that city was none but Baghdad. Qayrawān was adulated by its residents and extolled by its visitors. Both in poetry and prose, the city was movingly eulogized. Likewise, especially in the corpus of historiography and geographical and travel literature, Qayrawān was effusively praised. Mashriqi historian, geographer and traveler al-Yaʻqūbī (d.897) visited the city and was impressed by what he saw. The effusive praise for Aghlabid Qayrawān was enthusiastically shared by later Maghribi scholars. Famed al-Idrīsī (d.1165), Ibn Khaldūn (d.1406), and al-Saraqūsti (d.1143), and al-Wazzān (d.1554). Commenting on its pre-Hilali glory, al-Idrīsī, hailed Qayrawān as “the greatest city in the Islamic West,” and “the most populated, prosperous and thriving with the most perfect buildings.” As for its people, he extolled their love for virtue, tradition, loyalty, and moderation before commending their mastery (tafannun) of the best of sciences (maḥāsin al-ʻulūm). The effusive comments dramatically turns into elegiac/nostalgic statements as soon as al-Idrīsi discusses the Hilālī invasion of Qayrawān. What was once the most majestic metropolis of the Maghrib, al-Idrīsī deplorably comments, became nothing but “aṭlāl dārisa wa-athār ṭāmisa,” that is ““erased traces and obliterated ruins.”