Al Omarya School
It is a complex of three Islamic schools: the Muhaddith School, the Al-Jawliyya School, and the Al-Subbiyya School.
The Omariya school is located in the northern corridor of Al-Aqsa Mosque, close to Bab al-Ghawanmeh. It is bordered on the south by Al-Aqsa Mosque, and on the north by the public road called the Mujahideen Road (or Al-Saraya in the past and the “Way of Pain” at present). Affiliated to the Royal School.
It was named after the Omari conquest of the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, as it was stated in some narrations that he entered Al-Aqsa from the northern side after he Companions in the plain of the watchful.
It is a rectangular building from east to west, with a length of 95 m and a width of 55 m. This rectangle consists of several buildings from different historical periods. It is composed of the following:
a- the ground floor: it is the old high buildings and water channels adjacent to the rock on which these buildings were erected.
B- The first floor: it has hallways, 32 rooms, and two courtyards.
c- the second floor: it has 25 rooms and two courtyards.
The school's area is estimated at about 8 dunums, and it includes the following three schools:
First: The Modernist School
It starts from the western corner next to the minaret (Bab al-Ghawanmeh), and it consists of two floors, each floor has five rooms. The lower floor is a mosque.
Izz al-Din Abu Muhammad Abd al-Aziz al-Ajmi al-Ardabili established the Muhaddith school in 762 AH / 1360 AD. It overlooks Al-Aqsa Mosque and has a staircase that leads to To him, but it was recently closed, as this school was converted at some point into a military barracks.
Second: The Al-Jawli School
The founder and founder of the school is Prince Alamuddin Sanjar Al-Jawli, originally from Amed, Diyarbakir, and he was a pious scholar specializing in jurisprudence. Al-Shafi'i.
The school was established in 685 AH / 1286 AD during the Mamluk period, which is the period in which Sanjar was the ruler of Palestine and Gaza. There are no inscriptions on the building and it seems that they have been removed. The restoration of Al-Jawliyya to be used as a ruler for Jerusalem, and it was used during the Ottoman period as the seat of Ottoman rule until 1870 AD when the new Pasha moved to the Saraya, and it remained empty.
During the time of the British Mandate government, it was taken as a headquarters for the police, and in 1938 AD the Mujahideen took it as the headquarters for the holy jihad. /p>
Al-Jawliyya consists of a large iwan on the qibla side, with two rooms on either side of it, overlooking the mosque through five windows, and has facades of ablaq stone.
East of these three rooms, new buildings were erected belonging to the Omariya School, which is an elementary school opened in 1923. There is a rectangular yard north of the three rooms, which can be accessed from the north through the "Via Dolorosa."
There are rooms on the eastern, northern and western sides of the square, and at the time of the Crusader occupation, a room was added that was used as a church for the Knights Templar. And when Jerusalem was liberated, the Ayyubids restored it as a school and made it the seat of the Ayyubid leadership. One of the righteous people called Sheikh Derbas was buried there.
Third: The Sabian School
This school was established by the son of the deputy of the Sabian castle (Baniyas / Syria), Prince Alaeddin bin Ali bin Muhammad, in the year 800 AH / 1397 AD.
It occupies the eastern part of the Omariya school today and includes the hall and the buildings below it, and extends towards Al-Aqsa Mosque in what is called today the royal wing (upper floor), which was renewed in the British era by the Supreme Islamic Council, while The hall and the buildings below it have remained unchanged since the Mamluk period.
It had a great role in the intellectual and cultural field, and many endowments were endowed on it, and in the late Mamluk era it was used as a house for the prosecution, and in the early Turkish era it was used as a house for the ruler in the name of the Saraya, then it became a "Qishlaqa" ( Barracks or military housing) for the Ottoman army.
During the time of the British Mandate, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Saleh rented it from the Awqaf and used it as a school to teach children under the name of Rawdat Al-Maarif, and it remained so until 1938 AD, then the British seized it and turned it into a police station until 1948 AD.
After that it became the headquarters of the Arab Salvation Army, then the headquarters of the Jordanian Commander of Jerusalem, as a facility for several administrative departments at the beginning of the Jordanian era, and in 1952 it became a school again.