The Great School – also known as the Hanafi School – is one of the major schools and the most important religious pillars in Jerusalem Occupied, and benefit from the endowments that many parties have stopped. It had a tangible role in the intellectual movement in the Holy Palestinian city.
She took over and taught a number of senior scholars, and continued to play her intellectual role for several centuries.
Site and establishment
The Great School is located in the northern region of Al -Aqsa Mosque Blessed, on the path of Mujahideen Mosul from the gate of the tribes to the depth Old town.
The Great School established the Great King Sharaf al -Din Issa bin Muhammad bin Ayoub, who is the son of the Sultan’s brother Salah al -Din al -Ayyubi May God have mercy on them, in the year 614 AH/1218AD, and stop it for students of knowledge from the followers of the Hanafi school.
The school had many endowments from villages, farms and waste, for example: Half of the village Ram And the monastery of Asad, Hawsan, Battir, and others, but these people were tampered with the hands of some people, and they became special hopes.
The cause of the naming
It was called the organizer on the name of its origin and its standing, the great king Issa bin Muhammad bin Ayoub, and it was called the Hanafi because it was stopped on the jurists and agreed by the owners of the Hanafi school.
Prescription
The school consists of two floors, and its entrance leads to a distributor that in turn leads to an exposed plate on the first floor, and there is north of the courtyard Iwan (a wide place of the house surrounded by the walls of only three walls of the ceiling exposed face).
The hint is high in size, overlooking the plate from a southern opening led by a pointed contract. The plate has been on a number of rooms that are used to read and memorize the Qur’an, and archaeological evidence indicates that there was an Iwan south against the northern Iwan.
The rooms existing on the first floor until now, and the other that existed on the second destroyed floor, were used for the inhabitants of teachers, students of science and the school’s service.
However, this school has disappeared and destroyed many of its parts, and the rest of it became used as a housing house.
And behind it is a square that includes the graves of Mujahideen believed to be from the Ayyubid era who struggled with Salah al -Din al -Ayyubi, and the road to the south of this school was called the “Mujahideen Road” in relation to this cemetery.
The remains of the minaret behind the arena are from the southern side of the school, and it was established during the era of the Mamluks in 673 AH, by order of King Qaher Bin Al -Malik Al -Muazzam.
Many of the Hanafi scholars in Jerusalem learned in this school, and the most famous of them, Shams al -Din al -Hamwi, the headmaster of Jerusalem and Hebron, who was buried in the aforementioned Mujahideen cemetery.
And narrate Do you know the knowledgeable He visited this school on February 20, 1947 and found the ruin on the largest side of it, and was able to copy two inscriptions that are still read on two tiles.
The first inscription says, “An order that Mawlana Sultan, the great king, does the honor of the world and the religion of Abu al -Azaim, Issa bin Abi Bakr bin Ayoub, who stands for this school on the jurists and agreed by the companions of the Great Imam Abu Hanifa, may God be pleased with him and his satisfaction. In the months of the year fourteen and six hundred for the prophetic migration, may God accept him and forgive him. May God bless our master Muhammad and his family and peace.
As for the second inscription, he stipulated, “He ordered the architecture of this blessed minaret, the oppressive king, the beholder of this school.
The minaret of the school mosque, which was known as the Mujahideen Mosque, was destroyed about 150 years ago, and the rest of the school used a residence for Jerusalem families.