Al-Saqqa House

Al-Saqqa House (or Al-Saqqa Palace) is an ancient house in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood in the middle of the market in the eastern suburb of Gaza City. It was built in the seventeenth century AD in the year 1661 during the reign of Sultan Mehmed IV. It was built by Ahmed Al-Saqqa, one of the leading merchants at the time, whose family origins go back to the Arabian Peninsula from Mecca to Aqil ibn Abi Talib, the cousin of Muhammad. ^[1]

The house was destroyed on November 10, 2023 during an airstrike carried out by the Israeli Air Force on the Al-Sha’iya neighborhood in Gaza City, during the Israeli response to the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, based on what was stated on the page of the Palestinian Ministry of Culture and some social media. ^[2]

Al-Saqqa’s house, which has an area of 700 square meters, consists of a courtyard with marble tiles brought from the mountains of central Palestine and columns indicating the presence of a well, a main door two meters long that takes the form of a right angle and is darkened to preserve the privacy of the people of the house, an iwan^{[ clarification needed ]} for receiving guests, and living rooms in addition to the kitchen and bathroom. Major merchants and economists ^{[ clarification needed ]} gathered there, and it has a hall for events, including weddings, as it was the largest house in eexistence. ^[3]

The house was built from three types of stones: Karkar stone or sandstone, Jerusalem stone from central Palestine, marble from Roman stones and columns. The roof of the house is made of sand filled with pottery, which makes it cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

It is known as the first economic forum in Palestine. It was first restored from a shell it was exposed to during the 1948 war. It was registered as an archaeological site in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities after the arrival of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. In 2014, the “Iwan” Heritage Architecture Center, affiliated with the Islamic University, restored it.

Based on the narration of one of the senior mukhtars of the Shuja’iyah district about the origin of the story of the Al-Saqqa House, he says: The house belongs to a simple worker on a farm called Al-Tawabin, and he had a plot of land next to the Saeed Al-Shawa building. The narrator refers to the story from the days of Ibrahim Pasha’s^{[ who? ]} campaign for Palestine and Syria, which lasted ten years. One of the Pasha’s guards By stealing the “capacity of gold” that was considered as salaries for his army, and after stealing it, the guard hides it in the “Al-Tawabin” farm where Al-Saqqa works. The guard is executed with the Pasha’s cannon and the story ends. Al-Saqqa discovers its matter and decides to build a house that matches Al-Shawa’s architecture, and asks the building builder to build this house. To become rich and inherit the house from generation to generation. ^[1]

References

1. Abu Hassanein, May. ""Al-Saqqa's Archaeological House: Story and Identity". Nawa Network. Archived from the original on 10 November 2023. Retrieved 21 December 2023.
2. "Israel targets the human cultural heritage in Gaza by destroying archaeological monuments". Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper (in Arabic). Al Eqtisadiah . Retrieved 21 December 2023.
3. "بيت السقا الأثري.. جدران تروي تاريخ مدينة". وكـالـة مـعـا الاخـبـارية (in Arabic). Retrieved 2024-06-02.