In 1986, the United Nations Culture and Science Organization (UNSCO) included the old city of Sanaa on the list of World Heritage sites, according to the standards of the United Nations which include; that the site represents a "masterpiece of human-made creative genius." In the seventh and eighth centuries, the old Sana'a city turned into an important center for the spread of Islam. It preserved a religious and political heritage that is reflected in 106 mosques.
Al-Nahrain Mosque is considered one of the oldest archaeological mosques in Old Sana’a. The author of the book “Sana’a Mosques” Haj Mohammed bin Ahmed Al-Hajari (1889-1962) stated that “the mosque is one of the built mosques west of Al-Sa’ila, below Sana’a,” and that it is “attributed to the area in which it was built which is known by this name since the beginning of Islam. And the author adds: "As the people of history reported that a tomb was found in Al-Nahrain in the days of Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq, may God be pleased with him (other narrations whose authenticity has not been verified say that it is the tomb of Saif bin Dhi Yazan), and he added and repaired it [...] Muhammad bin Ali, a Sharif from Ashraf Dhahban [a neighborhood in the Jadir area north of Sana’a] in about the middle of the thirteenth century [Hijri].”
The entrance to the mosque used to be through its door located on the southern facade and led to the southwestern corner of the eastern courtyard. It consisted of a rectangular area from east to west, with a length of (12.90 meters) and a width of (6.65 meters) from north to south.
Dr. Ali Saeed Seif, Professor of Islamic Archeology at Sana’a University, believes that the Mihrab of the Al-Nahrain Mosque was in the middle of the qibla wall, and that “there was nothing left of the original northern wall,” as this wall was removed when the mosque expanded from its northern facade.
Renovations to Al-Nahrain Mosque
Dr. Seif, in his statement to "Khuyut", explains the most prominent renovations that have been made in the mosque, as it begins with the first renovation mentioned by al-Hajri by "Mohammed bin Ali, Sheriff of Dhahban", pointing out that this renovation represented "some reforms in the mosque and expanding its area.” As for the second renovation, it was an expansion and construction of the “Souh” of the mosque, at the hands of Hajj Ali Al-Wazzan in the year 1311 AH / 1893 AD, which al-Hijri mentions and Saif added that this expansion was carried out for the southern Souh.
The Professor of Islamic Archeology continues: “The third renewal took place in the year 1361 AH / 1942 AD, when repairs were made to the mosque, in addition to the construction of a “sabil” (a public water tank) to the south of the mosque to the left of the road leading to the Dome of Al-Mutawakkil Ali Allah Al-Qasim.
The fourth restoration "was an expansion in the area of the mosque, which was carried out by Abdullah bin Muhammad al-Jawfi, in the year 1389 AH / 1969 AD, on the northern of the original mosque, and the area of that expansion was larger than the original mosque." In the year 1393 AH / 1973 AD, Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Muhammad al-Jawfi made a fifth renovation similar to the previous one, where a new area was added on the eastern of the original mosque, and the area of this expansion was also larger than the area of the original mosque. Later, the same benefactor - Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Muhammad al-Jawfi, who was one of the merchants of Sana'a, carried out a sixth renovation by adding a new facility to the mosque, a praying area for women located at the bottom of the northeastern corner of the current mosque.
The seventh renovation was a “canopy”/a concrete shed mounted on two square pillars to cover and shade the eastern entrance to the mosque. This addition was at the expense of the scholar Hammoud bin Abbas Al-Muayyad, and the construction was carried out by Haj Mohsen Al-Ansi between the years (1975-1977 AD), and the stones of the shed were brought from the quarries of "Dhahban".
As for the eighth and final renovation, the annexes located to the southwest of the mosque - “Al-Methar” (places of ablution and washing) and students’ homes were demolished, and they were rebuilt again with stones and cement, which consist of lower bathrooms topped by a second floor, and the water sewers and bathrooms of the mosque were repaired in 2002.
Mohammad al-Bukair, a researcher in ancient Yemeni antiquities, told "Khuyut" that "because of its location in Old Sana'a, Al-Nahrain Mosque is considered a historical library," pointing out that "the most important historical buildings in Sana'a are the mosques that are subject to restoration and expansion." And that "each period has its own characteristics and features as a historical record from which the researcher can derive important historical information."
Different accounts of the reasons for the demolition
Khuyut interviewed a number of officials and engineers of the "concerned parties" to demolish the Al-Nahrain Mosque.
Deputy Culture Minister Mohammad Haidara said that the mosque’s demolition was “a result of poor coordination between the General Authority for Endowments and the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities in particular, and the General Authority for Antiquities and the Ministry of Culture in general.”
Engineer Yahya Al-Qahtani, Director General of Projects in the Endowments Authority, stated about the decision to demolish that the idea began assigning Engineer Abdul Salam Al-Mahdi by the Secretariat Office in the Endowments, to restore a number of mosques inside Old Sana’a, including the Dome of Al-Mahdi Mosque, Al-Nahrain Mosque, Al-Jnah Mosque and Al-Madhhib Mosque, in addition to the old endowment buildings in Sana’a that were damaged by rain last summer (2020), noting that “the Al-Nahrain Mosque has been restored from all sides.”
Al-Qahtani reported that, “On one of the days when Mufti Shams al-Din Sharaf al-Din was delivering a sermon in the mosque, and it was a rainy day, the rain leaked from the ceiling, so the Mufti said: “How does the restoration of the wall and roof is “leaking” happen? (i.e. rain water leaks from it).
According to Al-Qahtani, a committee was then assigned to inspect the roof of the mosque, and it was found to be completely damaged which demanded the removal of the roof, by the Secretariat of the Endowments Office, not by the Ministry of Awqaf. The roof was demolished and only wood remained. However, during the demolition, it became clear that the roof was "armed" concrete, and not "Qathath". At that time, "a committee of endowments and antiquities was hose tasked to supervise the collection of timber and to remove the entire roof, on the basis that it would be repaired.
When the roof was repaired and the armed concrete were "removed", and the conversation still with Al-Qahtani, the people of the neighborhood gathered to tell the joint committee that the direction of the Qiblah was wrong. He continues: "We did not believe at first, then a specialist was assigned to determine the correct direction of Qiblah, and we found that it deviated significantly (33.8) from the direction of the Kaaba."
And “since the wall and the roof are damaged, then why is the Qiblah not corrected?” Al-Qahtani said, pointing out that after this suggestion was accepted, “a committee was formed with the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities. The committee went out to inspect the site which took about 10 days to reach a solution. As a result of the ten days of inspecting the site, a new problem question was raised: “How is the direction of the qiblah corrected in the presence of arches?”, and after discussion among the members of the committee, they concluded that “the Qiblah cannot be corrected in the current situation,” At that time, according to al-Qahtani, the members of the committee “unanimously” agreed that the mosque would be completely rebuilt “in the spirit of old Sana’a,” and signed a 12-item minutes.
On the other hand, Eng. Yassin Ghaleb, a member of the joint committee of the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities, spoke to "Khuyut". Ghaleb saying: "On 5/1 [January 2021], we passed by chance near the Al-Nahrain Mosque, and we found that there are workers who are removing the entire roof of the mosque, without referring to the Authority, which is a violation of Law (16) of 2013." On the same day, the engineers of the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities submitted a report to its president, with recommendations to stop the demolition of the roof until the mosque is documented, take the measures stipulated in the law for the preservation of historic cities, and transfer the task to the competent department.
On January 22, 2021, according to Engineer Ghaleb, a meeting took place between the Awqaf Authority and the Historic Cities Preservation Authority, whose representative at the meeting proposed the restoration of the mosque “and fixing what can be repaired.” Ghaleb added that the commission was not aware that the mosque was "completely demolished" on January 18, four days before the meeting, at the end of which the meeting agreed to stop the demolition. Ghaleb continues: "The committee has made implementation-restricting clauses, the first of which is a detailed documentation of the mosque with all its components, cases and damages, with Article No. 5 in this agreement, that is, not to be destroyed."
At the same meeting, the participants agreed to “hold on the ruins of the roof,” so that specialists could document the mosque in a proper manner. Ghaleb added: “However, the endowments had actually demolished the mosque, according to the report of Engineer Sadiq Al-Najjar, Engineer Yahya Al-Qahtani and Engineer Abdul Salam Al-Mahdi,” noting that “the Authority signed an agreement on 22/1, on the basis that Article (5) of this agreement will be implemented in exchange for the fatwa issued by the endowments to remove the mosque.
Ghaleb asserts that putting Article (5) in the agreement is to document “everything of the mosque with details and components, including the school and the improper additions that contradict the character of the city, and the ground tank,”. However, the aim was to collect sufficient information to make the right decision to remove the structure of the mosque with its columns. and its arches; "Can we remove the qiblah and the building is still there as planned and can we keep as much of the structure of the mosque as possible, so that people can pray in it? But they didn't give us a chance to find solutions."
Mujahed Tamish, the acting head of the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities, told "Khuyut" that the authority intervened to stop the work at the time, that is, "when the roof and some parts of the mosque were removed." He added: "Contact was made with the Deputy Minister of Endowments and with the Director General of the Endowments Office - the Secretariat, and a joint committee was formed, but as a result of some confusion, a final report was made on the current situation." “The Authority did not sign the removal until after 80% of [the mosque] was removed, as a matter of fact.” Tamish says, the demolition of the Al-Nahrain Mosque as a crime, and confirms that the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities "is not involved in it."
"Khuyut" platform went down to the site of Al-Nahrain Mosque to document the condition of the mosque after the demolition, and "Snidar" met with Al-Nahrain Mosque (in charge of the affairs of the mosque) Saleh Shamakh. Shamakh tells the story of the mosque’s demolition from the beginning, that is, since he sent a letter to the Endowment Authority “in order to maintain the mosque.” Then a committee of the endowments came down and carried out the restoration work, then “came again to repair a spot of the ceiling, and the ceiling was demolished in order to restore it. Then, a few days later, the endowments said that there was a decision to correct the Qiblah.
According to Shamakh, "a sponsor came in an initiative to expand the mosque, and then the Awqaf Authority undertook the maintenance and restoration work in the mosque." He refers to a similar initiative that was proposed during the time of the scholar Hammoud Al-Moayad, to "extend the mosque to Al-Bustan, but the people of the mosque did not agree," and that they now "want to come back to the first plan, and the work has been stopped by the Authority."
In response to the sponsor's initiative, Al-Qahtani said: “I do not know who he is, but they said that there is a benefactor, and my thought was that it was the Ministry of Endowments as a result of deviation [in the qiblah], but it became clear to us that there is a benefactor, but until now we have not known who he is."
Al-Qahtani added that the demolition “was not carried out on the basis of the presence of a benefactor” who will finance the expansion, and “rather as a result of a deviation in the qiblah,” noting that the mosque “had cracks on the western side from top to bottom of the building.
Mujahed Tamish says: "Whether he is a benefactor or an official body, coordination must take place with the competent authorities, and any intervention by a benefactor or others is rejected until coordination is made with the competent authorities, namely the Historic Cities Authority and the Antiquities Authority."
Demolition Fatwa
The agreement to demolish the Al-Nahrain Mosque, signed by the Ministry of Endowments and the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities, was based on a fatwa from Mufti Shams al-Din Sharaf al-Din. About the validity of that fatwa, the engineer Al-Qahtani says: “First of all, the word fatwa came because people wanted a fatwa to demolish, and when we asked for the fatwa, it was present and written.” He points out that the request for the fatwa was based solely on "the process of correcting the qiblah, and because the deviation is significant." Al-Qahtani adds that there are those who said that “a great scholar issued a fatwa that prayer is not valid in the mosque, because he himself was the imam of the Al-Nahrain Mosque. The imam used to pray and deviate, thinking that it was a simple deviation, but when the new projection was presented to him, he was surprised along with the people, and since the qiblah was deviated in this way, it will be corrected, and the imam is convinced that it must be corrected."
For his part, Tamish said that the Grand Mufti is interested in the main goal; Fixing a defect that was present in the mosque, which is the deviation of the Qiblah, the fatwa came from a religious source and has no other dimensions” - as he put it.
Mutahar Taqi, head of the National Coalition for Civil Society Organizations, said that "no one has the right to issue fatwas for the destruction of an archaeological mosque."
Unconvincing justification
Speaking to Khuyut, Taqi said that "the principle of touching any building in Old Sana'a, whether it is a mosque, a house or any other facility, especially mosques, is a crime against a historical city that is among the cities of human heritage." “Any building that was built or restored before 1986, i.e. before Old Sana’a was declared on the list of human heritage, must be subject to the Historic Cities Preservation Authority Law of 2013.” he added.
Taqi responds to those who attribute the demolition of the Al-Nahrain Mosque to the deviation of the qiblah, according to the projection of the search engine "Google", that this is "illogical statement." He cites “the guidance of the Messenger [Muhammad], peace and blessings be upon him, and his hadith of Luber bin Yohans al-Ansari in the sixth year of migration, when he ordered him while building the Great Mosque in Sana’a, to direct the qiblah of the Great Mosque towards “Jabal Dhain.” “This hadith is stronger than any Google and any mufti.” And any man.” Taqi adds, stressing that “all the mosques of Sana’a were built in the direction of Mount Dhain, and that the Al-Nahrain Mosque is one of about 10 mosques built in the first half of the first century of migration, and therefore this ancient building is great, and no one has the right to destroy it.”
It is worth mentioning that Dhain Mountain is located in Ammran Governorate, and its height is more than 3000 meters.
Taqi points out that “any other excuse is considered an excuse that is uglier than an act,” and that “even if it is said that there is an attempt to prevent a Zaydi scholar from preaching, even if this excuse is valid, no one has the right to touch the mosque in any way.”
On the other hand, Yemen's delegate to UNESCO, Mohammad Jumaih, described in an article the demolition of the Al-Nahrain Mosque "as a crime that may affect the status of Old Sana'a on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which is already on the List of World Heritage in Danger."
Available Solutions to avoid demolition
Among the questions that Khuyut posed to specialists and those interested, the following question was: Was it possible to correct the qiblah without demolishing the mosque, and could the damage of the demolition be remedied?
Professor of Islamic Archeology at Sana’a University Ali Saeed Seif said that “there cannot be measures to remedy the mosque because the demolition was largely deliberate, and suggests that the purpose is not to modify the direction of the qiblah, but rather to demolish the entire mosque.” Because "it was possible to adjust and correct the direction of the qiblah by modifying a small part of the wall of the qiblah so that it can be corrected."
As for the researcher in ancient Yemeni archeology, Mohammad al-Bukair, he believes that there were indeed "solutions" to correct the direction of the qiblah without demolishing the mosque. He asserts: "During our scientific experiment in restoring the Great Mosque in Sana'a, the same problem was noticed, and the mosque's carpets were adjusted at a certain angle to correspond to the qiblah direction."
Al-Bukair points out that “in the event that the mosque’s carpets tilt angle is not appropriate and large, the other solution was the process of dismantling the mosque by the scientific method.” This method - according to Al-Bakir - begins with "documenting the mosque with photography and engineering drawings, and developing a scientific study that determines the first beginning of the dismantling process." The researcher cites an example of this scientific deconstruction: “For the ceiling, the extracted pieces are recorded, documented and placed in special places. After that, the walls of the mosque are dismantled and modified, and the columns of the columns remain as they are. After that, each portico is dismantled separately, and it is adjusted according to the required angle, then restoring the roof, inspecting the damaged parts and changing it according to the same old style.”
On the issue of demolishing the mosque without the scientific documentation that the two specialists in Islamic and ancient antiquities stress on: Seif and Al-Bukiri, the engineer Yahya Al-Qahtani has a different opinion. He says that the Qibla wall arches "are all new, built in 1976", and that "when they are numbered, we number the Habash stones. It is an arch! We should return it as it is." Al-Qahtani points out that the restoration and qiblah correction operations in the Great Mosque are different from the Al-Nahrain Mosque, and similarly in other mosques. He says: In the Al-Aini Mosque or the Great Mosque or in Ashrafieh, even the inscription on the ceiling is specific, and the verses must be numbered. As for this one, it is just a Habash stone and a white stone, the most important thing is to make an arch, it is not difficult, or something that is 200 or 400 years old, is something that is not more than 30-40 years old.”
Post demolition procedures
Mujahed Tamish, acting head of the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities, attributes the demolition of Al-Nahrain Mosque to what he considered a mistake by the Endowments Authority and the Historic Cities Authority in coordinating with specialists. However, he asserts that this error or "ambiguity", as it is called, "was solved in the expanded meeting that was held on February 14, when a joint committee was formed to study the dimensions of this issue and to solve the problem completely."
On February 14, 2021, an expanded meeting was held between the "concerned parties" in the Sana'a authority, to discuss the issue of demolishing the Al-Nahrain Mosque. The meeting was attended by the Minister of Culture Abdullah Ahmed al-Kibsi, the head of the General Authority for Endowments Abdul Majeed al-Houthi, the acting head of the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities, Mujahed Tamish, and the head of the General Authority for Antiquities, Abdullah Thabet.
According to Deputy Culture Minister Mohamed Haidara, it was agreed to form a joint technical engineering office in which the three bodies would be represented by two engineers each.
The assignment of this office, according to Haidara, was also, to “quickly develop a plan to rebuild the mosque as it was and with the same materials, and return it to its shape, taking into account the problems that occurred before, such as the leakage of the roof, and the deviation in the qiblah, provided that the development of the plan and the study be done within a week from the date of the meeting.
During that week, "Khuyut" went down to the site of the Al-Nahrain Mosque to check whether the members of the Joint Technical Engineering Office had started their work by field visiting the mosque. The reporter of this article attended the meetings of the engineers of the General Authority for Antiquities and the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities during that period, the meetings of which the General Authority for Endowments was absent in four meetings. The plan was not developed within the specified week, and according to the engineers, they were not formally assigned to do so.
At the conclusion of his speech to " Khuyut", Haidara said that what happened to the Al-Nahrain Mosque "will not be repeated in the future", because a circular was issued by the General Authority for Endowments after the expanded meeting, stating "it prohibited to make any developments in any archaeological mosque under any justification." When he talks about the "seriousness" of demolition "for our cultural heritage and our human values," he says that the "problem" of the Al-Nahrain Mosque "came to warn of a danger that existed and will not take place after this date."
The people of Haret Al-Nahrain
"Khuyut" met with a number of the people of Al-Nahrain zone. Mohammad Al-Zubaidi said: "The destruction and devastation of the mosque was not necessary, because the mosque needed a simple restoration in a specific place in the structure, but now they have prevented us from hearing the call to prayer and praying in it."
Al-Zubaidi adds: "The qiblah has been deviated for a long time, and Imam Hammoud al-Mu'ayyad used to direct us to deviate by four blocks and pray after him on the qiblah."
Many people resent the demolition of the mosque. Hujjah Khayriyah Saleh says to “Khuyut”: “They said the qiblah is crooked! How is the qiblah was crooked for the whole lifetime since the time of Hammoud al-Mu'ayyad, Muhammad Amer, and the ancient scholars? How come it is crooked! And the whole world prays at the Al-Nahrain mosque, it is the gate of heaven, the and the paradise of the world.
On the ninth of this April, the engineer, Yahya Al-Qahtani, was sacked from the General Administration of Projects in the Endowments along with a group of general managers of the Endowments Authority, and work on the mosque has not been initiated until today by the Antiquities Authority, the competent authority in this matter, according to the imam of the Al-Nahrain Mosque, as it was one of the businessmen in Sana'a have committed to rebuild the mosque.
