Abdul Latif Nabil Al -Sahaf
In Freej bin Khater in the heart of Muharraq, and on the corner of a narrow alley around which the steps of renewal accelerate, an old building that extends its veins extends to distant times, which the transit passes as if it is a faded shadow, a silent wall that swallows the steps on the way.
And like the transites .. I passed from there, but I stopped me a moment of contemplation, attributed it to being the son of this neighborhood … so I stopped in front of him as if time grabbed my hand to see a memory leaking from the fingers like water .. a memory present in the hearts, absent from the eyes.
In the past, among the pillars of this building, it was a school founded by Sheikh Muhammad bin Hassan Al Khater, known as the religious school. This school is filled with religious books and memorization councils, formed part of the pulse of Muharraq … part of its tales and features. Today, the building stands on its breath, confused between survival and extinction, alone as an abandoned sheikh.
His stories are silently eroded, and his memories with every new day. These walls are still speaking the names of men who passed through them … students, scholars and sheikhs who lived among their pillars, among the scholars and sheikhs who teach the judge of Muharraq Sheikh Ibrahim bin Abdul Latif bin Abdul Mohsen Al -Sahaf, Sheikh Abdullah bin Ibrahim bin Abdul Latif bin Abdul Mohsen Al -Sahaf, and the Mufti of Muharraq Sheikh Isa bin Rashid bin Isa bin Khamis Al -Maliki, Sheikh Al -Jowder, Mr. Ibrahim bin Saleh bin Muhammad bin Khalifa Al -Sada, Mr. Saleh bin Ibrahim bin Saleh bin Muhammad bin Khalifa Al -Sada, and Mr. Ahmed bin Ibrahim bin Saleh bin Muhammad bin Khalifa Al -Sada and many others.
As for the students who received education in it, including Sheikh Ahmed bin Muhammad bin Hassan Al Khater, Sheikh Jassim bin Muhammad bin Hassan Al Khater, Sheikh Hassan bin Muhammad bin Hassan Al Khater, Sheikh Yusuf bin Muhammad bin Hassan Al Khater, Sheikh Abdullah bin Ajlan bin Ibrahim, Abdullah Al -Dhawan, Rashid bin Hindi, Abdullah bin Nasser, Muhammad bin Yaqoub Al -Sahaf, and other Al -Sahaf.
The book “Aba Al -Mosaid” page 483 – 485.
As for the people of the region, they have a special matter for this school. Over the years, the rains did not wash what the memories have planned on its walls, and the transformations have not yet eradicated the place and the fragrance of nostalgia attached to its spirit. But the stories are slowly melting something and melting at the age of time .. These places when they are neglected will remain merely lip narratives that they lived here, they leave and leave with them the memory of the place. Not only is a building that is threatened with extinction, and does not need to restore what is perpetuated from it, but it must be dealt with as an identity that stands on the edge of forgetfulness, as a school that has an entity and a teacher.
Among the cracks of memory, the face of the place overlooks its old features, whose details are whispering, longing for everything that is raised in the soul when nostalgia intensifies, so the places become a mirror of the soul, you see with the eyes of the heart, its image looms from afar, light as a shift that hovers between the soul and the depths of the arteries of memory. There is from the land of Makkah, and from the flood of longing, the verses were asked on the paper a poem, “Peace on Bahrain” was titled:
And I am to the people of burning upright
May I forget its councils of blossom?
Peace be upon her and her summary
The Al -Buainayn Al -Munif on the sea
It is done for the two risks mosque
And a school of knowledge and remembrance
Peace be upon Bahrain from her son
Who is in the Mechanism of the Excellency
In the verses, the place remained alive, fresh, saturated with familiarity, an intimate voice stemming from the synthesis of the spirit of the soul addressed by the poet Abdul Mohsen Al -Sahaf Al -Arkan itself ..
You are looking for this school in search engines, you find only passing signs, scattered nuggets, and personal diligence by some by photographing the building from the outside and mentioning some information – a step they thank – you may find a few lines in the pages of books stacked on the archive shelves, and a reference in a bumpy document. Among the documents related to the place is a verb with a signature and conclusion:
Correct the least presented
Abdullah bin Ibrahim Al -Sahaf
Date of 11 Ramadan 1346 “a century age document”
Part of its text, “He stood on the school built by Muhammad bin Hassan Al Khater, who is in Muharraq and stopped them on my father and on the job of his offspring after him.”
This school was stopped by Sheikh Muhammad bin Hassan Al Khater, and his name was linked to it and its history was breathing through it.
And between the evidence of the research and its sources highlights – and even the most important – the book “Aba Al -Mosaid”, the collection and investigation of Khalid bin Abdullah bin Youssef Al -Khater, recently issued in 1447 AH / 2025AD. It is a pioneering documentary work that immortalizes prominent stations from the past, combining the novel and history, providing a model in the accuracy of the information, the investigation of research and the trust of documentation, with a high scientific effort worthy of appreciation and praise, so it was truly a qualitative addition to the historical library.
The mention of the religious school came in this book, and noted that it is the first endowment of Sheikh Muhammad bin Hassan. The author also reported that the sheikh bought five shops in Manama and stopped it on the school so that its proceeds are dedicated to the school and for those who teach in it, as well as for its maintenance if its construction is weakened.
“Aba Al -Mossad”, pp. 71-73
A long silence of approximately thirty years has spanned
Between a document dated 1346 AH and a subsequent one in 1376 AH, the school was absent from the official records, and the papers were absent in the fall of the archive. Perhaps it fell from the registration branch, and the fall remained stuck between them.
All the chapters were late, waiting for a flash to be authorized in a new chapter, and late in the last pages of the book itself – Aba Al -Mosaid – a light flash: a short record recommends the imams and muezzins in Muharraq to sit to the virtue of Sheikh Abdul Rahman bin Hussein Al -Jowder in the religious school.
It was a last shift that old heart. I was kept the books of time for the years, then found a new life in a book, before it is replaced again in its long silence.
“Aba Al -Mossad”, p. 485
Books are silent evidence that beats a hidden life, lives of their steps and the fingerprints of hands fluctuated in their pages, the ink of the past still applies in the veins of words, and between their folds, she senses breaths that were panting behind knowledge.
Scientists, sheikhs and students gather in seminars under the roof of the religious school library. The library was silent, tired of wooden shelves, and the books lean on each other to support themselves.
Some of them infiltrated and managed to reach a safe place, preserved as holdings in which the soul will be given whenever a contemplative eye looked at it. Whenever you glimpse this next book with a cover that shows the effects of wars, he fought the battles and came up with firm dust as a clear shield in the scars that protects the eroded yellow leaves that read:
“In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful
To know the standing on this book that he entered into the possession of the least Muhammad bin Hassan bin Khater and that I have made him an imprisonment and an accomplished endowment, insulting to God and for those who benefit from the scholars in our school of information located in Muharraq does not come out of it. My good offspring of them (so whoever replaces him after he heard it, but his sin on those who change him, and God is heard)
Done on Rabi` al -Thani 14 in 1296 AH (seal).
It carries the tone of the will, which resonates and its presence is evident whenever the book reopens and contemplates the entire scene. And when the acquisition of the book was a special place, he wrote the ink of the past in the left corner of the top on the outskirts of another book page:
“This – that is, the book – in the king of Abdulaziz bin Hassan Al -Youssef, then moved to the king of the least Abdullah bin Ibrahim Al -Sahaf.”
This book entered and then moved, the previous book mentioned the religious school specifically, but this book did not mention the place from which it came out, perhaps it belongs to another silo that is only simple steps from the school that separates them a short winding distance, a second heart beats with knowledge. She was – and used the past formula here – the library of Sheikh Abdullah Al -Sahaf, which was inherited by the father to his son, so a witness remained in the continuation of generations, he remained extended to the school and the extension of its breath, a still room surrounded by a thick silence that is filled in the sense, long arms in the form of shelves that embrace ancient books and folded manuscripts containing the hustle and bustle of pods.
The leaves tremble and whisper what has not yet been heard, and the more you try to listen to your soul, the echo of a remote call to prayer that hesitates with different voices, floating around the beacons and domes and crosses times and brings you here with a distance that is also not far where the prayer call to prayer is shouting at the Sheikh Hamad Mosque, so the voices of the call to prayer will expand slowly to reach the neighboring shops and cafes, The mosque and outside it, and Sheikh Abdullah Al -Munabir ascends a preacher and an imam who extends his voice from the mosque to Al -Freij in the echo of science and the Qur’an in an echo that hesitates in Muharraq.
The threads of a light that extends from the religious school that interferes with the shadows of the mosque, so that it takes place between the house and the library.
At that time, the books were the most sincere way to transmit knowledge and knowledge, with the struggle of minds and from them the ears of lives. These books are not papers that are collapsed, but rather live effects from the library of the religious school, which smell of Freij bin Khater, as if the alleys still live between the lines and remain one of the most valuable holdings that the father preserves, may God protect him.
With careful steps in the school, the book “Aba Al -Mosaid” went through a researcher who searches in the files, collects the scraps, and rearranges the timeline of the history that almost erased in remote corners, it is the last witness, the modern document that embraced the remaining old documents and joined them, is the last of the school mentioning where “its location and maps, its land and its path, its building and its building materials, its complex It is limited, its shape and its room, its door and windows, from its foundations and the one who stopped it, the arrested shops for it and its proceeds, its documents, its sheikhs, scholars and students, its library and books, how many times became its restoration, its pictures, when the teaching stopped in it, its presence, its absence, its absence, its birth, its upbringing and death.
Or cancel it, transfer it to a house, shops, and rent it !!
It is a harsh paradox !! And the most severe transformations when the place is drawn from a lively live memory to eternal absence !! Slowly the place fell, and his memories bleed, and with him his soul faded little by little.
This building suffered a lot without any sound from it. Or maybe he had a voice and heard him, but no one caused him, and who has to care?! You care about and suffer when you are a root implanted in the place and you are uprooted. How is the absence to fold a heavy page of history with all its momentum, memories and memories … How can he reduce all this in a monthly rental body that carries a sign of “rental history”.
The question that knocks on the doors, all doors without exception. This building, this date, do we let it collapse and wiped out of the city’s memory !! Or do we restore life to him to witness that Muharraq did not only teach reading, but also made men, and lit a generation with the light of the Qur’an.
I think that if this school was included as a historical teacher, it is restored and opened its doors again to memorize the Qur’an and teach the science of religion according to the condition of standing, with documenting the details of its founding and those who have studied it from sheikhs and scholars will be a major addition to the region, and to consolidate its identity and an extension of its history. Bin Khater School is a symbol of Muharraq, which is not appropriate to be absent.
