The Saraya House

The story

The Saraya House — the government house, in translation from Turkish — was built in 1901 by the Ottomans, and was the first public building in Beersheba. It stands on a hill in the northern part of the Keren Kayemet LeIsrael pedestrian mall, which was then called 20 Meter Street, and in its day it could be seen from anywhere in the city. The building has two stories, three arches and a large hall, and its original roof was a red tiled roof — a combination of Turkish and European style. It served the local government, and the first governor to sit in it was Muhammad Jarallah. Beside it stood the police building, the municipality, the land registry office and the courthouse, and nearby passed the road from Gaza, one of the main roads in the Negev, so that all who passed along it were under the governor's supervision. With the entry of the British into the city in 1917 the building became the Bedouin court, in which the Bedouin residents of the area were judged according to Bedouin law. In 1938, in the days of the Great Arab Revolt, the building was set on fire and its wooden roof burned down completely; the Mandate authorities put up a concrete roof in its place and incorporated it into a complex of government, police and post office buildings that were built adjoining it. In May 1948 the Egyptian expeditionary force took the building, and in October 1948, in Operation Moshe, its men surrendered after a threat of direct shelling; the sources differ as to whether this was on the 21st or the 22nd of the month. Afterwards the headquarters of the Negev Brigade was established at the place, and from January 1949 the combat staff of the southern front. Today the Beersheba police and the headquarters of Southern Command are housed in the complex. In February 2016 an agreement was signed for the evacuation of the Command from the compound, in which it was agreed that the Saraya buildings would be preserved.

• Ottoman
• British Mandate
• 1948
• Beersheba