Qishla

About :

Al-Qishlah Palace is one of the ancient palaces that was created in 1941 AD under the reign of King Abdulaziz Al Saud, as it is located in the city of Ha'il. The builders worked on the building for a year and a half, a mosque and a prison were linked to it, and it was completed in 1943.

At that time, they named it after Qishlah, a word of Turkish origin that means winter camp. 

This word was first used back in the Ottoman era to express the residence places of soldiers in their castles. 

The palace is distinguished by its fantastic strategic location, as it is located right in the center of Ha'il city, making it easy to get from and to it, and it is one of the most important landmarks of the Ha'il region, which many people want to come and enjoy its lovely view.

The Castle of the palace was built in a rectangular shape from clay material, which they used to form the palace; it has a wide space, its length from East to West is 241 meters, and its width from North to South is 141 meters. 

It also has two floors and domes, so when you visit the castle, you will find that the ground floor consists of 83 rooms,

And the upper floor contains about 59 rooms, which all overlook the palace's courtyard directly. You can see other buildings affiliated with the palace's services, and you can also find four square-shaped towers in its corners.   

It also contains four other towers located in the middle of the walls, and they were called the supporting towers, which reach a height of about 12 meters. 

There are two primary entrances to the palace building. The first is on the east front and is distinguished by lovely decorations and inscriptions. The second door, positioned to the south, is considered the palace's main entrance.

One of its most important features is also that it has been designed and built to simulate the school and the Najdi method, as well as decorations and inscriptions characterized by the architecture of the traditional city of Ḥa'il, which are floral, geometric elements through gypsum. 

When you visit the palace, you will notice its magnificence and enormous size of 19.932 square meters.

Also, one of the fascinating inscriptions in the palace has this sentence (long live our King the Great King Abdul Aziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud)

They built the Qishla Palace in the old days using traditional materials at that time such as milk and stone in the style of the Najdi school, which was widespread at that time, and it is also characterized by its gypsum decorations such as floral and geometrical elements These are the elements that distinguished the Ḥa'il region at that time in its architecture.

You can also notice that there are eight square towers, four of them are located at the corners, and there are four located in the middle of each wall, each tower reaches a height of about 15 meters 

It also has balconies listed from the top, characterized by two openings, the first of which is located in the middle, and the second is in the prominent part of it located below, through which the soldier or Defender uses it to fire, and there are also many openings for shooting arrows under the palace building, which is one of the most important elements of defense, which was common at that time 

There is also a yard in the center of the palace that was used in the past for training soldiers and parades, and the four sides of the Palace are characterized by the presence of porticoes roofed using plants and also Tamarisk tree trunks, which are carried by stones carriages.