Amiriya Madrasa
Madrasa in Rada, Yemen
The Amiriya Madrasa (Arabic: المدرسة العامرية) is a 16th-century madrasa (educational institution) located in Rada, Yemen. It is under consideration for inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was built in 1504 and is an example of the architecture of Tahirids, Yemen. The monument was in poor condition until 1978 when Iraqi-born archaeologist Selma Al-Radi saw it and enlisted financial help from foreign missions to restore it in a more than twenty-year effort which she led.
History
The complex was originally commissioned in 1504 by Amir ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, then Sultan of the Tahirid Dynasty, and was built in his name. The project was one of many sought by Wahhab, who had amassed significant wealth through trade across the Indian Ocean from the port city of Aden. Its date of completion was some time in 910 Rabi' al-Awwal of the Islamic calendar (August to September 1504). It was built to serve equally as a mosque, a madrasa and a private residence of Wahhab. Yemeni folklore tells that Wahhab occasionally ordered each window in the complex to the filled with lanterns as he rode on the hills of Radda with his daughter.
In 1517, Wahhab was killed in battle by invading forces from the Mamluk Sultanate, his head being decapitated and displayed on a pike in Sanaa.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4746764. Authority coordinates are 14.410, 44.767. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1504, 1978 and 1517.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amiriya Madrasa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.