Mamilla Cemetery, sometimes called Ma'aman Allah Cemetery (), is a historic Muslim cemetery in West Jerusalem that dates back to the Crusades, and lies just to the west of the north-west corner of the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, near the New Gate. The cemetery, at the center of which lies the Mamilla Pool, contains the remains of figures from the early Islamic period, several Sufi shrines and Mamluk-era tombs. The cemetery grounds also contain the bodies of thousands of Christians killed in the pre-Islamic era, as well as several tombs from the time of the Crusades.
Its identity as an Islamic cemetery is noted by Arab and Persian writers as early as the 11th century, and it has been characterized as "the largest and most important Muslim cemetery in all of Palestine". It was used as a burial site up until 1927 when the Supreme Muslim Council decided to preserve it as a historic site. Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the cemetery and other waqf properties in West Jerusalem fell under the control of Israeli governmental bodies. The Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs stated in 1948 that the cemetery is: "one of the most prominent Muslim cemeteries, where seventy thousand Muslim warriors of [Saladin’s] armies are interred along with many Muslim scholars... Israel, will always know to protect and respect this site."Visit Jerusalem's New Museum of Tolerance. Feel Your Blood Boil, Bradley Burston, 7 June 2012
A number of buildings, a road and other public facilities, such as a park, a parking lot and public lavatories have since been constructed on the cemetery grounds, destroying grave markers and tombs. A plan to build a Museum of Tolerance on part of the cemetery grounds, announced in 2004, aroused much controversy and faced several stop work orders before being given final approval in July 2011.
Name
The cemetery shares its name with the Mamilla Pool, located at its center. A church dedicated to "St Mamilla" was located at the same site in the early Byzantine and Islamic periods.
Vincent and Abel (1922), supported by Pringle (2007), see it as plausible that a Byzantine-period pious woman by the Latin name of Mamilla sponsored the construction of a pool connected to the Patriarch's Pool next to the Church of the Resurrection, and that she became venerated as a saint to whom a church was dedicated next to her pool. Pringle cites Vincent and Abel. They see it as more likely that the church was named after the pool than the other way around.
Muslim popular etymologies Mamilla is mentioned as an Islamic cemetery as early as the 11th century in Concerning the (religious) status of Jerusalem, a treatise penned by Abu Bakr b. Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Wasiti, the preacher of Al Aqsa Mosque in 1019–1020 (AH 410). He gives its name as zaytun al-milla, Arabic for "the olive trees of the religion", which Moshe Gil says was "a commonly used distortion of the name Māmillā," along with bab al-milla (meaning, "the door of the religion").
Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi writes in al-Haqiqa, based on his travels to the region in 1693–1694, that, "It is said that its original name is Ma'man Illah and sometimes it was called Bab Illah [Gate to God]. It is also called 'Zeitun il-Milla'. Its name, according to the Jews, is Beit Milo and to the Christians, Babilla. But it is known to the common people as Mamilla." A similar description appears in James Turner Barclay's The City of the Great King (1857) and he gives the meaning of Ma'man Illah (or Ma-min-ullah, as he transcribes it) as "What is from God!"
History Byzantine period During the Byzantine period in Palestine (c. 4th–early 7th centuries), a church dedicated to St Mamilla was established on the same site and it appears to have been used for burials at this time as well. A rather biased account of the aftermath of the Persian capture of Jerusalem in 614 by Strategius, a monk of Mar Saba, says that the bodies of thousands of Christians killed as a result of the Persian siege – 4,518 according to Georgian translations of the lost Greek original, and 24,518 according to Arabic translations of the same – were found in the Mamilla Pool and buried in caves in and around it.
Early Islamic period Islamic rule over Jerusalem began in 638 under the Rashidun Caliphate and persisted for some 1,400 years, interrupted only by the periods of Crusader rule between 1099 and 1187 and between 1229 and 1244. Throughout much of this period, Mamilla cemetery was the largest Islamic cemetery in the city, containing the remains of emirs, muftis, Arab and Sufi mystics, soldiers of Saladin and numerous Jerusalem notables. The cemetery is said to be the burial site of several of the first Muslims, the Sahabah, companions or disciples of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. In 1945, The Palestine Post said it covered an area of over 450 dunams (111 acres), while Haaretz in 2010 said that at its peak, it covered an area of 200 dunams (some 50 acres). A 1938 deed issued by the British mandatory authorities to the Islamic waqf outlined the size of the plot as 134.5 dunams (33 acres).
Religious warriors or mujahideen who died in the battles for control over Jerusalem with the Byzantines in 636 and the Crusaders in 1137 were buried in the cemetery, including, according to tradition, some 70,000 soldiers of Saladin. The Church of St Mamilla was still standing in the 9th century when Palestine was under the rule of the Abbasid Empire; it is listed in the Commemoratorium De Casis Dei (c. 808) as one of the properties for which the Jerusalem Patriarch paid the Arabs taxes,Gil, pp. 153, 442. and is described by Bernard the Monk as lying about a mile west of Jerusalem (c. 870).
The cemetery is mentioned by Arab and Persian authors under its various names throughout the ages (see above). In 1020, al-Wasiti writes that the Muslim cemetery situated in zaytun al-milla and outlines the advantages of being buried in Jerusalem. Ibn al-Adim, the Syrian historian, recounts visiting the cemetery several times, and on one visit in 1239–40 recalls going to the graves of Rabi' al-Mardini (d. 1205–1206), a shaykh from Mardin renowned for performing miracles, and al-'Iwaqi (d. 1232), a pious Sufi who lived in the compound of al-Aqsa mosque. Al-Adim describes the grave of the former as housed in a prominent mausoleum with other pious individuals.
Crusader/Ayyubid period During Crusader rule over Jerusalem, the cemetery appears to have once again served as a burial place for Christians. Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, the French archaeologist, described and sketched several Frankish sarcophagi that were in the cemetery in the 19th century, most of which were destroyed in 1955 (see below).
Al-Quraishi, a famous Sufi mystic said to have had miraculous healing powers, immigrated to Jerusalem from Andulasia by way of Fustat and garnered a school of disciples in his new home that numbered some 600 people before his death and burial in 1194.
Mamluk period
During the period of Mamluk rule (c. 12th–15th centuries), most of the area's notable citizens were buried in Mamilla. A structure known as al-Kebekiyeh (or Zawiya Kubakiyya), a one-room square-shaped building covered with a dome and incorporating architectural materials from the Crusader era was built during this period. It is identified as the tomb of emir Aidughdi Kubaki, a Syrian slave who rose to prominence as the governor of Safed and Aleppo, before his death in 1289.
In the 14th century work A'lam, a collection of traditions on the value of prayer in Jerusalem, al-Zarkashi says those buried in the city will avoid fitnat al qabr or "purgatory of the tomb," and for those buried in zaytun al-milla itself, it would be as if they were buried in heaven.
Ibn Arslan, who was buried alongside Al-Quraishi (d. 1194) some two and a half centuries after the Ayyubid-period Sufi master, was a charismatic Sufi shaykh whom Muslims from surrounding countries came to visit.
Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaymi in al-Uns al-Jalil (c. 1496) says, "Who ever invokes God's name while standing between the graves of Ibn Arslān and al-Quraishī [in Māmilā cemetery], God will grant all his wishes."
Other notables buried in Mamilla and recalled by Mujir al-Din include two founders of zawiyas in Jerusalem – Nasr ed-din Mohammad, one of the "ten emirs of Gaza", and Shaykh 'Omar, a Moroccan of the Masmoudys, El Modjarrad tribe. Also named are several emirs, including Ruq ed-din Mankouros, the imperial lieutenant of the Jerusalem Citadel (d. AH 717), Abu el-Qasim, the governor of Nablus and custodian of Jerusalem and Hebron (d. AH 760), and Nasser ed-din Mohammad, custodian of the two Haram al-Sharifs (Holy Mosques) of al-Aqsa in Jerusalem and al-Ibrahimi in Hebron (d. AH 828), among others.
Ottoman period
During the period of Ottoman imperial rule from the early 16th to early 20th centuries, the cemetery continued to serve as a burial site, and in 1847, it was demarcated by a fence. By the 1860s, the borders of the cemetery were delineated from the by then encroaching urban development by a wall and surrounding road.
Mandatory Palestine period
Burials in the cemetery ceased early in the period of British rule over Mandate Palestine (1918–1948), following the 1927 decision by the Supreme Muslim Council, who oversaw the administration of waqf properties, to preserve it as a historic site. By this decision, the cemetery, its tombs, and its grounds were maintained.
In 1929, Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, decided to build the Palace Hotel on what was assumed to be outside the border of the cemetery. While the foundations were being laid, Arab workers uncovered Muslim graves. Baruch Katinka, a Jewish contractor hired to oversee the project, wrote in his memoirs that when the Mufti was informed of the discovery, he said to quietly rebury the bones elsewhere, as he feared Raghib al-Nashashibi, his political rival and the mayor of Jerusalem, would issue a cease work order. As Shari'a law permits the transfer of graves in special cases with the approval of a qadi (Muslim judge), Husayni, acting as head of the Supreme Muslim Council, the highest body in charge of Muslim community affairs in Mandate Palestine, authorized the disinterment. When it was discovered what had happened, rival factions filed a suit against Husayni in the Muslim courts, arguing that he had desecrated ancient graves.
The Islamic waqf continued to control the cemetery and in 1944, the cemetery was designated an antiquities site by the British mandatory authorities.
A November 1945 article in The Palestine Post reported on plans of the Supreme Muslim Council (SMC) and the Government Town Planning Adviser to build a commercial center on cemetery grounds and to transfer remains buried in the areas to be developed to a "40 dunams walled reserve" centered around the tomb of al Sayid al Kurashi, ancestor of the Dajani family. A member of the SMC told the newspaper that, "the use of Muslim cemeteries in the public interest had many precedents both in Palestine and elsewhere." The SMC's plan, however, was never implemented.
Israel
At the time of Israel's assertion of control over West Jerusalem in 1948, the cemetery, which contained thousands of grave markers, came under the administration of the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property and the Muslim Affairs Department of Israel's Ministry of Religious Affairs. After the armistice, Israeli authorities destroyed the part of the cemetery closest to the armistice line.The Meeting of Civilizations: Muslim, Christian, and Jewish edited by Moshe Ma'oz p. 103 Since 1948, the site has been progressively built over with carparks, and partly developed into Independence Park.