Mamilla cemetery

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Mamilla cemetery, looking east, 2013. The vegetated area in the center of the picture is Independence Park. The curved road in the upper area forms the western boundary of the Mamilla cemetery, in which the Mamilla basin is a rectangular structure . At the left end of the street mentioned, the building site of the Museum of Tolerance can be seen behind the construction fences. On the right above the Mamilla basin, with the curved facade, the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem (formerly the Palace Hotel).
Mamilla Cemetery, 2014
View from Mamilla Cemetery across Agron Street to the former Palace Hotel, 2007

The Mamilla Cemetery ( Arabic مقبرة مأمن الله, DMG Maqbarat Maʾman Allāh ) is a historic Muslim cemetery west of Jerusalem's old town . The remaining part is located approx. 700 m northwest of the Jaffa Gate .

The cemetery was already in use in the early 7th century when thousands of murdered residents of the city were buried in caves near the Mamilla Basin after the Sassanid conquest of Jerusalem . Archaeological findings from a cave and a Byzantine cistern date from this period. The first mentions of the cemetery are found in Arabic and Persian writings from the 11th century, some of which are based on traditions from the 8th century. Muslim sources name up to 70,000 fallen Muslim martyrs whose skulls were buried in the lions' den in the cemetery after the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. After the recapture of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, Saladin had his warriors who had fallen in battle buried in the Mamilla cemetery. In the centuries that followed, the Mamilla cemetery developed into the largest Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. Numerous religious and secular dignitaries were buried here.

In the late 19th century, still under Ottoman rule, Agron Street was built on the cemetery area and the southern part of the Mamilla cemetery was earmarked for building. Both the British League of Nations mandate for Palestine and the Supreme Islamic Council with the Palace Hotel (today Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem), as well as Israel and the city administration of Jerusalem with a school, the Independence Park, an underground car park and other buildings, used parts of the cemetery as building land. The Supreme Islamic Council and the Qādī of Jaffa as the highest Islamic judge in Israel each gave their approval. The area of ​​the Mamilla Cemetery has been reduced from more than 13 hectares to less than two hectares since the establishment of the State of Israel.

Marvin Hier , the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center , has been planning a Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem since 1993 , the concept of which is to correspond to that of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. After a part of the Mamilla cemetery, which had been used as a parking lot for many years, was earmarked as a building site and work began in 2005, strong resistance arose on the Palestinian side. The Supreme Court allowed after several years of litigation and construction freeze that construction work will be carried out subject to conditions. The Palestinian side then started an international public campaign that continues to this day. The opening of the Museum of Tolerance is planned for 2021.

Surname

There are several explanations for the name Mamilla. One relates to a historically inconceivable Christian saint, who was honored by a church built in the center of the area in the early Eastern Roman times. The Jerusalem Qādī and historian Mujir ad-Din gave a different explanation in his major work in 1495. The name is therefore based on the Arabic term Mimmā Manna Allāh ( that given by God ). Other Arabic names are Bāb al-Milla and Zaytūn al-Milla ( olive trees of God ).

history

Tomb from the time of the crusaders

Eastern Roman Empire up to the Crusades

The first burials are said to have taken place in Eastern Roman times in the vicinity of the Church of St. Mamilla. According to a contemporary report, the city dwellers murdered in the course of the conquest of Jerusalem by the Sassanids in 614 were buried at 35 grave sites in the vicinity of Jerusalem. In the Mamilla Basin alone, 4518 or 24,518 victims were murdered and buried nearby, according to different translations of an original report that has been lost.

The cemetery was first mentioned in Arabic and Persian writings from the 11th century , including an essay by al-Wasiti, who preached the al-Aqsa mosque from 1019 to 1020 . These writings referred to an al-Hasan as the source of the traditions, who was probably Abū Saʿīd al-Hasan ibn Abī l-Hasan al-Basrī , who died in 728. This suggests that an Islamic cemetery existed as early as the eighth century.

The Islamic historian Abū Shāma reported in the 13th century that the martyrs' cave of the Mamilla cemetery contained the skulls of the Muslim martyrs who fell during the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, including his great-great-great-grandfather. Muslim traditions give numbers of up to 70,000 dead.

After the recapture of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, Saladin had his warriors who had fallen in battle buried in the Mamilla cemetery. The earliest burial mentioned by the Jerusalem Qādī and historian Mujir al-Din in his History of Jerusalem and Hebron in 1495 was that of an Emir of Saladin in 1189. Al-Din's report is the most important source on the early history of the Mamilla cemetery, which is already to was the largest in town at the time.

Muslim rule

Mamilla Basin with surrounding graves, 1854
View over the Mamilla Basin to the Jaffa Gate , Muslim graves in the foreground, around 1878

For centuries, high-ranking Muslims came to Jerusalem in old age to die in the holy city and to be buried here. This preference for Jerusalem by Muslim believers was borrowed from Judaism, for which this tradition can already be proven in antiquity. In the 14th century, the Muslim scholar Muhammad ibn Bahādur al-Zarkašī gave the reason that those buried in Jerusalem were spared the agony of the grave, and that a grave in the Mamilla cemetery corresponds to a grave in heaven. The three large Muslim cemeteries outside of the old town were primarily used for the funerals of the townspeople and their guests, Mamilla west of the Jaffa Gate, Bab al-Sahirazu north of the old town and Bab al-Rahmah in the east. There are also a large number of small burial places, mostly mausoleums of particularly wealthy or respected Muslims, most of which date from the Mamluk period. The oldest surviving epitaph in the Mamilla cemetery dates from 1285. The files of the Sharia court of Jerusalem, which also performed the duties of a registry office and land register and meticulously recorded births, deaths, weddings and real estate transactions, are one of the most important sources for Muslim history of Jerusalem. The files were kept from 1529 to 1917 or 1919 and also provide information about the dead in the Mamilla cemetery.

The Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Michael Solomon Alexander , was able to conclude an agreement in 1843 that allowed the burial of deceased Christians on a parcel in the southeast area of ​​the Mamilla cemetery. After a while, a Muslim and a Christian funeral took place at the same time. The Muslims complained that by doing this their prayers also benefited a Christian, and that this was unacceptable to them. The conflict led Alexander's successor, Samuel Gobat , to buy a piece of land on Mount Zion in 1848 and set up the Zion cemetery there. The Christians who had been buried in the Mamilla cemetery in previous years were reburied.

Agron Street, on which the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem is now, and which is located on a former cemetery site, was built under Ottoman rule. At that time, from 1882 to 1897, Salim al-Husayni was mayor of Jerusalem. The southern part of the cemetery was earmarked for building during the last years of Ottoman rule . A wall was built to protect the remaining part.

League of Nations Mandate Palestine

Plan by Charles Robert Ashbee , 1921. The white area in the middle is the Old City of Jerusalem, the pentagon with a yellow background to the left of it is the Mamilla cemetery.

In 1927, the use of the Mamilla Cemetery was largely abandoned by the Supreme Islamic Council in Palestine established by the British , and in the same year it was declared a monument. Until 1948, however, there were still isolated funerals by families who wanted to bury their relatives near the graves of those who had died earlier.

Palace Hotel, around 1929 to 1933
Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem 2019, at the right edge of the picture the Mamilla cemetery
Aerial view, at the upper edge of the Mamilla Basin and the Palace Hotel, 1928–1946

The first major conflict over the development of parts of the Mamilla Cemetery was triggered in 1925 by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine and President of the Supreme Islamic Council in Palestine, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini . Al-Husseini built the Palace Hotel, which opened in 1929, on land that originally belonged to the cemetery. That was, in his view, a legitimate real estate deal whose proceeds should go to the Waqf. The controversy arose over the question of whether it was morally and under Islamic law permissible to build on an area designated as a cemetery. Al-Husseini's lawyer defended the Grand Mufti before the Sharia court in 1927, pointing out that the question of the inviolability of cemeteries was controversial among Islamic legal scholars.

During the excavation work, the Arab workers found human remains. The Grand Mufti told the site manager that he should continue the work and collect the found bones so that he could secretly bury them in another grave after the earthworks were completed. Palestinian opponents of the Grand Mufti saw this as a violation of Sharia law and Islamic traditions.

The contract to build the Palace Hotel, signed on December 27, 1927, called for a construction cost of 56,000 Palestinian pounds. The leasing to the hotel operators should bring the Supreme Islamic Council an annual income of £ 7,300. This profit, which would benefit the Muslim community, was an important argument for the permissibility of building on the cemetery grounds. In fact, construction costs rose to £ 73,500, rental income was only £ 3,000 annually, and the project weighed on the Supreme Islamic Council for many years.

In 1927 three Jerusalem Muslims complained to the Supreme Islamic Council against other construction work on the site of the Mamilla cemetery. Their lawsuit was dismissed for formal reasons, as only mutawallis , the administrators of a Waqf, were entitled to complain. In doing so, the Council broke Islamic law, since every Muslim can sue as a possible beneficiary in the affairs of pious foundations. In its reply, the Supreme Islamic Council boasted of the construction work it carried out, which would have increased its income by 2,225 Palestinian pounds annually. The shops in Mamilla Cemetery alone would bring in income of £ 750 a year.

Until the 1930s, Mamilla Cemetery was the largest Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem with an area of ​​around thirty hectares. During the British mandate over Palestine between 1920 and 1948, further parts of the cemetery were separated, so that in 1948 it only had an area of ​​134 dunums (13.4 hectares ). In the land register, the area was listed in 1938 as a pious foundation ( Waqf ), which was under the supervision of the General Waqf of Jerusalem. The part of the cemetery south of Gaza Road was designated as building land.

The General Islamic Congress met in the Palace Hotel in 1931 . The congress decided to establish an Islamic university in Jerusalem, as an alternative to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem founded in 1918 . The congress did not specify a location, but surviving photos of a design show that the construction should take place on the site of the Mamilla cemetery. In the mid-1940s, when Amin Abd al-Hadi was chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council, residential buildings were planned on this property. According to a newspaper article in the Palestine Post in November 1945, the Supreme Muslim Council was planning a shopping mall in part of the Mamilla Cemetery for which burial sites were to be relocated.

In 1945, the individual tombstones of the Mamilla cemetery were numbered on the instructions of the Supreme Muslim Council. The council archives contain a list of 841 graves and, as far as it was possible to determine at that time, the names of the deceased. The Jerusalem city architect Henry Kendall drew up a development plan in 1946 that provided for the development of the entire eastern part of the cemetery (i.e. the part that has now been preserved): The repair and beautification of the immediate vicinity of the basin is being considered in order to use part of the area for high-quality commercial and to develop living areas. In addition, there is hope of creating extensive public and private open spaces, with tree-lined boulevards between the blocks of houses. Many important graves, dating back to Saladin's time, are protected and preserved from further damage and neglect ( English Proposals are now being considered to repair and beautify the immediate surrounds of the pool, to develop part of the land for high class commercial and residential purposes. In addition it is hoped to lay out spacious public and private open spaces with tree lined boulevards between the blocks of buildings. Many fine tombs which date back to the times of Saladin will be preserved and protected from further damage and neglect ). In 1947, the British Mandate Administration declared the Mamilla cemetery an archaeological site.

Israel

After the First Arab-Israeli War , Mamilla Cemetery came under the control of the Israeli authorities in 1948. At that time there were still thousands of graves in the cemetery. The number of graves in Mamilla Cemetery was given as 15,000 by former US diplomat Andrew Killgore, who worked in Jerusalem in the late 1950s. If it is to be understood as the number of grave sites that were identifiable at the time, this number is certainly clearly exaggerated. Since then, parts of the cemetery area have been separated on all sides for other uses. When the State of Israel annexed all of Jerusalem in 1967, the number of tombstones had decreased significantly. In 2009 only about 8 percent of the original area and 5 percent of the graves were left.

Development before 1964

Following Israel's declaration of independence in 1948, several laws, The Absentees' Property Laws , were passed regulating how the State of Israel would handle the property, including real estate, of refugee Palestinians left behind. The property was initially placed under the administration of the Custodian of Absentee Property . He often handed over houses and furniture to Jewish immigrants. The pious foundations such as cemeteries and mosques were initially under the fiduciary administration of the custodian . An additional law passed in 1965 transferred ownership to the Custodian of Absentee Property , who in turn transferred two-thirds of all Waqf to the Urban Development Agency for sale or as building land. The rest, mostly used mosques and cemeteries, were transferred to the Board of Trustees of the Muslim Waqf in 1956 , which was subordinate to the Ministry of Religious Affairs . These trustees appointed by the Israeli government were, in the opinion of the Palestinian side, collaborators who, without regard to Muslim interests, sold real estate to the Israel Land Administration or exchanged unfavorably with it.

After the conquest of West Jerusalem, Israeli authorities did not allow the Islamic Waqf Foundation to take care of the cemetery, which fell into disrepair. The Arab population lived in the Jordan-controlled part of the city or in the north of the country and had virtually no access. However, in 1948 the Israel Ministry of Religions promised the Jordanian government to protect the cemetery.

In 1950 Jordan and Israel clashed over reciprocal accusations of the destruction of cemeteries. Jordan lamented the Israeli damage to the Mamilla cemetery and published the criticism in the Arab press. As a result, the cemetery was cleaned and protected by the Israeli side. At the beginning of the 1960s, the examination of reversed roles was repeated. The Jordanian government supported the construction of the Hotel Jerusalem Intercontinental on the Mount of Olives . An access road led through the Jewish cemetery, where numerous gravestones were damaged during construction and some of them were used as the foundation of the road.

Repeated work was carried out on the Mamilla Cemetery in the early 1950s, including building a drainage ditch, cleaning the Mamilla Basin, leveling an area west of the Mamilla Basin with the destruction of graves, and paving the Manasseh ben Israel Street west of the basin and Hillel Street in the north. At the intersection of these two streets there is now a school and the new building of the Museum of Tolerance.

Fatwa of the Qādī Taher Hammad

In 1964 the area of ​​the cemetery was expropriated by a decree of the Ministry of Finance. On June 2, 1964, the Mayor of West Jerusalem, Mordechai Ish Shalom , applied to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for the Mamilla Cemetery to be revoked from its sacred status. Ish Schalom asserted in his application that the Supreme Islamic Council of Palestine had already declared the Mamilla cemetery to be derelict before 1948. He also submitted a building application from the city of Jerusalem during the British Mandate for Palestine for several buildings, including one for the Arab League . Among other things, the independence park was to be established in the cemetery, only a small part of the cemetery was to be preserved as a memorial. The matter was brought before Sheikh Taher Hammad, the Qādī of Jaffa and at that time the senior Islamic judge in Israel as chairman of the Sharia Court of Appeal.

Taher Hammad had studied Islamic law at the Azhar in Cairo , obtained a degree and also taught there. At the time, the Qādīs were employees of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and were under its supervision. As Qādī, Hammad has repeatedly declared building over Muslim cemeteries to be harmless. In 1964, before the Mamilla cemetery was dealt with, Taher Hammad had already been convicted of a property offense detrimental to public property and of forging documents. He was retired on March 22, 1965. His appeal against the conviction was dismissed by the Supreme Court in 1966.

In his fatwa , Taher Hammad first checked whether it was permitted under Islamic law to open a grave in order to carry out another burial. He found that this was basically allowed but makrūh (undesirable). He also stated that the cemetery was indeed mundaris (derelict or abandoned). He therefore decided to remove the graves between the trees, both those structurally designed and those marked only with simple gravestones. He made the decision without having visited the Mamilla cemetery, but wanted to visit the site later to assess the work carried out. At the end of his fatwa, he made a distinction between the sanctity of a tomb, which could deteriorate in the course of time according to Sharia law, and the permanent sanctity of a mosque.

Taher Hammad's fatwa has several flaws that cast doubt on its validity. The fatwa was headed qarar fatwa , roughly translating as "fatwa judgment". Qarar is by definition the judicial decision on a dispute. The decision is announced by the judge in the presence of the conflicting parties. There can not be a qarar without such a dispute. In addition, the role of the Mayor of Jerusalem as the applicant and the nature and content of the evidence presented are unclear. In any case, the mayor was not the Qadi's appointed trustee or administrator of the cemetery. Obviously Taher Hammad did not observe the mandatory procedural rules, which is why his decision cannot be a judgment. On the other hand, a fatwa as the expression of an opinion on questions of religion has no formal requirements, but also no binding effect. After all, Taher Hammad did not inspect the cemetery to clarify whether the bodies of the deceased had turned to dust. Instead, he has announced his visit for a time after the irrevocable destruction of graves. Overall, the Qādī's fatwa can be seen as a worthless opinion of favor.

The fatwa issued by Taher Hammad did not allow any development on the site, only the establishment of a park. Nonetheless, a number of urban development measures have been carried out on the original cemetery site by the Jerusalem City Council, including the construction of apartments, commercial properties and public facilities such as a school and Independence Park.

As the highest-ranking Qādī in the Israeli Sharia courts, Qādī Ahmad Natour issued a marsum qada'i (a religious decree) in 1994 in response to the fatwas previously issued in favor of the overbuilding of Muslim cemeteries . The sanctity of all Muslim cemeteries and mosques, including the derelict or abandoned, is permanently enshrined in it. All past fatwas to the contrary are null and void. In addition, the Qādīs will in future be prohibited from arbitrarily appointing mutawallis as trustees of cemeteries or mosques. Rather, they have to propose candidates to the Sharia High Court in Israel, who are accepted or rejected by the court. This restriction is in response to previous sales of cemeteries or mosques by the mutawallis .

The Israel Ministry of Religions declared Natour's decree ineffective in June 1996 because Natour was not entitled to such a measure. Natour believes the ministry's intervention is an improper interference in Islamic jurisdiction and insists on his decision. Several Israeli legal scholars, notably Shmuel Berkovitz and Aharon Layish, also question Natour's decree, insisting that Sharia law permits the building of Muslim cemeteries in the general interest ( maslaha ). Natour, in turn, is of the opinion that maslaha only describes the welfare of the ummah , and that the sale of Muslim cemeteries to Israeli interested parties cannot be justified with the maslaha . In the conflict over the new Museum of Tolerance, the Simon Wiesenthal Center relies on the fatwa proclaimed in 1964 by Qādī Taher Hammad, which it regards as the incontestable and irrevocable profanation of the Mamilla cemetery.

Development since 1965

Independence Park, 2013

In 1965, Israel added a provision to the Absentee Property Law that deprived the pious foundations of their status as Waqf and placed them under fiduciary management by a government agency, the Custodian of Absentee Property . In 1967 an application from the Jerusalem Waqf Authority to allow the Mamilla Cemetery to be looked after again was rejected. In the same year, a large part of the cemetery was converted into Independence Park. Numerous graves were destroyed when the park was built.

In 1979 the part later used for the Museum of Tolerance in the northwest corner of the cemetery was earmarked for a parking lot, which was completed in 1986. On January 28, 1986, the Jordanian Foreign Minister and the Minister for Religious Foundations and Islamic Affairs lodged a complaint with the Director General of UNESCO . They alleged that Israel was affecting the Mamilla cemetery and causing damage to the graves of important Muslim dignitaries. In November 1986, an observer from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) at the United Nations complained to UNESCO that urban bulldozers had uncovered numerous human remains when a sewer pipe was laid on the cemetery grounds. Israel denied allegations that few bones were exposed. The promise made to Jordan in 1948 to preserve the Mamilla cemetery was confirmed by Israel before UNESCO. After the completion of the car park, which was also used by many Muslims, the protests initially subsided.

In 1992 ownership of the Mamilla Cemetery was transferred from the Custodian of Absentee Property to the City of Jerusalem. On January 15, 2005, the Israel Electric Company carried out earthworks in the cemetery to lay cables.

Graves in Judaism and the Mamilla Cemetery

The admissibility of opening historical graves is controversial. Those who consider the reburial of the deceased and the opening of graves in the context of excavations to be permissible refer to the Shulchan Aruch , who allows the laying of a grave that disturbs the public. Already in Hellenic and Roman times, such reburial of the Jewish deceased was carried out in large numbers as part of building measures.

Renewed tombstone of Ahmad Agha Duzdar , 2005. The tombstone was smashed after a short time.

Jewish graves in Israel today are only moved by the Israel Antiquities Authority as part of emergency excavations. A small group of radical Orthodox Jews invariably rejects any disturbance of the peace of the dead, be it archaeological excavations or building projects. They demand that all construction work be stopped as soon as human bones are found in the earth. The religious affiliation of the deceased is irrelevant, unless there is evidence that they are non-Jews. In practice, following this view means the end of an excavation as soon as a human bone is discovered during the work. It is not uncommon for roads to be diverted or houses not built when there is even suspicion of Jewish graves in the ground. In contrast, Muslim tombs are viewed as dispensable and not respected. Protests against the building of the Museum of Tolerance came not only from Palestinians, but also from Jews, who oppose any desecration of graves. The different treatment of Jewish and Muslim graves contributed to the fact that the museum building on the grounds of the Mamilla cemetery was and is perceived by Muslims as discriminatory. In addition, the handling of the Mamilla cemetery monument was sharply criticized by archaeologists. The excavations at the site of the Museum of Tolerance represented a quick clearing out rather than a scientific excavation, and contradict the ethical standards of modern archeology.

In Jerusalem, parts of the Jewish population show no respect for the Mamilla cemetery. The area was used by marginalized social groups as a place of retreat and was heavily polluted with discarded beer cans, syringes and used condoms. The cemetery is used by young people as a shortcut to the northeastern party zones of the city and to relieve themselves. The tombstone of Ahmad Agha Duzdar , Ottoman governor of Jerusalem from 1838 to 1863, restored in 2005 with financial support from the Turkish consulate in Jerusalem, was smashed after a short time. As part of the conflict over the museum building, the entire Mamilla cemetery was cordoned off in May 2006, so that Muslims were denied access to the graves of their relatives. Suspected Jewish vandals invaded during this time and destroyed several graves or smeared them with racist graffiti.

Conflict over the Museum of Tolerance

Mamilla cemetery with the Mamilla basin in the middle, above the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem. On the left under the basin the much larger Museum of Tolerance, April 2019.

Planning and start of construction

As early as 1993 , after a visit to the Museum of Tolerance at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, the Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek suggested a similar museum in Jerusalem. An area on French Hill was initially planned for this. In 1999 Frank Gehry was won over as an architect for the museum building. Gehry explained his involvement in 2010 by saying that close friends suggested he work with Marvin Hier. According to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the project in Jerusalem should be divided into a museum and a conference center, and promote the idea of ​​tolerance. The program seemed justified and he was assured that all sides would be taken into account in the design of the exhibition and that freedom of expression would prevail within the walls of the new building.

At the beginning of the planning, Gehry was shown various locations, including one next to a prison that Gehry did not consider appropriate. The location at the Mamilla cemetery, shown to him by the Mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert , seemed suitable, as its use as a car park since the 1960s spoke against the religious significance of the site. Gehry planned the Museum of Tolerance for this location and later stated that the boundaries of the cemetery were respected and that the building with its view over the cemetery should express a respectful relationship between the museum and the cemetery.

In the years that followed, further construction work was carried out on the former cemetery site, including the addition of two existing buildings and the construction of two new ones. In March 2002 the building of the Museum of Tolerance was formally decided. On November 24, 2002, a model of the museum was ceremoniously unveiled in the residence of the President. It was then presented to the public in the main hall of the city administration without any protests. The first building permit was issued in October 2004. On May 2, 2005 in the presence of high representatives of the state of Israel as the President Katsav, Deputy Prime Minister and Industry and Trade Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister took Silvan Shalom , Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz , and the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger , the foundation stone laying ceremony instead of.

Even before any construction work began, in 2004, the site was examined by the archaeologist Gideon Suleimani from the Israel Antiquities Authority. He pointed out that there were an indeterminable number of graves in the floor of the planned building plot. The construction work began with the mandatory archaeological examination of the building site under the supervision of the antiquities authority. In November and December 2005, it was found that there were numerous human remains in the ground. During an emergency excavation , around 1000 graves were discovered and archaeological objects uncovered. The graves were contained in five different layers, the oldest of which dates from the 11th or 12th century. With the exception of a few Crusader graves, all of the dead, including women and children, lay in the graves in Muslim positions, lying on their side and facing Mecca. The remains of 400 people were packed in cardboard boxes and taken to an undisclosed location. The antiquities authority decided that from an archaeological point of view there were no objections to further construction. Only a small area that still contained human remains had to be protected. On February 8, 2006, the Israeli daily Haaretz published a photo showing an open grave in the Mamilla cemetery with a complete skeleton. That was more than 40 years after Taher Hammad's fatwa, who declared the cemetery dilapidated and implicitly all bones turned to dust.

Legal proceedings

On December 28, 2005, three activists of the anti-Zionist Northern Islamic Movement in Israel appeared at the construction site and photographed human remains. On the same day, the Northern Islamic Movement affiliated Al-Aqsa Association for the Development of the Assets of the Muslim Waqf in the Land of Israel Ltd. filed a motion to freeze construction at the Supreme Court . When the application was not granted for weeks, the organization asked the Sharia court to stop construction. The Qādī of Jerusalem issued the requested order, but the Israeli police refused to enforce it. The organization then made another motion to the Supreme Court with the aim of enforcing the construction freeze. On March 1, 2006, the Qādī of Jerusalem, Muhammad Zibde, appointed two administrators ( Mutawallis ) affiliated with the Northern Islamic Movement for the cemetery and instructed them to take all necessary measures to protect the cemetery. These appointments were overturned by the Supreme Court under the Absentee Property Law. In the meantime, the development company involved in the construction of the museum also sued the Supreme Court with the aim of declaring the Sharia court incapable of having jurisdiction, since the profaned Mamilla cemetery is no longer a waqf, but only trust assets under the administration of the Ministry of Finance.

In April 2007, when the Supreme Court proceedings were well advanced, a group of 70 mostly Jewish Israeli academics appealed to the court. The group led by the historian and diplomat Shimon Shamir , which included five winners of the Israel Prize and seven civil and human rights organizations, sought to act as amici curiae to support the court in its decision-making. They expressed concern that the construction project would strain relations between the Israeli authorities and the Jews on the one hand and the Arab-Muslim population and the Arab and Muslim states on the other. In addition, the construction could have consequences for the protection of Jewish graves abroad. The Supreme Court rejected the motion to admit the group as a party to the proceedings. However, the group was granted the right to be heard in the proceedings and to submit expert opinions. The museum responded by organizing its own support group of 182 academics and public figures under the leadership of Shabtai Shavit , the former director general of the Mossad . This group was also allowed to submit expert reports in favor of the museum.

During the three trials, the Supreme Court issued three interim orders:

  1. the excavation work on the museum premises must be stopped until a decision has been made on the matter;
  2. the Sharia court is prohibited from acting in parallel with the Supreme Court on this matter;
  3. after the Supreme Court learned that the excavation work had already been completed in two of three construction phases, the construction freeze was lifted for these sections. In the third construction phase, which comprised 12 percent of the building site and which contained most of the human remains, no further digging was allowed. The client and the Israeli authorities were ordered to explain to the court why the construction plan should not be changed in such a way that this third construction phase remains unaffected.

First, the Supreme Court transferred the case to mediation at Meir Shamgar , one of its former president. The seven-month mediation process failed because the Muslim plaintiffs refused to compromise on building the museum in the Mamilla cemetery. The court asked the developer to submit proposals on how to deal with the graves in the third construction phase. The museum suggested two options. The first involved the reburial of the human remains at the museum's expense, under the supervision of Muslim clergymen. The second proposal involved building the third section in such a way as not to dig deep and to leave a cavity between the ground and the underside of the building with no contact between the building and the graves below. There was no need to build an underground car park in favor of a solution with less parking space at another location on the building site.

On October 29, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that construction of the museum could continue under certain conditions. The museum must ensure that human remains are treated with respect. The museum could implement one of its own proposals, the reburial, with the possibility of building an underground car park, or the construction with minimal interventions in the ground and a structure floating above the ground. The antiquity authorities estimated the number of graves to be up to 1,000, of which 400 have already been excavated or uncovered. The Supreme Court has taken the building projects advocated by Islamic clergy under the British mandate, including the Palace Hotel, as evidence that Islamic law allows cemeteries to be built if it is in the public interest. When the parking lot, Independence Park and other buildings on the cemetery area were built decades ago, there were no noteworthy Muslim protests. In addition, the Jerusalem Muslims themselves were not particularly respectful of the site.

Israeli political scientist Yitzhak Reiter sees the Supreme Court's decision as problematic for several reasons:

  • The court judged the uncovered graves on the building site of the Museum of Tolerance as if they were randomly uncovered and previously hidden individual finds. In fact, the Mamilla cemetery is a long-known historical cemetery with around 1000 graves in the area affected by the construction work;
  • The Supreme Court failed to recognize that the fatwa on clearing the site was for the creation of a public park, not for the construction of buildings and deep earthworks;
  • the judgment criticized the late intervention of the Muslim plaintiffs and failed to acknowledge that Muslims protested against construction work on the Mamilla cemetery as early as 1950, 1958 and the mid-1980s;
  • unlike most major infrastructure projects, the museum can be built in a different location;
  • an important argument in favor of building at this location, the defining architectural effect of Frank Gehry's buildings, became obsolete when he withdrew from the project.

After the trial

From November to December 2008, Israeli archaeologists cleared up the remaining graves under most of the construction site without an excavation permit from the antiquities authority. In the first quarter of 2009, an approved excavation followed on the area with the most graves. An Iron Age aqueduct was also uncovered. In 2010, the client declared that the bones from the graves had been reburied "in a respectful manner" in a Muslim cemetery. The place was initially kept secret. After anonymous reports to the press, the museum stated that the bones were buried on a part of the fenced construction site, which will not belong to the museum grounds but to the Mamilla cemetery after the construction work is complete. In 2012, Marvin Hier claimed to the media that there had been no Muslim graves on the museum grounds for a year. Nonetheless, further excavations were carried out in 2012 and 2014.

In the years following the verdict, it became clear that the opponents of the museum building did not want to accept the decision of the Supreme Court. The group of 70 Israeli academics who stood before the Supreme Court for the protection of Mamilla Cemetery began a public campaign against the museum, which received little response from the Israeli public. At the same time, Palestinian civil rights organizations began an international campaign in which they presented the dispute over the Mamilla cemetery as part of Israel's policy of eradicating Muslim cultural heritage. They were able to raise 60 Muslim dignitaries from East Jerusalem whose relatives were buried in the Mamilla cemetery. The internet campaign resulted in dozens of critical media articles and thousands of signatures for an online petition against the Museum of Tolerance. From 2010 to 2011 there were almost weekly vigils at the Mamilla cemetery, but only a few dozen people attended. Some activists were sent off by the Israeli police or the domestic secret service Shin Bet , and those taking part in the demonstrations were monitored by the police and the secret service during the events and beyond. During this time, tombstones were destroyed or removed from the cemetery twice by the Israeli authorities. The protests were joined by architects, the UN Human Rights Commission, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

The US Center for Constitutional Rights was able to obtain a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council on March 19, 2010 , in which Israel's actions in the occupied territories were criticized, the construction of the museum was declared illegal and Israel was asked to stop construction. Another petition was sent to UNESCO in January 2011. Notwithstanding this, the Israeli Interior Ministry approved the construction plans for the museum in July 2011. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured the Simon Wiesenthal Center their support. In May 2012, new contracts were signed between the museum sponsor and the city of Jerusalem. At the city council meeting, only six out of 31 city councilors approved the treaty, three voted against and the rest abstained or left the room during the vote.

As early as 2007, the city council of Jerusalem had requested the Northern Islamic Movement to take care of the graves in the remaining part of the Mamilla cemetery. In the course of this work, numerous new tombstones were erected. The new tombstones were removed by the Israeli authorities after they were discovered. The Israeli authorities consider the installation of the new tombstones as an illegal invasion of land owned by the State of Israel . The activists again denied these allegations as Israeli lies . They are of the opinion that the newly erected tombstones were erected on existing graves and merely replaced previously existing tombstones.

It is unclear whether the public protests against the museum sparked or contributed to the following developments. At first it became apparent that the Simon Wiesenthal Center would miss the targeted donation target of 200 million US dollars. Frank Gehry withdrew from the project in 2010, according to him due to scheduling problems, and is no longer in contact with the Simon Wiesenthal Center. A less ambitious and less expensive construction was commissioned. The new plan was presented in September 2010 by the Chyutin architects from Givʿatajim and comprises a complex with a usable area of ​​46,000 square meters, which extends over three above-ground and three underground floors. Completion should take place in 2015 and the construction costs compared to Gehry's design for 250 million are only 100 million US dollars. The building permit for the museum was granted in July 2011 by the Israeli Interior Ministry. In September 2011 the Chyutin architects withdrew from the project due to differences in the planning. The construction was undertaken by a third architect based on Chyutin's plans.

The disputes over the Museum of Tolerance also had an impact on other construction projects at the Mamilla cemetery, which were previously undisputed. In 2009, the Israeli government wanted to build a new judicial center on the site of a school, which was in turn built on part of the Mamilla cemetery, which would bring together all of Jerusalem's courts in one building complex. In early 2009 it was reported in the Israeli press that the President of the Supreme Court, Dorit Beinisch , wanted to reconsider the new building project. Later another location was chosen for the construction project, the construction site on the school grounds is intended for another project.

Positions

The struggle for the Museum of Tolerance was fought with bitterness by supporters and opponents. In the public dispute, both sides resorted to invented, falsified or distorted shortened information in order to strengthen their own position or to defame their opponents. One of the few equalizing voices in 2002 was the Israeli historian Raphael Israeli, who expressed empathy for the Arabs who had been robbed of their homeland in a paper on the divided Jerusalem. In addition to the destruction of Palestinian villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Israeli named the destruction, Judaization or conversion of many mosques, cemeteries, mausoleums of popular saints and other cultural assets, among which the Mamilla cemetery is the best known example. A few years later he was one of the staunch supporters of the Museum of Tolerance. The conflict researcher Eve Spangler of Boston College ranks the events around the Mamilla Cemetery in a series of examples of racist attacks against Palestinians, which, had they been perpetrated against Jews, would have sparked an outcry. The German political scientist and historian Götz Aly sees the museum project as a symbolic provocation of a weak Israeli government that will replace political action and disavow the idea of ​​tolerance. The building project is seen by many critics as an attempt to replace historical evidence of Islamic culture in Jerusalem with newly constructed evidence of Jewish life in the city. A futuristic representation of coexistence is being built on the remnants of the multicultural past. According to the American historian Erik Freas, the construction of the Museum of Tolerance shows that heritage manufacturing is not a marginal phenomenon in Israel. By selectively highlighting Jewish cultural heritage and systematically neglecting and destroying the cultural heritage of Muslims and Christians, the State of Israel wants to legitimize itself and to emphasize Judaism over other religions.

Different statements are made by those involved in a variety of contexts. Examples are the information on the occupancy of the cemetery. While the Palestinian side claims that the cemetery was in continuous use until 1948 (but since 1927 only exceptional burials have been carried out to bury married couples or families together), the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its supporters refer to the 1927 from the colonel Islamic Council decided to discontinue use and, against their better judgment, give the impression that there have been no burials in the Mamilla cemetery since then. The SWC relies on the allegedly incontestable fatwa of the Qādī Taher Hammad, although it is clear that the requirement for all remains to turn to dust was never met. The SWC is also deceiving the public by using the already ineffective fatwa, which did not allow any earthworks, as permission for the unrestricted use of the Mamilla cemetery as building land. The SWC rejects the criticism of Islamic clerics and legal scholars and claims for itself and for the (Jewish) Islamic scholars commissioned by it the higher competence in the interpretation of Islamic law. The Palestinians mostly keep silent about the fact that Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem were already being used as building land under Ottoman rule in the 19th century, that this practice lasted until the end of the mandate, and that in Islamic states the leveling of cemeteries in favor of building projects is quite common. While the Simon Wiesenthal Center extensively prides itself on its global tolerance efforts, the Palestinian side rightly points out that this is about tolerance towards Jews, that the Palestinians do not appear in the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, and that they are also in the museum tolerance in Jerusalem will not play a role.

According to the Palestinian side, the destruction of the graves is being carried out to erase the traces of Christian and Muslim life in the inner city of Jerusalem, to construct a state with an exclusively Jewish identity and to destroy everything Palestinian. The US-Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi accused the Israeli government of moral failure for having protested against the desecration of Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives when East Jerusalem was under Jordanian administration. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Israeli government, the city administration of Jerusalem and their supporters claim that the museum's critics are using the conflict over the building to provide a platform for their political stance critical of Israel. Indeed, a significant part of the opposition comes from Palestinian nationalists, who use the "desecration" of the Mamilla cemetery as a pretext to promote their Palestinian nationalism. The positions of the irreconcilably opposing parties are made clear in a 2010 edition of the US magazine Critical Inquiry . The magazine published an extensive review of the building project under the title The Architecture of Erasure by Saree Makdisi, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles . The booklet contains several replies, from Marvin Hier as director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the historian Raphael Israeli, Frank Gehry , the Gehry biographer Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe and other experts.

Current condition

Only a few dozen tombstones remain in the remainder of the Mamilla cemetery, most of which have been overturned, broken and hidden in thick undergrowth. The inscriptions were often painted over, cemented over or smashed by vandals. Only a few of the historical graves are in good condition. Repair measures by the Israeli authorities were aimed at preserving the ancient Mamilla basin and the Byzantine cistern in Independence Park today. On the other hand, evidence of centuries of Islamic culture was left to decay or purposefully removed in favor of urban development measures.

caves

Lions Cave in Independence Park, 2011

To the west of the cemetery area that remains today, in Independence Park, there are three caves. Several medieval Muslim legends address the martyr's cave ( Shuhada cave ) and bring it with the burial of thousands of murdered residents after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Sassanids in 614, or with the bones of the Muslims who were killed by the crusaders in 1099 when they took Jerusalem in context. The reports of historians of the Middle Ages and some archaeological findings may refer in part to other burial caves in the Mamilla district that are not related to the Mamilla cemetery.

Around 1950, a director general of the Ministry of Religious Practice invented a new story about Jews who died in the Maccabees' battle against the Seleucid Empire . Its alleged tradition included a lion guarding the bones, from which the Muslim martyr's cave was given the Jewish name "lion's den". The officer in question similarly rededicated many other religious sites of Muslims to holy sites of Judaism, since the sites in the Jordanian-occupied part of Jerusalem were not accessible to Jews from 1948 to 1967. In addition, these rededications were an attempt on the one hand to erase Muslim history and on the other hand to construct historical legitimation for the Jewish presence. The "Lions' Den" was opened in 1954, but it met with criticism from the public and the religious establishment rejected the den as a blatant invention of a zealous official. It quickly became meaningless again, especially since the holy places in East Jerusalem have been under Israeli administration since 1967.

architecture

Grave of Hasan al-Nashashibi, died 1903, opposite the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem

At the time of Mujir al-Din, several areas were spread across the grounds of the cemetery, including one for the followers of Abū Yazīd Taifūr ibn ʿĪsā al-Bistāmī , a Sufi mystic of the 9th century. Only one of the graves remains.

Zaouia al-Qalandariyya

In 1495, Mujir al-Din reported three mausoleums. According to him, a Byzantine chapel known as the Red Monastery was converted into a zaouia called al-Qalandariyya. The structure, erected around 1387 to 1398, collapsed in 1487 or 1488. The Palace Hotel (today Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem) was built on its site at the end of the 1920s.

Zaouia al-Kubakiyya

Zaouia al-Kubakiyya
Interior with sarcophagus

At the eastern end of the Mamilla cemetery is the free-standing mausoleum of the emir ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Aydughdī al-Kubakī ( al-Kebekiyeh or Zaouia al-Kubakiyya ). Al-Kubakī had been appointed by Baibars I in 1266 as governor of Safed , which was retaken by the Knights Templar . He was later appointed governor of Aleppo by Qalawun , but only held this office from 1279 to October 1280. He was then imprisoned, released and retired to Jerusalem, where he died in 1289.

The building, with a square floor plan of around six by six meters, has a cylindrical top made of four layers of stone and a protruding cornice with a cavity on the upper edge. The top of the cylinder is closed with a dome. Three walls of the mausoleum have windows, the north-west facing wall is the entrance. The tympanum is adorned by a lying three-pass open at the bottom , in the upper arc of which there is a rectangular cartouche with a dedication. The dedication in Arabic script names the name of the deceased and the date of his death, the 5th Ramaḍān 688 (September 22, 1289). A large relief arch, the ends of which rest on two brackets at the level of the top edge of the door, is attached above the entrance. The door and windows were locked by the city government in 1975 to prevent homeless people from entering. Two simple stone benches that flanked the entrance were removed a few years ago. In the middle of the interior there is a stone sarcophagus . In the wall facing Mecca there is a simple mihrāb between two windows of recent times , the window niches are closed with pointed arches at the top. Viewed from the inside, it can be seen that the transition from the square floor plan of the mausoleum to the cylindrical tower takes place in two stages, from square to an octagon to a circle.

The mausoleum combines elements of the architecture of the Crusaders and the Mamluks. The arch above the entrance, the now missing stone benches on its sides and the dedication above the door are typical elements of the Mamluk architecture. On the other hand, the pointed arches above the windows, the three-pass outside above the door, the consoles as the end of the relief arch, the cornice with a cavity and the sarcophagus inside are spoils - in the material or ideal sense - that were taken from the architecture of the Crusaders. The Islamic population of Jerusalem must have known the importance of al-Kubakī in the fight against the Crusaders. In this respect, the use of elements of crusader architecture can also be understood as a symbol of the triumph of Islam over the Christian conquerors.

The most extensive speculations on the building history of the mausoleum name an early Christian chapel, which was dedicated to St. Mamilla. A burial chapel was built in its place at the time of the Crusades, in which the deceased canons of the Holy Sepulcher were buried. The outer walls of this chapel were used at the end of the 13th century to build the mausoleum of al-Kubakī. The entire gate therefore comes from Christian times.

Tomb of Sheikh Ahmad al-Dajani

Tomb of Sheikh Ahmad al-Dajani

On the southwestern edge of the Independence Park is the tomb of Sheikh Ahmad al-Dajani (allegedly 1459–1561). Al-Dajani is referred to in some sources as a descendant of the Prophet Mohammad because of his relationship with ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib . According to tradition, he was an eminent scholar and Sufi master with many disciples. According to a document from the Sharia court from 1560, Sheikh Ahmad al-Dajani was entrusted by Suleyman I with the supervision of the newly discovered tomb of David . This task was passed on to his descendants, who began with al-Dajani with the addition of al-Daoudi to their name . Until Israel declared independence in 1948, members of the family lived in the immediate vicinity of David's tomb.

Al-Dajani's mausoleum dates from the mid-16th century. Photographs from 1933 still show an extension that no longer exists today. The list of graves in the Mamilla Cemetery, compiled in 1945 by the Supreme Council of Muslims, listed several graves of the al-Dajani family in the immediate vicinity of the mausoleum, including graves of two sons of al-Dajani from the 16th century. Today there are no more references to these graves. The building was illegally occupied in 1986 by a criminal , the al-Dajani family. The occupier removed the sarcophagus, hung mirrors on the walls and opened a restaurant. It was not until 2012 that the family regained control of the mausoleum after long legal battles and renovated it at their own expense. A new tombstone was placed during the renovation, the mausoleum has remained closed since then.

Gravestone of Sheikh Abdallah al-Qureishi

Only a few meters from the tomb of Sheikh Ahmad al-Dajani is the tombstone of Sheikh Abdallah al-Qureishi. Born around 1150 in Algeciras , al-Qureishi came from Spain via Egypt to Jerusalem, where he taught more than 600 students as a Sufi master. After his death in 1202 he was buried in the Mamilla cemetery. Al-Qureishi's reputation as one of the most important Sufis of his time led to the fact that his grave quickly became a place of pilgrimage and was mentioned by Mujir al-Din and other historians. Sheikh Abdallah al-Qureishi's tombstone is a special testimony to Islamic sepulchral culture . At some point it was moved here from the actual grave, directly next to the location of the Museum of Tolerance.

While ordinary tombstones only contain the al-Fātiha , the name of the deceased, a blessing formula dedicated to him and the year of his death, some inscriptions also show a verse from the Koran . Only particularly important personalities were honored with a tombstone that honors the deceased in poetic verse. According to historical reports, al-Qureishi's tomb was renovated in 1332. The tombstone that exists today dates from 1557 and contains six verses in honor of al-Qureishi, in which the Mamilla cemetery is explicitly mentioned as his resting place. Although al-Qureishi was an Arab and died long before the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem, the inscription is in Turkish. This reflects the Ottoman tradition of making the graves of Sufi masters and other important Islamic scholars as holy places for pilgrimage destinations, and of caring for and equipping the graves accordingly.

Mamilla pelvis

Mamilla Basin, 2005

In the center of the remaining part of the cemetery is the Mamilla Basin , an ancient pool of water that is 89 to 97 meters long, 59 to 65 meters wide and six meters deep, according to various sources. In the rainy season, it was fed by the water that flowed down from the surrounding hills. It probably served as a reservoir for Jerusalem's water supply and was connected underground and through aqueducts to the Hezekiah Basin and Sultan's Pool .

Byzantine cistern

Openings of the Byzantine cistern

In Independence Park, directly on Menashe ben Israel Street, which runs between the park and the Mamilla cemetery, there is a Byzantine cistern that was discovered during excavations in 2012. The excavations provided evidence that the cavity was used as a two-story tomb with excavated chambers in the 4th to 7th centuries. Around the year 700 the building was converted into a cistern . For this purpose, the walls and floors of the burial chambers were removed in order to obtain a continuous space, and several openings to the surface were made in the vault. It was used as a cistern until the late 18th or 19th century. The cavity was then used as a lounge, with a tunnel connection to the newly built rooms east of the cistern, and was finally forgotten.

literature

General

  • Gideon Avni: The Persian Conquest of Jerusalem (614 ce) - An Archaeological Assessment . In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research . No. 357 , 2010, p. 35-48 , JSTOR : 27805159 .
  • Frederick C. Conybeare : Antiochus Strategos' Account of the Sack of Jerusalem in AD 614 . In: The English Historical Review . tape XXV , XCIX, 1910, p. 502-517 , doi : 10.1093 / ehr / XXV.XCIX.502 ( tertullian.org ).
  • Ahmad Mahmoud, Anna Veeder: Hidden Heritage. A Guide to the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem . 2016, doi : 10.13140 / RG.2.2.20070.01600 .
  • Charmaine Seitz: Paradise and Gehenna Keep Close Company in the Sanctuary of God . In: Jerusalem Quarterly . tape 21 , 2004, p. 59–65 ( palestine-studies.org [PDF; 2.5 MB ]).

architecture

Conflict over the Museum of Tolerance

  • Critical Inquiry , Spring 2010:
    • WYD Mitchell : Editor's Note . In: Critical Inquiry . tape 36 , no. 3 , 2010, p. 517-518 , doi : 10.1086 / 653410 .
    • Saree Makdisi: The Architecture of Erasure . In: Critical Inquiry . tape 36 , no. 3 , 2010, p. 519-559 , doi : 10.1086 / 653411 .
    • Frank Gehry : Critical Response I: Response to Saree Makdisi's “The Architecture of Erasure” . In: Critical Inquiry . tape 36 , no. 3 , 2010, p. 560-562 , doi : 10.1086 / 653412 .
    • Raphael Israeli, Shmuel Berkovits, Jacques Neriah, Marvin Hier : Critical Response II: “The Architecture of Erasure” —Fantasy or Reality? In: Critical Inquiry . tape 36 , no. 3 , 2010, p. 563–594 , doi : 10.1086 / 653413 (with several photos of Gehry's design).
    • Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe : Critical Response III: Response to Saree Makdisi's “The Architecture of Erasure” . In: Critical Inquiry . tape 36 , no. 3 , 2010, p. 595-600 , doi : 10.1086 / 653414 .
    • Daniel Bertrand Monk: Critical Response IV: The Intractability Lobby: Material Culture and the Interpretation of the Israel / Palestine Conflict . In: Critical Inquiry . tape 36 , no. 3 , 2010, p. 601-608 , doi : 10.1086 / 653415 .
    • Saree Makdisi: Critical Response V: Letter to the Editors . In: Critical Inquiry . tape 36 , no. 3 , 2010, p. 609-618 , doi : 10.1086 / 653416 .
  • Campaign to Preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery (Ed.): Petition for Urgent Action on Human Rights Violations in Mamilla Cemetery by Israel . 2010 ( ccrjustice.org [PDF; 5.0 MB ]).
  • Erik Freas: Archeology and Creating Facts on the Ground . In: Nationalism and the Haram al-Sharif / Temple Mount. The Exclusivity of Holiness . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland 2017, ISBN 978-3-319-49919-2 , chap. 8 , p. 113-138 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-319-49920-8_8 .
  • Nazmi Jubeh: The Bab al-Rahmah Cemetery: Israeli Encroachment Continues Unabated . In: Journal of Palestine Studies . tape 48 , no. 1 , 2018, p. 88-103 , doi : 10.1525 / jps.2018.48.1.88 .
  • Asem Khalidi: The Mamilla Cemetery; A buried history . In: Jerusalem Quarterly . tape 37 , 2009, p. 104–109 ( palestine-studies.org [PDF; 325 kB ]).
  • Noam Leshem: “Over our dead bodies”: Placing necropolitical activism . In: Political Geography . tape 45 , 2015, p. 34–44 , doi : 10.1016 / j.polgeo.2014.09.003 .
  • Yossi Nagar: Bone reburial in Israel: legal restrictions and methodological implications . In: Cressida Fforde, Jane Hubert, Paul Turnbull (ed.): The Dead and their Possessions: Repatriation in principle, policy and practice (= Martin Hall, Julian Thomas, Peter Stone [ed.]: One World Archeology . Volume 43 ). Routledge, London, New York 2004, ISBN 0-415-34449-2 , chap. 6 , p. 87-90 .
  • Qadi Ahmad Natour: The battle over the Muslim cemeteries in Israel . In: Marshall J. Breger, Yitzhak Reiter, Leonard Hammer (Eds.): Sacred Space in Israel and Palestine. Religion and politics (=  Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics . Volume 41 ). Routledge, London, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-415-78315-6 , chap. 8 .
  • Ahmad Natour: Israel's Seizure of Islamic Endowments (Awqaf) . In: Nadim N. Rouhana, Areej Sabbagh-Khoury (Ed.): The Palestinians in Israel. Readings in History, Politics and Society . tape 2 . Mada al-Carmel. Arab Center for Applied Social Research, Haifa 2018, p. 85–100 ( mada-research.org [PDF; 1.7 MB ]).
  • Yitzhak rider: Allah's Safe Haven? The Controversy Surrounding the Mamilla Cemetery and the Museum of Tolerance. Contesting Domination over the Symbolic and Physical Landscapes . The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, Jerusalem 2011.
  • Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead. Mamilla Cemetery and the MOT . In: Yitzhak Reiter (Ed.): Contested holy places in Israel / Palestine. Sharing and conflict resolution (=  Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics . Volume 41 ). Routledge, London, New York 2017, ISBN 978-1-138-24349-1 , chap. 8 , p. 156-181 .
  • Liv G. Nilsson Stutz: The Noah Complex and Archeology in the Holy Land: The Case of the Mamilla Cemetery and the Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity . In: Heritage & Society . tape 5 , no. 2 , 2012, p. 221–248 , doi : 10.1179 / hso.2012.5.2.221 .
  • Gideon Sulimani, Raz Kletter: Bone Considerations: Archeology, Heritage, and Ethics at Mamilla, Jerusalem . In: International Journal of Cultural Property . tape 24 , no. 3 , 2017, p. 321-350 , doi : 10.1017 / S0940739117000157 .
  • Shaira Vadasaria: Necronationalism: managing race, death and the nation's skeletons . In: Social Identities . tape 21 , no. 2 , 2015, p. 117-131 , doi : 10.1080 / 13504630.2015.1041014 .
  • Maria LaHood and Rashid Khalidi on Zionist Excavations at the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem . In: J. Kēhaulani Kauanui (Ed.): Speaking of Indigenous Politics. Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders (=  Indigenous Americas ). University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, London 2018, ISBN 978-1-5179-0477-7 , pp. 171-184 .

Web links

Commons : Mamilla Cemetery  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Tawfiq Da'ādli: Mamlūk Epitaphs from Māmillā Cemetery .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Hamdi Nubani: Mamilla Cemetery. Historical Tombstones in Arabic .
  3. ^ A b Moshe Gil : A history of Palestine, 634-1099 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne 1992, ISBN 0-521-40437-1 , Section 836, pp. 633-634 .
  4. ↑ a b Gideon Avni: The Persian Conquest of Jerusalem .
  5. ^ Frederick C. Conybeare: Antiochus Strategos' Account of the Sack of Jerusalem in AD 614 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e Nazmi Jubeh: The Bab al-Rahmah Cemetery: Israeli Encroachment Continues Unabated .
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Ahmad Mahmoud, Anna Veeder: Hidden Heritage. A Guide to the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem .
  8. ↑ a b c d e Hana Taragan: Mamluk Patronage, Crusader Spolia .
  9. ↑ a b c d Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , p. 157.
  10. ^ A b c d Charles Clermont-Ganneau : Archaeological Researches in Palestine during the years 1873–1874 .
  11. ^ Brian Schultz: The Archaeological Heritage of the Jerusalem Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion . In: Palestine Exploration Quarterly . tape 136 , no. 1 , 2004, p. 57-74 , doi : 10.1179 / 003103204225014201 .
  12. ^ A b c Charmaine Seitz: Paradise and Gehenna Keep Close Company in the Sanctuary of God .
  13. ^ A b Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , p. 158.
  14. ↑ a b Yitzhak Reiter: Islamic endowments in Jerusalem under British mandate . Routledge, London, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-7146-4670-1 , pp. 196 .
  15. ↑ a b c d e f Hans-Christian Rößler: Tolerance Museum Jerusalem: At some point my grave also disappeared. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . July 21, 2011, accessed December 31, 2019 .
  16. ↑ a b c d Asem Khalidi: The Mamilla Cemetery; A buried history .
  17. ↑ a b c Götz Aly : Strange in Jerusalem. In: Berliner Zeitung . July 19, 2011, accessed December 31, 2019 .
  18. ↑ Andrew I. Killgore: Vignettes From Jerusalem the Golden . In: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs . April / May, 1997, p. 34-35 ( wrmea.org ).
  19. ^ Souad R. Dajani: Ruling Palestine, A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine . The Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights, Geneva, Bethlehem 2005, ISBN 92-95004-29-9 , pp. 37–55 ( badil.org [PDF; 1.9 MB ]).
  20. ↑ a b c Haitam Suleiman, Robert Home: 'God is an Absentee, Too': The Treatment of Waqf (Islamic Trust) Land in Israel / Palestine . In: The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law . tape 41 , no. 59 , 2009, p. 49-65 , doi : 10.1080 / 07329113.2009.10756629 .
  21. ↑ a b c Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , p. 159.
  22. ↑ a b c d e f g Qadi Ahmad Natour: The battle over the Muslim cemeteries in Israel .
  23. ↑ a b Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , pp. 159-160.
  24. ↑ a b Ahmad Natour: Israel's Seizure of Islamic Endowments (Awqaf) .
  25. ↑ a b c d e f g h Raphael Israeli et al .: Critical Response II: “The Architecture of Erasure” —Fantasy or Reality? ( Critical Inquiry , Spring 2010).
  26. ↑ a b Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , p. 173.
  27. ↑ a b c d e Saree Makdisi: The Architecture of Erasure ( Critical Inquiry , Spring 2010).
  28. ^ A b Yossi Nagar: Bone reburial in Israel: legal restrictions and methodological implications .
  29. ↑ a b Saree Makdisi: A Museum of Tolerance we don't need. In: Los Angeles Times . February 12, 2010, accessed June 10, 2015 .
  30. ↑ a b c d e Liv G. Nilsson Stutz: The Noah Complex and Archeology in the Holy Land: The Case of the Mamilla Cemetery and the Museum of Tolerance and Human Dignity .
  31. ↑ a b c d Gideon Sulimani, Raz Kletter: Bone Considerations: Archeology, Heritage, and Ethics at Mamilla, Jerusalem .
  32. ↑ a b c David Keane, Valentina Azarov: UNESCO, Palestine, and Archeology in Conflict . In: Denver Journal of International Law & Policy . tape 41 , no. 3 , p. 309-343 , doi : 10.2139 / ssrn.2297291 .
  33. ^ A b Campaign to Preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery: Petition for Urgent Action on Human Rights Violations in Mamilla Cemetery by Israel .
  34. ↑ a b c Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , p. 160.
  35. ↑ a b c d Frank Gehry : Critical Response I: Response to Saree Makdisi's “The Architecture of Erasure” ( Critical Inquiry , Spring 2010).
  36. ↑ Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , pp 160-161.
  37. ↑ a b c d Noam Leshem: “Over our dead bodies”: Placing necropolitical activism .
  38. ↑ Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , pp 162-163.
  39. ↑ a b Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , p. 163.
  40. ↑ Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , pp 163-164.
  41. ↑ Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , S. 175th
  42. ↑ Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , pp 176-177.
  43. ↑ a b Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , p. 164.
  44. ↑ Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , S. 177th
  45. ^ Campaign to Protect Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem. In: Center for Constitutional Rights . July 5, 2015, accessed January 1, 2020 .
  46. ^ Melanie Lidman: Museum of Tolerance gets final go-ahead. In: Jerusalem Post . July 13, 2011, accessed January 10, 2020 .
  47. ↑ Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , pp 164-165.
  48. ^ Raphael Israeli: Jerusalem Divided. The Armistice Regime 1947-1967 . Routledge, Abingdon, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-7146-5266-5 , pp. 115 .
  49. ^ Eve Spangler: Understanding Israel / Palestine. Race, Nation, and Human Rights in the Conflict . Ed .: Patricia Leavy (=  Teaching Race and Ethnicity . Band 3 ). Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei 2015, ISBN 978-94-6300-087-1 , pp. 61 .
  50. ^ Erik Freas: Archeology and Creating Facts on the Ground .
  51. ↑ Yitzhak Reiter: Museumizing over the Dead , S. 174th
  52. ^ Marshall J. Breger, Yitzhak Reiter, Leonard Hammer: Introduction . In: Marshall J. Breger, Yitzhak Reiter, Leonard Hammer (Eds.): Sacred Space in Israel and Palestine. Religion and politics (=  Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics . Volume 41 ). Routledge, London, New York 2012, ISBN 978-0-415-78315-6 , chap. 8 .
  53. ↑ a b Shaira Vadasaria: Necronationalism: managing race, death and the nation's skeletons .
  54. ^ Gideon Bar: Reconstructing the Past: The Creation of Jewish Sacred Space in the State of Israel, 1948-1967 . In: Israel Studies . tape 13 , no. 3 , 2008, p. 1-21 , JSTOR : 30245829 .
  55. ^ A b Franz Ollendorff : Two Mamlūk Tomb Chambers in Western Jerusalem .

Coordinates: 31 ° 46 ′ 41 ″  N , 35 ° 13 ′ 14 ″  E