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Coordinates: 31°46′35.93″N 35°14′2.75″E / 31.7766472°N 35.2340972°E / 31.7766472; 35.2340972
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Revision as of 21:22, 4 January 2019

The Moroccan Quarter between 1898 and 1946.

The Moroccan Quarter[1] or Mughrabi Quarter [2] (Arabic: حارَة المَغارِبة Hārat al-Maghāriba, Hebrew: שכונת המוגרבים, Sh'khunat HaMughrabim) was a 770-year-old neighborhood in the southeast corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, bordering on the western wall of the Temple Mount on the east, the Old City walls on the south (including the Dung Gate) and the Jewish Quarter to the west. It was an extension of the Muslim Quarter to the north, and was founded as an endowed Islamic waqf or religious property by a son of Saladin in the late 12th century.[a]

The quarter was razed by Israeli forces, at the behest of Teddy Kollek, the mayor of West Jerusalem, who had no official jurisdiction in this area of East Jerusalem, three days after the Six-Day War in order to broaden the narrow alley leading to the Western Wall and prepare it for public access by Jews seeking to pray there.[4]

History

Ayyubid and Mamluk eras

According to the 15th-century historian Mujir ad-Din, the quarter was established in 1193 by Saladin's son al-Malik al-Afdal, as a waqf (charitable trust) dedicated to Moroccan immigrants; he also established a school there, the Afdaliyyah.[5] Later pious Moroccan donors extended this with several other waqfs: in 1303, one Umar ibn Abdullah ibn Abdun-Nabi al-Masmudi al-Mujarrad endowed the al-Masmudia zaouia (religious school) for the benefit of Moroccans living in the Moroccan Quarter, while in 1320 Shuayb ibn Muhammad ibn Shuayb, a grandson of the major Sufi Abu Madyan, endowed a second zaouia there to be funded by his lands at Ain Karim. In 1352, the Marinid sultan of Morocco, Abu Inan Faris, established a smaller waqf—a Qur'an donated to the al-Aqsa Mosque, together with a representative to ensure that it was read from regularly.[6] [7]

Ottoman era

The Jewish and Moroccan quarters
Moroccan neighborhood dwellings bordering the Western Wall, 1898–1914

According to the French traveler Chateaubriand who visited in 1806, some of the residents of the quarter were descended from Moors who had been expelled from Spain in the late 15th century. They had been well received by the local community and a mosque had been built for them. [8] Residents of the neighborhood held on to their culture in the way of food, clothing and traditions until it became assimilated with the rest of the Old City in the 19th century.[9] Thus it also became a natural place of stay to Moroccans who came on pilgrimage to the al-Aqsa Mosque.[9]

Taxation registers listed 13 households in the quarter in 1525–26, 69 households, 1 bachelor and 1 imam in 1538–39, 84 households and 11 bachelors in 1553–34, 130 households and 2 bachelors in 1562–63, and 126 households and 7 bachelors in 1596–97.[10]

Over the years a small number of schools and mosques were established in the quarter and Muslim clerics who performed religious duties at the al-Aqsa Mosque lived there.[9]

Buildings in the quarter were only four meters away from the Wailing Wall (now known as the Western Wall), a remnant of the Second Temple plaza and the holiest most important place of pilgrimage for Jews. Public access to the wall was through a narrow passage from King David's Street, sometimes leading to disputes between the Jewish worshipers, jostling for space, and the residents, who complained of the noise.[11] The Moroccans, who regarded the Jews as infidels, subjected them to harassment and extracted payment in return for allowing them to pray undisturbed.[12]

In an account of his travels to the Holy Land in 1845, T. Tobler noted the existence of a mosque in the Moroccan quarter.[13]

In 1887 an attempt to buy the Moroccan Quarter was made by Baron Rothschild who conceived a plan to purchase the quarter and rebuild it as "a merit and honor to the Jewish People"[14] and to rehouse the inhabitants in better accommodation elsewhere.[15] The proposed purchase was approved by the Ottoman Governor of Jerusalem, Rauf Pasha, and by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Tahir Husseini. After permission was obtained from the highest secular and Muslim religious authority [who?] to proceed, the plan was shelved because authorities [who?] banned any construction there, only permitting the planting of trees to beautify the area. Additionally they would not allow Jews to have full control over the area, as they might ask people to stop using the plaza for various activities that disturbed the worshipers, such as "driving mules."[14] Other reports claim the plan fell through because of speculations that it would trigger a negative Arab reaction.[16]

In the first two months after the Ottoman Empire’s entry into the First World War, the Turkish governor of Jerusalem, Zakey Bey, offered to sell the Moroccan Quarter, which consisted of about 25 houses, to the Jews in order to enlarge the area available to them for prayer. He requested a sum of £20,000 which would be used to both rehouse the Muslim families and to create a public garden in front of the Wall. However, the Jews of the city lacked the necessary funds.[17]

British Mandate era

In 1918, Chaim Weizmann, then a prominent Zionist leader, sent a letter to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office asking for the quarter to be vacated and the wall placed under Jewish ownership; however, the British maintained the status quo ante. The wall as well as the Moroccan Quarter remained Waqf property, while Jews retained their longstanding right to visit it.[citation needed] After the 1929 Palestine riots, Great Britain appointed a commission under the approval of the League of Nations to settle the issue. The Commission again reaffirmed the status quo, while placing certain restrictions on activities, including forbidding Jews from conducting the Yom Kippur prayers (the holiest holiday in Judaism), which involved the blowing of the Shofar, and Muslims from carrying out the Thikr (Islamic prayers) close to the wall or to cause annoyance to the Jews.[11]

Jordanian era

When Jordanian forces emerged as the victors in the battle for possession of the Old City in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, 1,500 Jewish residents, coinciding with the flight or expulsion of 70,000 Palestinians from Israeli-occupied areas of Jerusalem, were expelled from the Jewish Quarter, which was in the vicinity of the Moroccan zone.[b]

In 1965, Palestinian squatters in Jewish properties on the edge of the Moroccan Quarter were evicted by the Jordanian government and resettled in the Shu'afat refugee camp, four kilometers north of the Old City. The motives behind this ejection are unknown.[19]

State of Israel

Clearing the plaza in front of the "Wailing Wall", July 1967

On Saturday evening, 10 June 1967, three days after the Israeli army had captured the Old City of Jerusalem, on the last day of the Six-Day War, 650 residents of the Moroccan Quarter were told to vacate their homes on short notice. Workers guarded by soldiers first demolished a public lavatory upon the Western Wall, and then the remaining buildings,[20] which included 135 houses and the Bou Medyan zaouia. Some of the residents refused to leave until their homes were collapsing. An elderly woman discovered in the rubble died soon after.[21]

The Sheikh Eid Mosque, one of the few mosques remaining from the time of Saladin, was also destroyed before its historic significance was identified by the Israel Antiquities Authority.[22]

The demolition was approved by the Mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek, who wrote about it in his 1978 autobiography.[23][24] In a letter to the United Nations, the Israeli government stated that the buildings were demolished after the Jordanian government had allowed the neighborhood to become a slum area.[25] The work was done quickly in anticipation of a huge crowd of Jewish worshipers, who would be able to pray at the wall for the first time in 19 years. [26] Lieutenant Colonel Yaakov Salman, the deputy military governor in charge of the operation, aware of possible legal trouble on account of the Geneva Convention, had brought documents from the East Jerusalem municipality testifying to the poor sanitary conditions in the neighborhood and Jordanian plans to eventually evacuate it.[20] According to one source, the retired Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion played a pivotal role in the decision to demolish the quarter. He visited the Wall, with Shimon Peres, the day after the Old City had been captured and protested at the presence of a sign in Arabic.

He noticed a tile sign in front of the Wall, which read "Al-Burak Road" in English and Arabic but not in Hebrew, It was a reminder of the prophet Mohammad's legendary horse, Buraq, left tethered by the Wall as the prophet took his journey to heaven from the famous rock above. Ben-Gurion looked at the sign with disapproval and asked if anyone had a hammer. A soldier tried to pry off the tile with a bayonet, but Ben-Gurion was concerned about damage to the stone. An axe was produced and the name on the rile carefully removed. The symbolism of expunging Arabic from the redeemed Jewish holy site was not lost on the surrounding crowd, or on Ben-Gurion. They cheered, and Ben-Gurion exclaimed, " This is the greatest moment of my life since I came to Israel.'[27]

In aan ccount by Ya’akov Yannai, head of the National Parks Authority in June 1967 and personally involved in organizing the demolition, it was Ben-Gurion himself whu inspired and encouraged the razing of the Moroccan area.[28] Ben-Gurion also proposed that the walls of the Old City be demolished on account of them having no Jewish significance, but the government did not take up the idea.[28]

On April 18, 1968, the Israeli government expropriated the land for public use and paid 200 Jordanian dinars to each family that had been displaced.[29][23] A group of former residents wrote to Kollek to thank him for his assistance in resettling them in better housing conditions.[30]

A complex of buildings close to the wall, that included Madrasa Fakhriya and the house that the Abu al-Sa'ud family had occupied since the 16th century, were spared in the 1967 destruction, but demolished in 1969.[31][32]

The prayer site was extended southwards to double its length from 28 to 60 meters, and the original plaza of four meters to 40 meters: the small 120 square meter area in front of the wall became the Western Wall Plaza, now in use as an open-air synagogue covering 20,000 square meters.[23]

In the post-1967 period, many of the residents emigrated to Morocco with the assistance of King Hassan II.[29] Other families resettled in the Shu'afat refugee camp and other parts of Jerusalem.[29]

Notes

  1. ^ 'one of the best documented endowments, one that embraced the entire quarter of Western muslims or Maghrebis.'[3]
  2. ^ 'Intense fighting took place in the vicinity of this quarter between Zionist forces sent to wrest this area from the Jordanian forces. The former were eventually defeated in the summer of 1948. They and the 1,500 Jewish civilians living in this part of the Old City were expelled (the non-combatants were sent across the frontier that divided the city between Israeli and Jordanian held sectors, while the Jewish soldiers were held and then released as few months later). The flight of these 1,500 Jews coincided with the forced removal of 700,000 Arabs from areas of historic Palestine conquered by Israel in 1948, including 70,000 from Jerusalem.'[18]

Citations

  1. ^ Aboud 2000, p. 6.
  2. ^ Hilterman 1995, p. 55.
  3. ^ Peters 2017, p. 357.
  4. ^ Gorenberg 2007, p. 42.
  5. ^ Peters 2017, p. 358.
  6. ^ Peters 2017, pp. 357–359.
  7. ^ Tibawi 1978, pp. 10–15.
  8. ^ Chateaubriand 1812, p. 89.
  9. ^ a b c al-Tijani 2007.
  10. ^ Cohen & Lewis 2015, pp. 81–91.
  11. ^ a b "Report from the International Commission for the Wailing Wall", December 1930 (available as UN doc A/7057 - S/8427 at UNISPAL Archived 2007-12-28 at the Wayback Machine)
  12. ^ Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century: The Old City, Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi and St. Martin's Press, 1984 p.157
  13. ^ Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century: The Old City, Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi and St. Martin's Press, 1984 p.162–163
  14. ^ a b Rossoff, Dovid (1998). "Beyond the Walls: 1870–1900". Where Heaven Touches Earth. Jerusalem: Guardian Press. pp. g.331. ISBN 0-87306-879-3.
  15. ^ Martin Gilbert (2008). The Routledge Historical Atlas of Jerusalem: Fourth Edition. Routledge. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-415-43343-3. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  16. ^ Stockman-Shomron, Israel (1984). "Jerusalem in Islam: Faith and Politics". Israel, the Middle East and the Great Powers. Transaction Publishers. pp. g.43. ISBN 965-287-000-5.
  17. ^ Gilbert, Martin (1996). "War, 1914–1917". Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century. London: Chatto & Windus. pp. g.42. ISBN 0-7011-3070-9.
  18. ^ Aboud 2000, p. 8.
  19. ^ Aboud 2000, pp. 8–9.
  20. ^ a b Occupied territories: the untold stories of Israel's settlements, Gershom Gorenberg
  21. ^ Tom Segev (2007). 1967. Metropolitan Books. pp. 400–401.
  22. ^ Nit Hasson (June 15, 2012). "Rare photograph reveals ancient Jerusalem mosque destroyed in 1967". Haaretz.
  23. ^ a b c "Simone RIcca: Heritage, Nationalism and the Shifting Symbolism of the Wailing Wall", Jerusalem Quarterly (Summer 2005/24), Institute of Jerusalem Studies (retrieved August 17, 2007)
  24. ^ "Teddy Kollek and the Native Question", Joost R. Hiltermann, Middle East Report 05-06/1993 (available at "Archived copy". Archived from the original on December 1, 1998. Retrieved 2013-03-26. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link))
  25. ^ Letter to the Secretary General Archived 2010-03-01 at the Wayback Machine, letter from the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, March 6, 1968 (retrieved August 25, 2007)
  26. ^ Aboud 2000, p. 9.
  27. ^ Hulme 2006, p. 9.
  28. ^ a b Paula Kabalo (2018). "City with No Walls: David Ben-Gurion's Jerusalem Vision Post-June 1967". Modern Judaism. 38 (2). "[Yannai said:] the person who can take credit for expanding the area of the Wall is Ben-Gurion as opposed to those who claim it for themselves. That's because if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have done it and the others wouldn't have either.
  29. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference jq7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  30. ^ Yonah Alexander; Nicholas N. Kittrie (June 1973). Crescent and star: Arab & Israeli perspectives on the Middle East conflict. AMS Press. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-404-10522-8. Retrieved 29 May 2013. The following is the text of a letter dated 8 January 1968, addressed by forty-one heads of families to the Mayor of Jerusalem, Mr. Kollek: We, the undersigned, who constitute part of the residents of the Jewish Quarter and of the Moroccan Quarter in the Old City, who were evacuated from our homes there as a result of the six-day-war, wish to thank His Honor, as well as Mr. Meron Benvenisti, in charge of East Jerusalem, and Mr. Faris Ayub, head of the public relations bureau in the eastern part of the city, for the financial aid and human care which was extended and is still being extended to us, which impressed us profoundly and which afforded us and our families more decent alternative accommodations. We pray God will grant you long life and a continuance of your good deeds.
  31. ^ Reinventing Jerusalem:Israel's Reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter after 1967, Simone Ricca, pp. 67–113
  32. ^ Robert Schick. "Mamluk and Ottoman Jerusalem". In Gideon Avni and Katharina Galor (ed.). Unearthing Jerusalem: 150 Years of Archaeological Research in the Holy City. pp. 475–490.

Sources


31°46′35.93″N 35°14′2.75″E / 31.7766472°N 35.2340972°E / 31.7766472; 35.2340972

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