Moroccan Quarter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Moroccan Quarter or Mughrabi Quarter (Arabic حارة المغاربة Harat al-Maghariba) was a neighborhood in the southeast corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, bordering on the western wall of the Temple Mount on the east (including the Western Wall), the Old City walls on the south (including the Dung Gate), the Jewish Quarter to the west, and the Muslim Quarter to the north. It was first established by Saladin's son al-Malik al-Afdal, according to the 14th-century historian Mujir ud-Din, as a waqf (charitable trust) dedicated to Moroccans (or Maghrebis in general; the Arabic is ambiguous); he also established there a school, the Afdaliyyah. Later pious Moroccan donors extended this with several other waqfs: in 1303, one Umar ibn Abdullah ibn Abdun-Nabi al-Masmudi al-Mujarrad endowed a zaouia 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 al-Ghauth, endowed a second zaouia there to be funded by his lands at Ain Karim. In 1352, the Marinid king of Morocco himself, Ali ibn Uthman ibn Ya'qub ibn Abdul-Haqq, 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.
The Western Wall (or "Wailing Wall"), a remnant the Second Temple plaza, has been an important place of pilgrimage for Jews since the temple's destruction. Access to it was through a blind alley within the Moroccan Quarter, sometimes leading to tensions between the Jewish visitors, wanting easier access and more space, and the residents, who complained of the noise. With the onset of Zionism, these tensions increased. In 1918, Chaim Weizmann sent a letter to the British Foreign Office asking for the quarter to be removed and the wall placed under Jewish ownership; however, the British maintained the status quo ante, and the wall as well as the Moroccan Quarter remained Waqf property, while Jews retained their longstanding right to visit it. After the 1929 Palestine riots, a League of Nations commission was appointed to settle the issue, and again reaffirmed the status quo ante, while placing some restrictions on the timings of prayers, forbidding Jews from conducting the Yom Kippur prayers which involved the blowing of the Shofar.
After 1948, the quarter, with the rest of the Old City, passed into the hands of Jordan, and the adjacent Jewish Quarter was burned and demolished by the Jordanian Army. On June 7, 1967, Israel took it over in the Six Day War. Four days later, on June 11, Israel demolished the Moroccan Quarter, consisting of 135 houses, two mosques, and two zaouias. On April 18, 1968, it officially expropriated the land of the quarter for public use, along with the Jewish Quarter. In the Moroccan Quarter's place, it built a large plaza in front of the Western Wall.
[edit] References
- A. L. Tibawi, The Islamic Pious Foundations in Jerusalem. The Islamic Cultural Centre, London 1978. ISBN 0-9505957-1-3.
