CONTROVERSY OVER MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE EXCAVATION:

Israelis won't stop dig at Muslim cemetery
2/8/2006, 9:53 p.m. CT
By LAURIE COPANS
The Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — A dispute over the fate of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem threatened Wednesday to ignite tensions in Holy City as workers removed skeletons from the site despite Muslim pleas for the work to end.

Israeli developers and archaeologists are removing the tombs to make room for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center to build a multi-million-dollar Museum of Tolerance, dedicated in part to promoting understanding among different religions. Muslims are incensed.

Mufti Ikrema Sabri, the senior Islamic cleric in Jerusalem, on Wednesday demanded that the dig stop at the site which until 1948 served as the main Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.

I've been following this story for a while, but haven't posted it, since I couldn't figure what "ancient" meant in this context. To the press, it seems often to mean anything more than a couple hundred years old. But this comment puts it as far back as the time of Muhammad:

"There should be a complete cessation of work on the cemetery because it is sacred for the Muslims," Sabri told The Associated Press. The Waqf, the Muslim council in Jerusalem that Sabri oversees, was not consulted on the dig, he said. The cemetery was in use for 15 decades and friends of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad are buried there, Sabri said.

UPDATE: Archaeologist David Stacey e-mails to reproach me:

Jim, You really should not be so blase about the destruction of the Muslim cemetery in gan ha-azmaut (independence park) which was in use until 1948. The graves, around one corner of the Mamilla Pool, are reasonably well preserved, many with engraved inscriptions, and include a number from the Mameluk and Ottoman periods, in particular a mausoleum dated 1289 CE. These can be seen at
http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/sbf/escurs/Ger/15escursEn.html

The park also includes several second-temple Jewish cave-tombs, generally in poor condition (I helped excavate one many years ago [David adds in a second message: "the tomb I excavated was not, now that I think about it, in Independence Park itself but in the garden further south behind the King David Hotel. However there are second temple tombs in the Park"]). Imagine the furore that would break out if a well-preserved and previously unknown Jewish tomb complete with skeletons was discovered during construction work!

Fair enough, and thanks for the additional info. I had meant to add a request for more information to the end of the post and forgot to put it in. I didn't mean to imply that the site was only important if it was ancient in the technical sense; just that I try to keep my comments focused mostly on the archaeology of that period. There are lots of stories I am concerned about that don't end up on PaleoJudaica.

But I should have said more than I did. Bear with me: you may have noticed that posting has been light this week. It's the first week of classes and a very busy administrative time. And, to top it off, in the last few days I've had a massive hay fever attack (in February!) along with unpleasant side effects as I try new medications. (While I was writing this update, someone stopped by my office to show me another one to try.) In short, I've been struggling to post at all.

As to how responsibly this cemetery is being treated, there seems to be controversy, and I can't say I'm ready to take sides. There's plenty of salvage archaeology of Jewish sites too, and necessarily so. Is this site so important that the museum should be moved elsewhere? Maybe. Would someone like to e-mail me to argue that? But whatever the merits of the case, I will say that the decision to continue the excavations while waiting for the Supreme Court ruling doesn't seem to me to be good opening publicity for this museum.

UPDATE: David replies:

The cemetery was in use until 1948! The graves are perfectly visible although they show signs of lack of upkeep. It's not as if they weren't known about and only showed up after construction work began.

Well, okay, but some of the media reports make it sound more complicated. A Chicago Tribune article says:

he 3-acre construction site is on part of what was once the sprawling Mamilla Cemetery, the largest Muslim graveyard in Jerusalem. In continuous use from the 12th Century until 1927, the cemetery contained hundreds of graves, including the tombs of scores of eminent Muslims: scholars, judges, fighters and holy men.

But after burials were stopped at the cemetery, it fell into disuse, and large parts of it were used for other purposes.

In the late 1920s, the Palestinian leader and mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, sanctioned the relocation of bones found during construction of a hotel built by the Supreme Muslim Council on former cemetery grounds.

A city park was built over much of the land in the 1960s, as well as schools and a hotel. In the 1980s a municipal parking lot was built in the area where the new museum is supposed to go up.

In its petition to the Israeli Supreme Court, the Al Aqsa Foundation, linked to the Islamic Movement, argues that under religious law, the sanctity of a Muslim cemetery is immutable and that it is forbidden to remove human remains or build on the area.

But expert opinions solicited by the Wiesenthal Center cite rulings by some prominent Muslim scholars permitting the use of abandoned cemetery land for farming or construction after the remains of the dead have decomposed, a period of more than 30 years.

Such a ruling obtained in 1964 enabled the construction of the park on most of the area of the Mamilla Cemetery, and similar rulings in 2001 allowed the clearing of cemeteries in Egypt for the construction of a ring road around Cairo, according to Shmuel Berkovitz, an Israeli attorney and expert on holy sites who submitted an opinion to the court.

And an Arutz Sheva article says the following:

The land for the project, which was purchased by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was a parking lot at the time of the sale, and according to Center spokesperson Hagai Elias, was not a cemetery. Muslim leaders maintain that the parking lot itself was built above the remnants of the cemetery.

I am not qualified to evaluate these claims. I blog, you decide.

David also reports that the site was a well-known cruising spot where gay Jews and Arabs could meet each other, which I suppose would not make the political situation any less complicated.

UPDATE: David replies:

Its a while since I was in J'lem and it wd appear from the articles you quote that the building site is somewhat to the north of the main cruising ground. However if the 'parking lot' is the one I think it must be I seem to remember some graves still visible next to it.
No Jewish cememtery still in use in the 20th century would ever be built on. And when development was going on near Gan Sacher for a yehiva (on ?Sderot Ben Zvi?) which required clearing a rock face at least one second temple tomb which was found was left incongruously intact between two buildings set back into the rock face on either side of it.