Little is known about the erstwhile Moroccan Quarter in the Old City of Occupied Jerusalem, and the Moroccans who came here in the 12th century, drawn to the Holy Land by Al Aqsa Mosque. Set up in the 15th century, this historical area in the Old City became a melting pot of cultures until it was razed in 1967.
Western Wall circa 1900
Origins and Establishment
According to historian Vincent Lemire, the history of the Moroccan Quarter began in 1187, when Al-Afdal ibn Salah ad-Din, the eldest son of Salah al-Din (Saladin), collaborated with Sidi Abu Madyan, a Sufi of Andalusian origin, to establish an Islamic endowment (waqf) to care for pilgrims from the Maghreb (North Africa) passing through Jerusalem. This was part of a larger initiative to rebuild the city. A formal waqf document was later issued in 1320 by one of Abu Madyan’s descendants, forming the legal basis for the quarter.
“In 1475, the Moroccan Quarter was given as waqf [endowment] for the Moroccans by Sultan Salah Al Deen as a reward for their bravery during the Crusades and their crucial role in liberating Jerusalem. Several religious and scientific institutions were set up in the quarter, and they contributed much to the social, scientific and cultural development of the community in Jerusalem.”
Golden Age during the Ottoman Period
According to Lemire, the Moroccan Quarter experienced its golden age during the Ottoman period, during which the legal and financial standing of the waqf was significantly reinforced. The Ottoman central archives reflect a high level of support and endorsement for Abu Madyan’s waqf from Ottoman rulers. According to Lemire, this support stemmed from the centrality of Islamic law within the Ottoman administrative hierarchy and the significant interest the Ottoman state had in Jerusalem. Lemire’s meticulous exploration of archival documents revealed a healthy relationship between the waqf institution and the municipal authorities during the late Ottoman period. This relationship enabled the expansion of Abu Madyan’s waqf activities to serve not only North Africans but also the impoverished and orphans in the Holy City.
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Lemire was also able to extract glimpses of economic and social life in Jerusalem. Wages in Jerusalem remained low, while the operating costs of the waqf steadily increased. Maghrebi residents in Jerusalem worked in supervisory and security roles. The city's social life was characterized by intermingling between people from various backgrounds and orientations, contradicting the stereotypes often found in Orientalist literature.
Life in the Moroccan Quarter
Historically, most families resident in this quarter traced a genealogy back to the Maghrib. Pilgrimage or oppression in former lands brought many to Jerusalem. Over the course of several centuries, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Arabs from Palestine and elsewhere also took up residence in this quarter. The structures that comprised this neighborhood over the course of seven centuries were familial, religious, and social and were built mainly of stone and brick. Clustered densely together, these modest one and two story buildings enveloped a network of narrow alleyways that snaked through this largely poor neighborhood.
One thing that’s been lost is traditional attire. “The Moroccans in Jerusalem wore the traditional al qiftan - a hooded, long and loose flowing garment. Al qiftan is no longer popular among the Moroccans,” Al Tijani says. One former resident of the Moroccan Quarter, relates that in the days immediately following the Israeli entry into the Old City, the entire neighborhood was put under strict curfew. Palestinians were confined to their homes while their new "masters"-Israeli planners, politicians, and generals-met to determine the fate of their quarter and the Old City as a whole.
Dr Amin Tijani is the son of a man who journeyed to Palestine from Morocco in the 1920s. Tijani recalls how Jews and Muslims from Morocco lived together in the Moroccan Quarter. “My father bought a house in West Jerusalem in Katamon in 1947, but it was taken by Jews in 1948. We have documents proving that it belongs to us. Today four Moroccan Jews live there. In the Moroccan Quarter, Muslims and Jews both from Morocco lived together. My father told me about the time when I was an infant and had fallen ill. A Jewish doctor from the Quarter had treated my illness.”
Noura Al Tijani adds, “Initially, the Moroccans added a new tinge in the diverse Palestinian society. We then integrated into the community. Today, we can talk about a Moroccan community in Palestine only in the pre-Occupation period. The contemporary Moroccan presence in Palestine consists of Palestinian families whose roots go back to North Africa. These families are not very different from local Palestinians. “Despite Moroccans’ smooth integration into the Palestinian society, they still retain many of their traditions, especially those related to food, clothing and Ramadan rituals. If you’re invited to a Moroccan house during Ramadan, you will be greeted by the aroma of Al Harira soup. The soup is known for its exquisite taste and high nutritional value. You will also find on the Moroccan table a special dish called maftool or cuscusoon, made of semolina and wheat, and cooked in steam. A sauce of onion, meat and vegetables is also served with maftool to make a delicious dish.”
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700 Year Old Moroccan Quarter Torn Down to Make Place for Plaza - 1967 Jerusalem
The Decline and Demolition
The arrival of the British occupiers in Palestine marked the beginning of the decline of the Abu Madyan Waqf and the start of a dark chapter that continued until the demolition of the Moroccan Quarter and the displacement of its residents. Vincent Lemire makes a notable effort to trace Zionist interest in the Moroccan Quarter. Since the mid-16th century, Jewish communities had regarded al-Buraq Wall (also known as the Western Wall) as sacred, and by the late 19th century, the Zionist movement had incorporated the wall and its surroundings into its political and ideological agenda. Attempts to purchase the Quarter began in the early 20th century, and the physical presence of the Quarter became increasingly threatened by “modernizing” urban planning projects from as early as 1918, with proposals by William H.
However, after the end of the 1967 war, the Moroccan Quarter was razed to the ground to make way for the Al Buraq Wall. The process of removing the inhabitants of the Moroccan Quarter was initiated swiftly and with uncompromising severity. On the evening of 10 June 1967 the several hundred residents of the Moroccan Quarter were given two hours notice to vacate their homes. Those who refused the orders were forcefully evicted from their places of residence, as bulldozers and floodlights were mobilized to raze the area.
“The Moroccan Quarter housed structures such as the Al Buraq Mosque with its corner located outside Al Haram Al Sharif, the Al Afdal Mosque with Shaikh Hassan shrine in one corner, and the Al Magharbeh Mosque and Al Maghribial’s house, which were unfortunately demolished,” Al Tijani says. Almost all of the quarter‘s 135 homes were flattened by the evening of 11 June, with the "cleaning up process" proceeding for a few days thereafter. Certain structures on the neighborhood‘s periphery, however, were initially retained, most notably a mosque near the Bab Maghribeh, and the Zawiyya Fakhriyya. Both, however, were eventually razed in 1969.
At the time of demolition, roughly half of the neighbourhood‘s residents traced their lineage to the Maghreb. Many of them returned to Morocco via Amman with the assistance of King Hassan II. Other families from the neighbourhood found refuge in the Shu’fat Refugee Camp and elsewhere in Occupied Jerusalem.
Tijani describes the trauma his and other displaced families have experienced ever since their eviction in 1967. “The Jews demolished the whole area. We moved to [Occupied] East Jerusalem, and onwards to Ramallah, where we arrived in 1976. My father moved to Amman. Some of us stayed here, worked with the Israeli Administration so we could obtain their IDs. I worked in the public health sector as a doctor. We had to accept this because we thought it important to settle and live here, due to both religious and national obligations. My father passed away in 1981 in Jericho. He is buried in the cemetery adjoining Al Aqsa, near Bab Al Rahma [Gate of Mercy].”
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Aftermath and Legacy
The motivations of the Israeli state for obliterating this quarter were the same as those invoked for altering the rest of occupied Jerusalem since 1948. Underlying these schemes was and is the notion that the rights of the Jewish People in and to their "eternal" capital supercede those of the Palestinians. The logic that propelled then Mayor Teddy Kollek and others to erase the Moroccan Quarter community mirrors the vision of Zionist planners in other locales and in different times before and since. The former space in front of the Wall could not have accommodated the 400,000 people who swarmed to the site; the maximum number able to pray there during the Mandate were 12,000 per day.
Through a swift and resolute reconstruction, the area became-and remains-the "Western Wall Plaza" in the dominant Zionist lexicon. One segment directly before the Western Wall, consisting of roughly fifty meters in length and another fifty in width, was designated as an orthodox synagogue. This cordoned off area has been deemed "sacred space" and is partitioned between a men‘s and women‘s section. As the Israeli state reconfigured this area, the claim for the existence of the "presence of God" was now expanded. It was now made not only about the Wall itself, but also about territory several dozen meters before it-over precisely the area where the demolished Moroccan Quarter once stood.
Though the destruction of the quarter has been written about elsewhere, few works have detailed the personal consequences of displacement and the everyday qualities of loss for the former inhabitants of this largely forgotten quarter. For many of these Palestinian residents, the processes of colonial appropriation have been the dominant features of their lives. Abdel-Haq and his family have been displaced as the result of Israeli aggression on three occasions since the birth of the state.
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