In Jerusalem’s Mamilla Cemetery, an entire heritage is being erased
A centuries-old Islamic tomb seen in front of the fence surrounding Mamilla Pool, Mamilla Cemetery, Jerusalem
Tawfiq Da’adli writes in +972 on 20 August 2026:
Amid the cruel reality in which we now live, writing about heritage, the past, and cultural preservation can feel trivial. These are days marked by the systematic annihilation of Palestinians from among the people of this land — their physical being, their homes, their livelihoods, and everything bound up with their identity. Everything that has been built and cared for in this place over centuries now resembles the “museum of dust” that Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish evoked in “The Dice Player”: fleeting particles whose movement is governed only by the hand of chance.
That same hand of chance shaped the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem, a many-layered burial ground where the bodies of ordinary people, religious sages, and even some notables from the Mamluk and Ottoman eras were laid to rest. That hand also arranged the graves around a vast and ancient water reservoir, now known as the Mamilla Pool. Over time, dirt paths formed among the headstones and graves leading to the pool, creating a pocket of untamed nature amid Jerusalem’s landscape of concrete, asphalt, and stone cladding.
As the holidays of Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha approached, relatives would come to visit the graves of loved ones who long ago passed from the physical world to the spiritual one. They cleared the earth around the graves, poured cool water over the headstones, and repainted the letters faded by time. Some lay green date palms across the stones, arranging four of them into a small shaded canopy over the grave; after those dried out, new ones would take their place.
But the Mamilla Cemetery ceased to exist as a cemetery in any continuous sense after the Nakba of 1948, when it was torn to pieces and a large section became what is now known as Independence Park. Roads were paved across other parts — literally asphalt laid directly over graves — while still other sections became parking lots. And so what remains are ashla’a: fragments torn from the vast expanse of a burial ground that served Jerusalem for at least 1,000 years.
A few months ago, the pool itself — which dates back to at least the 6th century — disappeared behind a tall fence covered with renderings of what it is to become. The Jerusalem Municipality has announced the renovation with great fanfare: a reflection pool encircled by manicured lawns. Here and there in the renderings, a small rectangle appears that might hint at a gravestone — as though a fragment of the cemetery had slipped, almost accidentally, into the image of its future.