The Mughrabi Quarter, located in the southeastern corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, once nestled peacefully under the Noble Sanctuary. Founded in 1187 and subsequently home to a vibrant community of mostly North Africans and their descendants, the Mughrabi Quarter was a bustling neighborhood brimming with local culture, history, and life. Relations between its residents and their neighbors in the adjacent Jewish Quarter were harmonious, despite the ambitions of the ascendant secular Zionist movement in the late 19th century to destroy the Mughrabi Quarter.
Their goal was achieved in early June 1967 when the neighborhood was deliberately and systematically demolished to make way for the Western Wall Plaza. A detailed census, made the very year of the Quarter’s destruction, identified 138 Mughrabi households by name. These households comprised more than 650 residents, with homes ranging from one to six rooms. Almost every house had a cistern, with some containing two or three wells and water fountains. Most had a kitchen, toilet, storage facilities, and stables. The names of a number of familial properties recall the presence of fruit trees: Pomegranate House, Olive House, Palm House.
The Mughrabi Quarter was an integral part of the mosaic of neighborhoods in Jerusalem for 800 years — until 10 June 1967. Two days later it had been entirely leveled to the ground — wiped off the map.
Who was responsible for the destruction of this age-old neighborhood and the forced expulsion of its historic residents? Where did they flee with their children and elderly, with but a few possessions in hand? What are their stories? What are their legal rights to compensation for the destruction of their neighborhood and their livelihoods — a destruction in breach of international law?
This website invites you to visit the Mughrabi community through the memories of its survivors. Imagine generations of Mughrabi men guarding the adjacent Al-Aqsa Mosque as women prepared traditional dishes cooked in communal ovens. The aromas of couscous, shakshuka, and al-harira soup wafting through the alleyways.
The scent of freshly baked pita tempting the hungry from the local Sawwaf Bakery. Moroccan oud music drifting through honeycomb streets. Small gardens serving as outdoor rooms for extended families and friends on balmy evenings and flat rooftops hosting sleepy families on hot summer nights.
Just who were—and are—the Mughrabi people of Jerusalem? Discover the memories of a number of survivors and their descendants through video diaries. Meet Basima Zughayer, niece of Abu Hashem, the last man to leave the Quarter; Nazmi Al-Jubeh, whose father owned a local grocery; Mukhtar Abu-Marwan, head of the Mughrabis in Palestine, who keeps a copy of the Quarter’s endowment in his home in exile. Hear about their lives, listen to their stories, and learn about the Quarter, a vibrant place that may have been destroyed, but will never be forgotten.
Malik Al-Afdal, eldest son of the great Saladin, endowed the Mughrabi Quarter in 1187: he granted free residency for life to Arabs from North Africa, as well as to their descendants, as a reward for their help in defeating the Crusaders — and as an effort to repopulate Jerusalem.
Al-Afdal created a religious trust called a “waqf”, an Islamic philanthropic trust that is an inalienable endowment — one of the best documented endowments in Jerusalem.
In 1320, a descendant of the famous Sufi mystic, Abu Meydan, created another waqf for the benefit of the Mughrabi Quarter, by granting it the land income from the rich village of Ain Karem.
Given the enticing nature of Al-Afdal’s gift, it is no wonder the Mughrabi Quarter attracted so many émigrés from the Maghreb; that same welcoming spirit encouraged refugees from the Caliphate of Al-Andalus to seek residency in the Quarter after the Reconquista.
Al-Afdal’s waqf endowment also made provisions for al-Madrasa al-Afdaliyya, a law school that became a spiritual magnet for Maliki scholars, and later, an important pilgrimage shrine.
Over the centuries, seekers of knowledge from the Maghreb and Al-Andalus flowed into the hospices of the Quarter. From the Mughrabi Ascent, they passed through the guarded gate to Al-Masjid Al-Aqsa (“the Farthest Mosque”) on the Haram al-Sharif — the third holiest mosque in Islam and a vibrant intellectual center.
In 1344, Sultan Abu Hassan Ali bin Othman ibn Yaqoub ibn Abd al-Haq al-Marini, the first ruler of the Maghreb from the Marinid caliphate (CE 1331-48) and Commander of the Faithful, donated the Moroccan Qur’anic manuscript, known as al-Rab'a al Maghribia, to the Dome of the Rock as a waqf. It is one of the greatest treasures of the Islamic Museum of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Lavishly bound in leather in thirty separate parts, it was written by the Sultan in Moroccan calligraphy and decorated with saffron ink.
During the first half of the 16th century, the population of the Mughrabi Quarter quadrupled. Its spiritual stature was enhanced in the next century by the arrival of notable Sufi shaykhs who joined high government officials already residing in the area. Shaykh Muhammad bin Muhammed al-Tayyib Talafani of Morocco attained the position of Mufti of Jerusalem in 1777. Manuscripts in three private Jerusalem libraries (al-Aqsa, al-Khalidiyya, and al-Budayri) preserve the records of twenty Mughrabi judges who served in Jerusalem, as well as Mughrabi scholars who resided or sojourned in the city.
The Mughrabi skillfully contributed to the modernization of Jerusalem during the late Ottoman period (1892-1917). They were nominated by the city council to inspect roads, install street lighting, and collect taxes.
By all accounts, despite the Zionist threat, the Mughrabi community was on good terms with its neighbors in the adjacent Jewish Quarter.
Just before World War I, the account books indicate that the productive lands of Ain Karem provided almost half of the income of the Mughrabi waqf. The endowment administrators continued to finance the requirements of the Quarter’s founders: free meals were distributed during Ramadan, clothing was offered to the poorest, and payment of burial costs was covered.
The earthquake of 11 July 1927 damaged the neighborhood, but buildings were quickly restored. On 30 August 1927, a bomb attack coordinated by Yossef Hecht, head of the Haganah in Jerusalem, targeted a house of the Mughrabi Quarter facing the Western Wall (Al-Buraq). These tensions heightened during the riots of August 1929, which left hundreds dead in Jerusalem and Palestine.
After the 1948-1949 war, the Mughrabi waqf lost half of its regular income as the village of Ain Karem, which was located west of the new “Green Line” in Israeli territory. As the colonial power in the Maghreb, the French government decided to financially support the inhabitants of the Mughrabi Quarter and, in the 1950s, many restoration works were carried out, a new school was built, and a sports club was founded — thanks to the support of France, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.
In 1962, at the time of Algeria's independence, the ongoing support from France was interrupted. However, the Mughrabi Quarter continued to be regularly maintained, as evidenced by the archives of the Jordanian municipality of Jerusalem.
Due to belief in biblical narrative, unimpeded access was coveted to the Western Wall — known as the “Kotel” to Jews and referred to by Muslims as “Al-Buraq”, named after the mythological steed the Prophet Muhammed had tied to the wall during his Night of Ascension.
The Mughrabi Quarter was a major obstacle. From the mid-19th century onwards, wealthy Jews from abroad made numerous unsuccessful attempts to purchase it. Therefore, a pre-emptive plan was hastily implemented to stop residents organizing communal resistance or going to court to establish legal barriers.
At 6pm on 10 June 1967, four hours after signing the ceasefire that ended the Six Day War, a convoy of bulldozers rumbled through Zion Gate. Loudspeakers barked orders to the inhabitants to evacuate within a few hours, threatening dire consequences for those who resisted.
Bulldozers shook the foundations of Mughrabi homes so violently that some residents thought it was an earthquake. “Allah Yaeina” echoed from one home to the next — “God help us!”
With the clock ticking and orders bellowing out, residents frantically grabbed whatever they could.
Oral histories recount the personal and collective experience of trauma: a baby mistakenly left behind, a mute father crying, children in tears. Non-stop demolition proceeded for two nights. Excavators and bulldozers worked under floodlights to flatten the mainly one- and two-story, brick-domed residences clustered along narrow alleyways.
Eyewitnesses reported that the walls of some houses collapsed onto each other like a house of cards. An elderly woman was found dead in her bed; according to some Israeli sources, there were reportedly other corpses ploughed over in the wreckage. Historic monuments, among them two mosques, were razed. Within two days, all that was left of the Mughrabi Quarter was a crater surrounded by walls: a giant scar. And by dawn of 12 June 1967, the Mughrabi Quarter had been entirely wiped off the map of Jerusalem. Mughrabi Quarter inhabitants were blocked from returning by a security cordon.
Their personal goods and memorabilia were buried or ground into rubble. Those who were later able to return were devastated by the total destruction. The forced expulsion was an ethnic cleansing attempt, as exiled Mughrabi resident, Ahmad Al-Jaridi, recounts in an oral history: “The Israelis had buses waiting at Damascus Gate for those who wanted to go to the bridge that leads to Amman. They gave chocolate to people who got on the bus.”
Many were too poor to pay for rent elsewhere. Some found shelter with relatives in Jerusalem. Others went to the Sh’ufat and Qalandia Refugee Camps, where they have lived for more than half a century. Rouhi al-Khatib, then mayor of East Jerusalem, poignantly conveyed the human tragedy in a Memorandum delivered to Dr. Ernesto Thalmann, a UN envoy in Jerusalem, on 26 August 1967:
“One hundred and thirty-five houses in the Mughrabi Quarter adjoining the Wailing Wall and adjacent to the two Mosques of Omar and Aksa, which are Muslim Holy Places, have been dynamited and razed by bulldozers. Because of this, 650 Muslim, all of them poor and pious persons living near the Muslim Holy Place, were removed from their homes and driven away, after having been allowed no more than three hours to evacuate their homes, which they had to do while the curfew was in effect.
One can easily imagine the consternation of these families, who had to see to the removal of their property and take care of their children and their aged. One part of these buildings, comprising some houses and two small mosques, belongs to the Muslim Waqf. The other part was private property over which the Jews had no rights.”
It was under Ottoman rule that the so-called “Status Quo” arrangement for the Holy Places had been codified. These decrees aimed to resolve conflict between and among different religions and religious groups over shared or contested sites. They were legal obligations that guaranteed all faiths access to their holy sites and the right to consent to any change, either in procedure or substance.
The Status Quo protection was upheld during the British Mandate (1920-1947). In 1920, it was extended to include Al-Buraq [Western] Wall at Al-Aqsa Mosque on the al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary).
The Status Quo was breached with the destruction of the Mughrabi Quarter — a breach that decisively inaugurated an ongoing program to establish “facts on the ground” in East Jerusalem — “facts” that concomitantly stripped the Quarter of communal assets (“awqaf”) in order to expand the Jewish Quarter to four times its pre-1948 boundaries. Two decades prior to the Mughrabi Quarter demolition, Jerusalem had been designated a “corpus separatum” in an effort to depoliticize the city through internationalization. A special regime was created to be administered by the United Nations. This was confirmed in UN resolutions 181 (1947) and 194 (1948). This held until 10 June 1967.
The volunteer demolition crew hired by Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, consisting of private contractors, had been ordered to cloak their wreckage operation under the cover of darkness. The demolition squad followed a hand-drawn plan, hastily sketched out on the afternoon of the afternoon of 10 June by architect Arieh Sharon, president of the Association of Architects and Engineers, and Yaakov Yannaï, head of the National Parks Authority. A handful of key officials signed their names to the order: “Destroy blocks A and B except for the enclosure walls and buildings marked as C and D.”
But Israeli Defense Force Captain Eitan Ben-Moshe, who commanded the destruction, decided to exceed the plan. Yellow Xs superimposed onto a 1931 Zeppelin photo show the extent and severity of the devastation. Although Jerusalem mayor, Teddy Kollek, later justified the destruction as “an act of war”, it was a flagrant violation of the Status Quo, as well as Article 53 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Meron Benvenisti, Teddy Kollek’s deputy mayor, flatly stated in City of Stone (1996) that, “practical considerations were the determining factor in the demolition of the buildings of the Arab Quarter.”
But Benvenisti later blurted out the naked truth. When asked by a young Israeli filmmaker in 2013 about his role in the destruction, he angrily retorted, “Are you saying there’s an original sin? True, there is. Deal with it.” That transgression inflicted “a gaping wound in the flesh of the City”, lamented René Maheu, Director General of UNESCO, in a Le Monde article printed on 21 November 1974. That gaping wound is now compressed beneath a broad esplanade of 20,000 stone blocks—the Western Wall Plaza—effectively burying all remains of the Mughrabi Quarter.
The Mughrabi people played an important role in the city’s economic, social, spiritual, and cultural life. Skilled artisans sold handmade paper, belts, carpets, and metalwork. Others, who were recognized for their spiritual stature, served as imams of the Malikiya mosque, or Mughrabi mosque, adjacent to the Noble Sanctuary. Having earned a reputation as fast runners who were particularly strong and fearless, many Mughrabi men were sought as couriers in the city and were regularly employed to guard Al-Aqsa Mosque, among other important sites, and to provide security for the wealthy and powerful.
Jean de Tournai, a French textile merchant, with a keen eye for attire, who visited Jerusalem in 1488 noted that, “Moors wear white, with head wraps of fine cotton or toile de Holland.”
Fast forward to 1910 when Rev. Canon J.E Hanauer explored the five quarters of Jerusalem: Armenian, Jewish, Latin and Greek, Mohammedan Mughrabi and Moslem. He was particularly struck by the Mughrabi – “easily distinguished from others by the white burnoose, or hooded surplice-like cloak which they wear over other garments. They are mostly tall, well-formed men, with spare, wiry frames, and keen fierce-looking features.” Over the course of many centuries, Mughrabi men, who were mostly tall, stood out in their traditional white cotton head garb.
Visiting Moroccan dignitaries wore distinctive crimson fez hats, as historian Nazmi Al-Jubeh recalls. As a child, he watched Jordanian guards open the Bab Al-Maghariba, or Mughrabi Gate, for their official visits to the Haram al-Sharif.
The Mughrabi enjoyed a favorable reputation in Jerusalem as hard-working people, leading Charles Wilson to hire them in 1864 to conduct the rough physical labor required to complete his Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem. A network of 65 benchmarks was carved into the limestone of the Old City walls — four of them in the Mughrabi Quarter.
Traditional cooking methods were transmitted by Mughrabi women. They pounded paprika, pepper, and cumin for signature dishes—especially couscous and shakshuka—that remain staples in local Palestinian cuisine.
The Mughrabi community was guided by the “mukhtar”, the head of the local authority. The current mukhtar is octogenarian Mahmoud Al-Maslouhi (Abu Marwan). He has lived outside the Old City since he was exiled from his home, but he remains a faithful keeper of memory and a proud owner of his most prized possession: a laminated copy of the waqf endowment of 1187.
Like the mukhtar, about half of the Mughrabi Quarter residents at the time of its demolition traced a lineage back to the Maghreb.
As French journalist Simon Pierre observed, albeit with a touch of hyperbole: “It was the perfect Moroccan city in the heart of Jerusalem.” Today, however, the few remaining traces of the historic presence of the Mughrabi community in Jerusalem are buried underground — or openly under threat.
At roughly ten thousand square meters (forty dunums, or two and a half acres), the Mughrabi Quarter was fifth in size of the fourteen quarters that formed the complex urban mosaic of the Old City.
Many generations of Mughrabi schoolboys attended the 12th century Al-Afdaliyya madrasa, known as the “Qubba” (dome), located in the medieval al-Wad Street and destroyed in 1967; the beautiful medieval entrance to the tomb of a revered Sufi Shaykh.
The Mughrabi village contained a school, tribunal, mill, local commerces, communal ovens, and numerous fruit trees in family enclaves. Goods and refuse passed in and out of the Dung Gate, located at the Quarter’s southeastern corner.
The fortified postern gate was entered from the side so as to create a defensive bent-axis designed to impede frontal attack.
After passing through the compact gate, residents and merchants were met with one of the most beautiful natural areas of the Old City: Al-Hakurat al-Khatuniyya, the Garden of the Noblewomen. Vintage photos are all that remain of its splendor. The Garden included extensive ruins from Roman and Byzantine periods, as well as the foundations of Umayyad palaces.
Thickets of prickly pear cacti—originally brought from Andalusia after 1492—provided the Garden with shade; its pods were used for medicine and dye. A cistern near the Abu Saud complex allowed locals to access water for their vegetable plots and pulses.
Hospitality flowed at a Sufi hospice endowed in 1303 for Mughrabi pilgrims. The Zawiya Abu Meydan, also known as Al-Mughrabi Court, founded in 1320, was a place of prayer and retreat.
The late-Ottoman building is located at the most northwest corner of the Quarter — just down the steps from Chain Gate Street (“Ha-Kotel”) and almost flush with the back entrance to the Western Wall Plaza.
The Moroccan flag flies on its summit. A plaque superimposed above the entrance to Al-Mughrabi Court recollects Mughrabi communal life with its long-standing tradition of charity. The text commemorates a waqf donation made in 1303 by Sheikh Omar el Moujarrad al-Masa’udi to fund a soup kitchen for the “poor and needy.” Mukhtar Mahmoud Al-Maslouhi guards the key to the Mughrabi Court mosque for cleaning and protection, forever fearful that it will be confiscated by Israel.
The demolition of the Mughrabi Quarter in 1967 began the systematic appropriation of non-Jewish heritage in Jerusalem. Unimpeded access to the Western Wall through a vast prayer plaza was the first step towards a greater scheme: the systemic rewriting of Jerusalem’s multi-layered histories.
The aim was—and remains—to rewrite the story of Jerusalem by deleting contradictory histories, altering and reshaping the physical and demographic landscape of the city towards a fundamentally Jewish city under Israeli sovereignty. That plan is now far more ambitious: right-wing Israeli settlers want access to the Noble Sanctuary — to the former site of the Second Jewish temple that was destroyed in 70 CE by the Roman army. A current plan exists for the Third Temple to be built on the Haram al-Sharif, replacing Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Mughrabi Ascent and Gate remain the only access for non-Muslim visitors to the Haram al-Sharif.
In 2004, the old earthen Mughrabi Ramp—trodden down by countless footsteps, then weakened by the Quarter’s destruction—collapsed in harsh winter conditions. A wooden ramp replaced it.
A decade later, in 2014, the State of Israel began to build what was said to be a temporary ramp adjacent to the Mughrabi Ascent. This immediately heightened already volatile political and religious tensions both in Jerusalem and throughout the region. The provocation was seen as a potential violation both of the Status Quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque and of the Hague Convention of 1954. Under intense international pressure, the problematic ramp was soon dismantled. Since 1982, the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls have been on the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger. Yet massive excavations and illegal Israeli tunneling under these places continue to threaten the structural integrity of the perimeter.
Today, the Mughrabi Ascent remains one of the most politically charged and contested sites in the Old City — and well beyond. This is due to recurring efforts by right-wing Jewish settlers to further alter the Status Quo agreements at the Noble Sanctuary (Haram al-Sharif) that the State of Israel is legally obligated to uphold. The Islamic Waqf Department in Jerusalem maintains careful records of the violations and deliberate disturbances, most of which are perpetrated by Jewish settlers who are safeguarded by Israeli security forces. These statistics show that within the four years between 2015 and 2019, the number of incursions nearly tripled.
The Mughrabi Quarter was founded as an inalienable property, one which was to remain the property of its legal residents in perpetuity. Its destruction was a violation of modern international law — a violation that has yet to be officially recognized.
Basima Zughayer, a former Mughrabi resident, sums up the collective dilemma: “While we are powerless under the occupation; Israel is able to do whatever [it wants] because of its [political] strength and our weakness.” However, historical documentation affirms the legal right of the Mughrabi community, as its rightful residents for 780 years, to defend the Status Quo of the Mughrabi Gate against right-wing Israeli settlers. Moreover, legal documentation equips them to demand that the Mughrabi Quarter— heritage of outstanding universal value—be placed on the UNESCO List of Cultural Sites Damaged or Destroyed by War.
The Mughrabi Quarter was physically obliterated in 1967, but it remains intact, albeit in miniature form, represented in the Illés Relief of Jerusalem (1873), an extraordinary topographic simulacrum of the Old City that has recently been digitized. The virtual relief will be used to create a 3D model of the Mughrabi Quarter.
This will be achieved by gathering and valorizing archival and other historical data from this once vibrant neighborhood of Jerusalem. The Virtual Illés Initiative enjoins urgent new debates in the global arena about the crucial role cultural heritage plays in shaping Jerusalem’s future as a shared capital for two states.
The Illés Relief of Jerusalem (1873) and the Virtual Illés Relief Initiative
The Illés Relief, named after its creator, Stefan Illés, is like a nineteenth-century Google Earth view of the regional seat of the Ottoman administrative district called the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem – commonly referred to as Palestine – an independent province since 1872. Jerusalem was one of the empire’s first local municipalities, established in 1863. Illés’ Model is a unique topographic representation of the Old City at this time; it is an extremely rare primary source, as well as an invaluable artistic object. A virtual replica of the model was commissioned by ARCH Jerusalem.
The Virtual Illés Relief Initiative is an innovative, multi-phase, digital humanities mapping project that will evaluate and annotate the 3D model. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology and similar web technologies (web mapping) will be used to explore and excavate the historical layers of Jerusalem. A chronologically ordered geospatial database will be created to annotate the virtual replica in sequential stages beginning with the Ottoman era (1517-1917).