4. Maqams. Shfela

Maqam sheikh ‘Abdallah

مقام الشيخ عبد الله

קבר שייח' עבדאללה

This tomb is not mentioned by researchers of 19–20th centuries, although it is quite a remarkable one. For the first time it appeared on the British maps of Palestine. The maqam is situated on a small hill which is historically known as Khirbet al-Habur (SWP III, 281; Palmer 1881, 371 (Sheet XX)). The tomb with the sizes of 6.90 х 6.75 х 2.10 m with a 1.4 m high cupola has a beautiful arch entrance from the northern side. From the right side from the entrance there is a small window. A steeple-roofed mihrab in a southern wall of the tomb is surrounded by Arabic and Jewish inscriptions made by present-day visitors. The sheikh's cenotaph has not survived.

View from the north-east

View from the north

View from the west

View from the south-east

View from the east

The mihrab

From the eastern side to the maqam there is a small yard surrounded by a wall from which only fragments have been preserved nowadays. In a dozen meters to the West from the maqam the foundation of a rectangular building have been preserved, which function is not clear. Probably, it was a zawiya or a room for pilgrims and travellers.

Structure to the West from the maqam

Plan of maqam

Route. The maqam is situated in the Samakh Caves National Park and is seen from Highway 6. Below this Highway a soil road passes which leads from moshav No'am to Cretaceous caves of Samakh close to which a Muslim shrine is located. It is also possible to reach maqam by field roads leading from moshav Lakhish to the West, but these roads are almost unsuitable for cars.

Coordinates: 31°33'13.5"N 34°48'49.5"E
Location of the object on Google Maps
References: SWP III 281; The Archaeological Survey of Israel; iNature: Samakh Caves National Park

Maqam sheikh Abu Amran

مقام الشيخ أبو عمران

קבר שייח' אבו עמרן

Sheikh Abu Amran (or Abu Imran) was a local saint of Palestinian Arab village Zikrin (Thikrin, Dhikerin), which remains are located to the north-west of kibbutz Beit Nir. The tomb of sheikh Abu Amran is met in E. Palmer's (1881, 273) and H. Stewardson (1888, 137) works. V. Guérin visited Zikrin in 1863 but he did not mention about the local shrine (Judee II 107–108).

View from the south

Maqam’s ruins are located on a small hill in 700 m to the north-west of Zikrin’s ruins. This is a regular 6.30 х 6.30 m square with a destroyed roof. The biggest height of retained walls – 2.60 m. Wall thickness reaches 0.77 m. An entrance to a maqam from the northern side, in the western side there retained the part of a window. Inside each wall has a big arch roof. In the southern wall there was, probably, a mihrab but in this very place there is a big fracture. It is impossible to determine the location of a cenotaph because the surface of a burial room is filled with debris of crashed walls and a dome.

5. Maqams. Coastal Plain

Maqam ‘Abd an-Nabi

مقام عبد النبي

מקאם עבד אל-נבי

On the Tel Aviv coast, not far from the luxury Hotel “Hilton” in the Independence Park, there is an abandoned Muslim cemetery located on a small hill. It is the Maqam of ‘Abd an-Nabi, which now looks more like a slum area. Once they tried to restore it, but not very successfully. Finally they simply stopped taking care of it. People strolling along the promenade use it as a dumping-ground for empty bottles.

‘Abd an-Nabi means “the servant of the Prophet [Muhammad]”. Maqam appears on maps of Palestine of the 19th century, long before the foundation of Tel Aviv. It is in many ways similar to the Maqam sheikh 'Awad in Ashkelon (see below), also located on the coast. And it has the same three-part structure: the tomb in the center and two adjacent arched rooms on the sides of it.

View from the north-east

View from the north

View from the south

View from the north

Eastern room

The central room

Western room

A. Petersen examined the maqam of ‘Abd an-Nabi in June of 1992 and concluded that “The oldest part of the complex is the Prayer hall, which is the westernmost of the three units. It is entered via a doorway in the north wall. The doorway is set in a portal recess with an arch made of cushion voussoirs. The doorway is decorated with ablaq masonry (white and red stone) with two large basalt blocks above the lintel. The interior of the Prayer hall is a square area roofed with a folded cross-vault and a small fluted dome in the centre. There is a mihrab opposite the doorway in the middle of the south wall. The mihrab is a concave hooded niche made out of alternate blocks of pink and white marble. The south, west, and east walls each have pairs of small openings (now blocked).” (2001, 298)

Photo 1992 (from the book by A. Petersen)

Though the maqam of ‘Abd an-Nabi had been built a long time ago (15–16th century — Petersen 2001, 299), the Muslim cemetery came into existence only in 1902 after a terrible epidemic of cholera in Jaffa. With the expansion of Tel Aviv the Muslim community in Jaffa was cut off from the cemetery and they buried here no longer. Initially the cemetery occupied the area of 34.338 square meters, but after the construction of the hotel “Hilton” in 1963 was reduced to a tiny size. Even back in the 1940s it was noticed that young people of both sexes sunbathed in their underwear on the tombstones, and little boys defecated in the maqam. Letters from indignant citizens of Tel Aviv are kept in the city archives. It is true, though, that we do not exactly know what were the citizens indignant at: the desecration of the Muslim monument or obscene look of Jewish youth.

Read about it in the book: Barbara Mann. A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv, and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space. Tel Aviv, 2006. P. 64

‘Abd an-Nabi Cemetery. Photo 1900s

‘Abd an-Nabi Cemetery. Photo 1900s

6. Maqams. Sharon Plain and Carmel

Maqam sheikh ‘Abdallah as-Sahili

مقام الشيخ عبد الله السهلي

קבר שייח' עבדאללה

The main sanctuary of the former Palestinian village Balad ash-Sheikh has surprisingly survived until our days. It is the maqam of sheikh ‘Adballah as-Sahili, a famous Sufi scientist at times of a Turkish sultan Selim I (1512–1520). The maqam was built in 19th century, but there is evidence to believe that it was established during the Ottoman period.

View from the north

A. Petersen studied the shrine in 1994, “The tomb stands within a walled cemetery (the wall is modern) surrounded by tall blocks of flats. The south side of the shrine is cut into the rock of the hillside whilst the north side is built on a raised platform. On the south-west corner is a large buttress with sloping sides which appears to be of some considerable age. The main entrance is in the middle of the north side and consists of an arched recess (2m wide) with a rectangular doorway in the centre. Above the doorway, in the tympanum of the arch, is an opening in the form of an eight-pointed star. There is a smaller entrance on the east side reached by a small flight of steps, although this may originally have been a window. The interior is divided into three cross-vaulted bays. Each bay is roofed with a folded cross-vault with a small dome in the centre. In the middle of the south wall is a mihrab flanked with two square windows. In the west bay there are three cenotaphs or graves, one of which belongs to the shaykh. Ronen and Olami (1983, xvii, 40) refer to a rock-cut mihrab and steps leading to the roof of the shrine although neither of these was visible in 1994” (2001, 108–109).

View from the north-west

View from the south-west

West Side

The mihrab

We should add that there is no sigh of a cemetery, which used to be around the maqam, is left. Now the site in front of the maqam looks like a solid hard rock covered with grass and collapsed stone blocks. There is no tombstone there. As well as there is no plates or indicators with information about this shrine. The entrance to the maqam is beset by a iron bar, but in the east wall there is a big breach through which you can get into the shrine without any obstacles (what we actually did).

Plan of the maqam (from the book by A. Petersen)

Route. An Israeli city Nesher now stands on the place of Balad ash-Sheikh. The maqam of sheikh ‘Abdallah as-Sahili is located in the beginning of Zahal street, in the quarter, but it`s better to reach it via a lane leading to Giv‘on School.

Visited: 20.08.15

Coordinates: 32°46'18.5"N 35°02'33.8"E

Location of the object on Google Maps

References: Mülinen 1908, 176; DPV XXX 189 (Mülinen 1907); DPV XXXI 85 (Mülinen 1908); Khalidi 1992, 151–152; Petersen 2001, 108–109; The Archaeological Survey of Israel

Maqam sheikh ‘Amir

مقام الشيخ ﻋﻤﻴﺮ

קבר שייח' עמיר

A German traveler, E. F. Mülinen was the first who reported about this maqam in 1908. When describing Palestinian village Jeba‘, he commented, “The maqam of sheikh Amer dominates the eastern slope of the mountain (Im Osten am Bergeshage). There is an inscription saying, “it was Ahmad al-Hamidi who ordered this structure on this place, in 1232 (1817)” (1908, 283). It`s worth mentioning that in the early 20th century this building looked like a new one. Before, when C. Conder described Jeba‘, he did not mentioned any shrine. The maqam appeared on the PEF map (Sheet VIII), and also in Palmer`s list (1881, 152).

Actually, the maqam of sheikh ‘Amir is located on the western, not eastern, side of the hill. Now it can be considered as a newly built shrine. The initial blockwork survived only in one place of the north wall, from the entrance to the right. There is also a waterway, it is not known if it was since the very beginning. No other inscriptions are observable in the maqam.

View from the north-east

Photo of 1908 (from the book by E. F. Mülinen)

10. Rebuilt Maqams and Modern replicas of Maqams

The first sign that an old Muslim shrine went through a thorough renovation or was rebuilt is the green color of its dome. The Palestinian Arabs started the tradition of painting the domes and the doors of a shrine green quite recently — ten years ago. In the old days all maqams had white domes. The travelers of the 19th and early 20th centuries note this (Geikie 1888, I 67; McCown 1922, 48); this can be seen in colour drawings of that time.

It can be assumed that green as the colour of the domes of Palestinian shrines arose under the influence of The Green Dome built above the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, which was painted green in 1837. Masses of domes of the Palestinian mosques were repainted green at the beginning of this century. The dome of the Great Mosque of Jenin became green in 2005. The domes of the Sidna ‘Ali Mosque in Herzliya were painted green in 2007. The domes of the el-Zaytuna Mosque and the Jezzar Pasha Mosque in Acre turned green in 2009. The dome the Ras al-Amud Mosque in East Jerusalem is green since 2011. The central domes of the complex Neby Musa (Prophet Moses), located in the Judean Desert, were painted green in 2009.

Many domes of mosques and Islamic shrines were repainted green by “Al-Aqsa Foundation”, based in Umm al-Fahm.

Maqam sheikh ‘Abd ar-Rahman al-Mujarmi

مقام الشيخ عبد الرحمن الدجاني

קבר שייח' עבד רחמן א -מוג'רימי

Tantura was well known for European travelers a long time ago (even in the early 19th century), it was described many times, there left a lot of engraving plates and pictures of the seaside settlement. But we do not see the tomb of sheikh `Abd ar-Rahman al-Mujarmi on any of those pictures. E. Mülinen was the first who mentioned this shrine in 1907 (DPV XXX 189; 1908, 310). But there isn`t the tomb on the photos of Tantura published in his book. Though it would be interesting to compare how E. Mülinen saw this shrine and how we see it today.

After the Palestinians were exiled from Tantura, two Israeli settlements were established there: kibbutz Nahsholim and moshav Dor. According to M. Benvenisti, the Arabs of Fureidis (a neighbouring Palestinian village) told him that each time when an excavator started to demolish the maqam of sheikh ‘Abd ar-Rahman, its blade broke (2000, 198). Besides the maqam the seas-front house of the al-Yahya also survived. Some authors called this house “customs”.

A. Petersen explored the tomb of sheikh ‘Abd ar-Rahman al-Mujarmi in 1994 and describes it as follows, “This is located approximately 20 m east of the sea-front building. The mausoleum is entered through a doorway in the middle of the south side. Inside are three graves aligned east-west. One grave is said to be that of the builder of the sea-front building. The dome rests on an octagonal drum supported on spherical pendentives. The transition from drum to dome is marked by a torus molding” (2001, 293).

A. Petersen visited this place when a seashore hotel complex had been already founded in moshav Dor. The tomb of sheikh ‘Abd ar-Rahman is inside of it. According to the photo in Petersen's book, he studies the same structure as we see today. The same concrete blockwork as we see today. And now there are three tombstones inside the tomb covered with green cloths. It shows that the Muslims visit the tomb. There are also respective photoreports.

It's interesting that there is no mihrab in the maqam. Instead there is a little window in the south wall. A. Petersen did not tell anything about the mihrab either.

We can suppose that the original maqan of sheikh ‘Abd ar-Rahman al-Mudjarmi which E. Mülinen saw in 1907, was later completely rebuilt. It probably can be proceeded in time of the Israeli state, in 80s or early 90s in the 19th century; not a long tome before A. Petersen visited Tantura.

The Muslims (probably the people of Fureidis) rebuilt this shrine when the Palestinian commune was not subject to new influences , before the war of colors started, before domes of Muslim shrines started to be painted green. The dome of the tomb of sheikh ‘Abd ar-Rahman keeps a traditional white color.

Coordinates: 32°36'33.1"N 34°55'01.7"E
Location of the object on Google Maps
References: Mülinen, 1907; DPV XXX 189; Mülinen, 1908, 310; Khalidi 1992, 195; Benvenisti 2000, 198; Petersen 2001, 293; The Archaeological Survey of Israel
Addition: Panorama 1; Panorama 2

Maqam sheikh ‘Abd as-Salam

مقام الشيخ عبد السلام

קבר שייח' עבד אל-סלאם

The maqam of sheikh ‘Abd as-Salam was built in the district of Palestinian village ‘Anata in the early 20th century. It is still an active Muslim shrine and even is under renovation. The walls are whitewashed inside, the floor is tiled. A small site in front of the entrance is partly covered with the same tiles. In general the structure keeps the same size: 6.90 x 4.70 x 2.40 m. A renewed cenotaph is covered with a green cloth. It`s interesting that thereэs no mihrab in the maqam. It probably wasn't there originally.

View from the south-west

Photo of 1910s (from the book by McCown, 1922)

View from the north-east

11a. Lost shrines. South

Small buildings of a cubic shape with white domes located on the top of the hills are part and parcel of the Palestinian landscape. At least, so it was until 1948. According to J. Geikie, “There is, however, in nearly every village, a small whitewashed building with a low dome — the "mukam," or "place," sacred to the eyes of the peasants. In almost every landscape such a landmark gleams from the top of some hill, just as, doubtless, something of the same kind did in the old Canaanite ages; or you meet it under some spreading tree covered with offerings of rags tied to the branches, or near a fountain; the trees overshadowing them being held so sacred that every twig falling from them is reverently stored inside the "mukam." Anything a peasant wishes to guard from theft is perfectly safe if put within such a holy building. No one will touch it, for it is believed that every structure of this kind is the tomb of some holy man, whose spirit hovers near, and would be offended by any want of reverence to his resting-place.” (1888 I 578)

Travelers of the 19th and 20th centuries often depicted maqams, sometimes without even knowing their names and the name of a person buried there.

Many of these shrines have been lost forever. Maqam sheikh Samat, also known as the tomb of the prophet Samson, doesn’t exist already for more than half a century. He used to stand in the former Arab-Palestinian village Sar'a, on the top of the mountain now called Tel Tzor'a. Maqam nabi Samat was noted by C. Conder, J. Geikie and other researchers 19th century. We can see how this shrine used to look like in the drawings of the 19th century and 1920s.

Picture from The Survey of Western Palestine (1881)

Picture by G. Harper (1894)

“A mukam, or shrine, of a Muslim saint stands on the south side of the village; a low square building of stone, with a humble dome and a small court, within an old stone wall, at the side. You enter the yard through a small door in this wall, up two or three steps, but beyond the bare walls, and a solitary palm-tree, twice the height of the wall, there is nothing to see. Sheikh Samat, whoever he was, lies solitary enough and well forgotten in his airy sepulchre, but the whitewash covering his resting-place marks a custom which is universal with Muslim tombs of this kind.” (1888 I 67)