Burial and Cemeteries in Saudi Arabia

 

Please mind the comment specifications! [1]

I've long been interested in burial rites and cemeteries. If you enter the keyword "burial" here on the blog, you'll find many blog posts. But this post focuses on the Islamic form of burial and cemeteries in Saudi Arabia, which is quite different from other Islamic countries. I was once impressed by the funeral of one of the kings of Saudi Arabia, who was laid to rest in a grave alongside the next deceased, a grave that looked no different and wasn't marked separately – in death, all people are equal. I had just recently looked up a blog post about Muslim cemeteries in Iran for comparison [2]. And something like the Mausoleum of Sheikh Safi ad-Din Is’haq Ardabili (شیخ صفی‌الدین اسحاق اردبیلی) is hardly to be found in Saudi Arabia [3]. Or certainly not The Tomb of Shah Nur-eddin Nematollah Vali in Mahan [4], where we have also touched upon a particularly sensitive issue, as the Sufis are not recognized as Muslims by the Wahhabis. The tombs of the martyrs had structures, and these were destroyed by the Wahhabis because they were used for the veneration as saints; one should only worship Allah and not place any saints as intermediaries between oneself and God.

The cemetery I was able to see best was the historic cemetery below Zabal Castle (قلعة زعبل) [5], which has existed for about 900 years. The cemetery looks rather desolate, but that is by design. The dead are buried, and then the graves are left as they are. While we remove the remains after a while to make room for new graves, the dead are meant to rest here forever. I experienced this in Meerbusch, where a small cemetery has very short lease periods that cannot be extended, so I once searched for a grave in vain. That can't happen here; the graves rest and they aren't marked. But there's another problem. For a nomadic society, the desert, and especially the Saudi Arabian desert, is large enough for all kinds of cemeteries, but cities now grow around cemeteries, which are then separated off. The land belongs to the dead. There's no funerary rites with flowers or communal meals with the dead, as is common in some parts of Asia or Mexico. Well, I admit, that would be unusual in Europe as well.

At the historic cemetery below Zabal Castle, you can clearly see that stone slabs lie flat over the grave to protect the diseased from being gug up by animals, and slabs are raised each at the head and foot to mark the grave as such. The orientation is towards Mecca.

I would have liked to see the Jannat al-Baqī (ٱلْبَقِيْع) or more precisely the Baqi al-Gharqad (بَقِيْع الْغَرْقَد) in Medina [6], but there was no time for that. However, we visited the Masjid Sayed Al Shouhada (جامع سيد الشهداء) and the Archers' Hill Uhud (جبل الرماة), which is right next to The Second Martyrs' Cemetery of Uhud (مقبرة شهداء أحد الثانية). And there is very little to see. The martyrs' graves had structures, and these have been destroyed. Now, only a bare area remains, where doves rest. Not a place for the veneration of martyrs, but a place of permanent rest for their mortal remains.

More information about Islamic burial can be found in a Wikipedia article [7]. For Saudi Arabia, more information can be found in Saudipedia, which reports on burial practices in English [8]. As you can see, there are exceptions to what I have already described, but on the other hand, the state takes the matter very seriously, provides cemeteries, and also covers the costs of the burial.

When we turn to the "lion tombs" of the ancient Nabataean city of Hegra (Al Ula), we return to the topic of funerary rites.

Links and Annotations:
[1] Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia and Islam have become sensitive topics, so I must communicate the conditions for comments more specifically. This travelogue is not the appropriate place for a discussion of human rights. This is something for Amnesty International [1a]. Such comments, including islamophobic ones, disappear in the spam folder.
[1a] https://www.amnesty.de/informieren/laender/saudi-arabien
[2] Muslim cemeteries in Iran
https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2018/11/muslim-cemeteries-in-iran.html
[3] Mausoleum of Sheikh Safi ad-Din Is'haq Ardabili (شیخ صفی‌الدین اسحاق اردبیلی)
https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2018/11/mausoleum-of-sheikh-safi-ad-din-ishaq.html
[4] The Tomb of Shah Nur-eddin Nematollah Vali in Mahan
https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-tomb-of-shah-nur-eddin-nematollah.html
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabal_Castle
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Baqi_Cemetery
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_funeral
[8] https://saudipedia.com/en/article/2591/government-and-politics/government-affairs/cemeteries-in-saudi-arabia

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