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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The Titanic and Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax

 

The sinking of the Titanic [1] in 1912 still fascinates us today. We drove to the cemetery where, among others, victims of the Titanic are buried who were recovered but initially could not be identified. Those who were identified were mostly poor people whose burials in Great Britain no one could afford (transportation costs). The name is Fairview Lawn Cemetery. We could see the Jewish section from the outside on the way there, but it was too far away for us to visit. Maya, the local guide, told stories about some of the Titanic victims. "J. Dawn" was not the Jack Dawn from the movie Titanic, which I own but still haven't seen. There were still devotional objects there, but it was particularly bad after the film came out. Ultimately, however, tourism in Halifax benefits from the film about the fate of the Titanic and some of its passengers, because only since then there has been an increased interest in this cemetery. J. Dawn was Joseph Dawn, and he was a stoker on the Titanic. The grave of a child was now particularly adorned with offerings. The child's identity was determined about 20 years ago using DNA from other relatives, decades after the disaster. The gravestones are arranged like a ship's hull.
Celine Dion and her song My Heart Will Go On [3] -: I think I heard the story of how the song has been recorded. The tremor in her voice is said to be due to excessive coffee consumption. But I think that's completely irrelevant to the result.

But the other parts of the cemetery, which have nothing to do with the Titanic, are also interesting, such as the Chinese graves. I read Fong (方); the same reason as with Wong (王), because with an American pronunciation, the "a" would sound like an "ä".
The victims of the explosion disaster of December 6, 1917 (Halifax Explosion – there's a very detailed Wikipedia article [4]) were also commemorated; it was a naval ship that had exploded, and there was a shockwave that had seismic effects even 300 km away (Sydney), as well as a tsunami [5]. The force of the explosion was calculated to be 1/7 of that of the Hiroshima bomb of 1945 and was the largest human-made explosion until 1945. “Yet another cruel blow was to come the next day when a blizzard blanketed the area, hampering relief efforts as snow covered the dead and dying.” [6]
Then, in this area of the cemetery, another gravestone deeply moved me: "Mother" was inscribed on a very small gravestone, of which only a semicircle protruded from the earth.

Links and Annotations:
[1] “RMS Titanic was a British ocean liner that sank in the early hours of 15 April 1912 as a result of striking an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, approximately 1,500 died (estimates vary), making the incident one of the deadliest peacetime sinkings of a single ship.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic
[2] “Titanic is a 1997 American epic romantic disaster film written and directed by James Cameron. ... The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as members of different social classes who fall in love during the ship's maiden voyage.” 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_(1997_film)
[3] Céline Dion - My Heart Will Go On
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bFHsd3o1w0
[4] “On the morning of December 6, 1917, the French cargo ship SS Mont-Blanc collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Mont-Blanc, laden with high explosives, caught fire and detonated, devastating the Richmond district of Halifax. At least 1,782 people, largely in Halifax and Dartmouth, were killed by the blast, debris, fires, or collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
[5] A very detailed article with a narrated text can be found here:
https://canadaehx.com/2021/11/27/the-halifax-explosion/
[6] https://blog.library.si.edu/blog/2017/11/30/great-halifax-explosion/

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An unusual Funeral

You might have noticed that I fancy a morbid interest in burial rites and cemeteries. Yesterday I visited my parents and my mother told a story of one of her dearest friends.

The sister in law of my mother’s friend had passed away, not unexpectedly. But she had arranged for her funeral. She didn’t belong to any congregation anymore. So there had been a funeral orator, which isn’t the unusual thing I want to talk about. She asked all of her friends and relatives to appear at the graveyard in the clothes they would wear at her birthday party, which all did to honor the deceased. And when the coffin was lowered into the grave, they all blew soap bubbles as required by her. 

You might call it a strange funeral, but I just call it different. The participants will surely recall the day better and remember the deceased easier than had it been a usual funeral.