page_title: Moroccan Quarter
section_title: Ottoman era
hierarchical_section_title: Moroccan Quarter / History / Ottoman era
caption_attribution_description: עברית: Jews' wailing place הכותל
context_page_description: The Moroccan Quarter or Mughrabi Quarter was a 770-year-old neighborhood in the southeast corner of the Old City of Jerusalem, bordering on the western wall of the Temple Mount on the east, the Old City walls on the south and the Jewish Quarter to the west. It was an extension of the Muslim Quarter to the north, and was founded as an endowed Islamic waqf or religious property by a son of Saladin in the late 12th century.
  The quarter was razed by Israeli forces, at the behest of Teddy Kollek, the mayor of West Jerusalem, three days after the Six-Day War in order to broaden the narrow alley leading to the Western Wall and prepare it for public access by Jews seeking to pray there. It is now the site of the Western Wall Plaza.
context_section_description: The Ottoman taxation registers listed 13 households in the quarter in 1525–26, 69 households, 1 bachelor and 1 imam in 1538–39, 84 households and 11 bachelors in 1553–34, 130 households and 2 bachelors in 1562–63, and 126 households and 7 bachelors in 1596–97. Originally developed for Moroccans, over the centuries Jewish, Christian and Muslim people from Palestine and elsewhere had at various times taken up residence there. By the time Israel decided to demolish their houses, roughly half of the zone's inhabitants could trace their origins back to Moroccan immigrants.
  According to the French traveler Chateaubriand who visited in 1806, some of the residents of the quarter were descended from Moors who had been expelled from Spain in the late 15th century. They had been well received by the local community and a mosque had been built for them. Residents of the neighborhood held on to their culture in the way of food, clothing and traditions until it became assimilated with the rest of the Old City in the 19th century. Thus it also became a natural place of stay to Moroccans who came on pilgrimage to the al-Aqsa Mosque.
  Over the years a small number of schools and mosques were established in the quarter and Muslim clerics who performed religious duties at the al-Aqsa Mosque lived there.
  The site of Jewish prayer and lamentation was a stretch of some 30 metres along the wall, accessed via a narrow passage from King David's Street. In depth from the wall the paved area extended 11 feet. At the southern end lay one of the two zāwiyyah dedicated there in medieval times and the lane to the Wailing Wall sector ended in a blind alley closed off by the houses of the Moroccan beneficiaries. In 1840 a proposal by a British Jew, the first attempt to change the status quo, was conveyed via the British consul, and requested that Jews be allowed to repave the 120 sq. metre area. The plan was rejected both by the Abu Madyan waqf administrator and by Muhammad Ali Pasha. Moslems in the area also complained of the excessive noise, as opposed to past practice, caused by recent Jewish pilgrims. Jews at prayer were asked to continue their traditional practices quietly, and to refrain from proclaiming on doctrinal matters there.
  By the beginning of the 19th century Jewish worshippers were rare, and according to Yehoshua Ben Arieh, lacked any special distinction. In an account of his travels to the Holy Land in 1845, T. Tobler noted the existence of a mosque in the Moroccan quarter.
  According to Yeohoshua Ben-Arieh, the Moroccans regarded the Jews as infidels. They were subjected to harassment and were required to pay a sum in exchange for the right to pray there undisturbed. Increased friction at the site between Jews and Muslims arose with the onset of Zionism and the resulting fear among the Muslims that the Jews would claim the entire Temple Mount. Attempts were made at various times, by Moses Montefiore and Baron Rothschild to buy the whole area, without success. In 1887 Rothschild's bid to purchase the Quarter came with a project to rebuild it as "a merit and honor to the Jewish People" relocating the inhabitants in better accommodation elsewhere. The Ottoman authorities appeared to be ready to give their approval. According to some sources, the highest secular and Muslim religious authorities in Jerusalem, such as the Mutasarrıf or Ottoman Governor of Jerusalem, Şerif Mehmed Rauf Paşa, and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Tahir Husseini, actually gave their approval. The plan foundered on Jewish, rather than Muslim objections was shelved after the chief rabbinical Haham of the Jerusalemite Sephardi community stated that he had had a "providential intimation" that, were the sale to go through, a terrible massacre of Jews would ensue. His opinion might have reflected a Sephardi fear that the Ashkenazis would thereby take possession of the holiest site in Judaism.
  In the first two months after the Ottoman Empire's entry into the First World War, the Turkish governor of Jerusalem, Zakey Bey, offered to sell the quarter to Jews, requesting a su
caption: Moroccan neighborhood dwellings (left) bordering the Western Wall (right), circa 1898–1914. View towards north.
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