Saudi
Arabia Bulldozes Over Its Heritage
Over 98% of the
Kingdom's historical and religious sites have been destroyed since 1985,
according to the U.K.-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation
For centuries the Kaaba, the black cube in the center of Mecca, Saudi
Arabia that is Islam’s holiest point, has been encircled by arched porticos
erected some three centuries ago by the Ottomans, above dozens of carved marble
columns dating back to the 8th century. But earlier this month, any vestiges of
the portico and columns were reduced to rubble, cleared to make way for the
Saudi government’s expansion of Mecca’s Grand Mosque.
The $21 billion project, launched in 2011, is designed to meet the
challenges of accommodating the millions of pilgrims who visit Mecca and Medina
every year. Around 2 million currently visit during Hajj alone, the annual
pilgrimage that happens during the last month of the Islamic calendar. But
activists charge that the recent destructions are part of a much wider
government campaign to rub out historical and religious sites across the
Kingdom.
Over the last few years, mosques and key sites dating from the time of
Muhammad have been knocked down or destroyed, as have Ottoman-era mansions,
ancient wells and stone bridges. Over 98% of the Kingdom’s historical and
religious sites have been destroyed since 1985, estimates the
Islamic Heritage Research Foundation in London. “It’s as if they wanted to wipe
out history,” says Ali Al-Ahmed, of the Institute for Gulf Affairs in
Washington, D.C.
Though the Saudi
rulers have a long history of destroying historical sites, activists say the
pace and range of destruction has recently increased. A few months ago, the
house of Hamza, the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle, was flattened to make way for a
Meccan hotel, according to Irfan Al Alawi, executive director of the Islamic
Heritage Research Foundation. There have even been rumored threats to
Muhammad’s tomb in Medina and his birthplace in Mecca.
A 61-page report,
published recently in Saudi Arabia’s Journal of the Royal Presidency, suggested
separating the Prophet’s tomb from Medina’s mosque, a task “that would amount
to its destruction,” Alawi says. “You can’t move it without destroying it.” Moreover,
he alleges, plans for a new palace for King Abdullah threaten the library atop
the site traditionally identified as the birthplace of Muhammad. Even now,
signs in four languages warn visitors that there is no proof that the Prophet
Muhammad was born there, “so it is forbidden to make this place specific for
praying, supplicating or get [sic] blessing.”
Wahhabism, the
prevailing Saudi strain of Islam, frowns on visits to shrines, tombs or
religio-historical sites, on grounds that they might lead to Islam’s gravest
sin: worshipping anyone other than God. In recent years, the twin forks of
Wahhabi doctrine and urban development have speared most physical reminders of
Islamic history in the heart of Mecca. The house of the Prophet’s first wife,
Khadijah has made way for public toilets. A Hilton hotel stands
on the site of the house of Islam’s first caliph, Abu Bakr. Famously, the Kaaba
now stands in the shade of one of the world’s tallest buildings, the Mecca
Royal Clock Tower, part of a complex built by the Bin Laden Group, boasting a
5-story shopping mall, luxury hotels and a parking garage.
Saudi officials did
not respond to interview requests, but in the past, they have said that the
expansion project is necessary to cater to the ever-growing number of pilgrims
to Saudi Arabia, a number forecast to reach 17 million by 2025. When it’s done,
the expansion of the mataf, the area where the faithful circumambulate around
the Kaaba, will treble its capacity, to 150,000 people; the Great Mosque will
be able to hold 2.5 million.
Amir Pasic, of
IRCICA, the culture organization of the 56-nation Organization of Islamic
Conference, points out that the logistics for Hajj dwarf those required for a
World Cup or Olympics. “Every time has the right to make changes on the
existing urban set-up,” he said. “Every generation tries to develop something.
The Kaaba is what’s important.”
If Mecca’s new skyline is impossible to ignore, what with 48
searchlights beaming from the top of the Clock Tower, other changes to the
landscape are more insidious. “Everyone’s focused on [the two mosque expansion
projects], but people are not focusing on what we’re losing in the meantime,”
says Saudi activist, poet and photographer Nimah Ismail Nawwab. After blue
markings appear on sites mentioned in Islamic histories, says Nawwab, then the
bulldozers come–often in the dead of night. “Everything happens at night,” she
told TIME by phone from Saudi Arabia. “By the next day in the morning, the
monument is gone.”
It’s not just in
Mecca, either. Over a year ago, the split in Mount Uhud, north of Medina, where
Muhammad was said to have been carried after being wounded in the famous Battle
of Uhud was filled with concrete. A fence went up at the base of the mountain,
warning would-be visitors that it was just a mountain, like any other. Six
small mosques in Medina where Muhammad is believed to have prayed have been
locked. The seventh, belonging to Islam’s first caliph Abu Bakr, has been razed
to make way for an ATM. Nawwab, along with a small group of historians and
activists, has tried to raise awareness by photographing sites and starting a
Twitter campaign, but says “it’s a losing battle, despite the fact that what’s
being lost is not just Muslim history, but human history.”
When the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan
Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001, they were met with international condemnation.
The response to the demolition activity in the Kingdom, by contrast, has been
decidedly muted. “When it comes to Mecca, as far as we are concerned it’s a
Saudi question,” says Roni Amelan, a spokesman for UNESCO, the United Nation’s
cultural body. The Saudi government has never submitted Mecca for inclusion on
the list of World Heritage Sites. As UNESCO’s mandate requires a respect for
the sovereignty of individual countries, “we don’t have a legal basis to stake
a position regarding it,” adds Amelan.
Muslim governments,
perhaps mindful of the power of the Saudis to cut their quotas for how many
pilgrims can attend Hajj, have been strikingly silent on the issue. The
Organization of the Islamic Conference has also been noticeably quiet on the
destruction of the Saudi campaign. One exception has been Turkey, whose Ottoman
heritage has also long been under threat. In September, Mehmet Gormez, head of
the Dinayet, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, told journalists that
he told Saudi’s minister of Hajj that the skyscraper overshadowing the Kaaba
“destroys history,” the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News reported.
“History is being destroyed in the Holy Land each day,” he added.
For pilgrims old
enough to remember the dangerous crush of crowds in the 1980s, the spate of new
development may be welcome, offering a chance for comfort on their spiritual
journey. For other Muslims, like Ziauddin Sardar, author of the recent Mecca:
The Sacred City, the vigor of the Saudi campaign springs from financial
jitters. “The Saudis know the oil is going to run out,” he said. “Hajj is
already their second major source of income, after oil. They look at Dubai, and
Qatar, and ask ‘what are we going to do?’ And they say, ‘We have Hajj, and
we’re going to exploit it to the max.’”
Carla Power is the author of If the Oceans Were Ink: A Journey to the
Heart of the Quran (Henry Holt: April, 2015)
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