The Ardebili dome ... a Sufi teacher, the Safavid dynasty, is extinct

Juman Abu Arafa - Occupied Jerusalem

Sheikh Alaeddin Ali Al-Ardebili, the grandson of the founder of the Safavid method, did not know that his life that began in Iran would end in Jerusalem, and his grave would be a prominent landmark adjacent to the wall of Jerusalem and the eastern Al-Aqsa Mosque for more than 600 years, and researchers say it will not last long if the teacher continues to neglect the fall .

West of Bab al-Rahma - one of the gates of the Jerusalem and al-Aqsa walls - the ardebili dome or the “Safavid soil” rises three meters from the rest of the graves of the Bab al-Rahma cemetery east of the mosque, and it consists of an open stone building with four arches, two arcs complete in its façade, and two unfinished to the right and left They joined the fence at the point where the wall appeared, so that the building seemed completely restored to the wall as if it had merged with it.

Erosion and neglect
With a length of eight meters and the width of four and eroded stones interspersed with yellow grass, the Ardebili dome tries to stand on the already eroded fence, as if they complain to each other of neglect and scarcity of restoration in light of the factors of time of weather and occupation.

The researcher, Muhammad Aramin, who studied the cemeteries in Jerusalem and inspected the building on the ground, confirms that two short domes were on top, but part of the southern dome is destroyed with the ceiling, adding that his current condition will not allow him to withstand long.

Aramin says that the building contains five completely destroyed tombs inside, of which only piles of stones and broken evidence remain, except for a grave just below the northern arc of the dome surrounded by an iron fence, the owner of which was not known.

The director of the Manuscripts Center at Al-Aqsa Mosque Radwan Amro - Al-Jazeera Net - confirms that the tomb of Alauddin Ardebili is located under the dome or in the ground rooms below it, and added that a ground room for burial is located under the southern dome, expecting another room to be next to it, and this explains that the two rooms were visible The original dome of the Mamluk period erected upon them, but they obliterated and built on top of them the current dome during the Ottoman period after the destruction of the first.

At the front of the Ardebili dome is a five-line stone plaque, mentioned by the Swiss orientalist Max van Bershem in 1900 in one of his books, and engraved on it in the Arabic Thuluth script. "This is the tomb of the imam, the investigator and the verified ink, the collector of Sharia and truth. And eight hundred (832 AH) then this dome was destroyed over the years and renewed from his descendants the best credit and to the famous religion of Ibn Al-Kawakibi judge in Al-Asaker .. in the Ottoman Empire thirty-three years and after the thousand (1033 AH).

Who is Ardebili?
Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali says in his book al-Anas al-Jalil al-Quds wa al-Khalil that Aladdin al-Ardabili is "Ibn al-Sheikh al-Abid al-Maslak Sadr al-Din bin al-Sheikh Safi al-Din al-Ardabili al-Ajami.

Aladdin Ardebili hails from Ardabil in northwestern Iran on the border with Azerbaijan, where he assumed the spiritual leadership of the Safavid method after his father Sadr al-Din, who in turn inherited it from his father, Safi al-Din, the founder of the method, who was from the Sunnis and the community on the doctrine of Imam al-Shafi’i and gathered around him thousands of murids who Later they were the founders of the Safavid state.

Ardebili was known by the nickname "Siah Bush" - that is, the draft - because black clothing was required, as he remained in the Safavid spiritual leadership 38 years in which he was transferred between many countries, until he passed away in Jerusalem at the age of sixty years in the year 832 AH / 1428 AD, and was buried in the cemetery of Bab al-Rahma His companions built a large dome over his grave as a shrine.

The dome was later demolished, until Ibn al-Kawakibi, a judge of the soldiers in the Ottoman Empire who searched for the heritage of his forefathers from Iran, restored it, and erected the Ardebili dome again in its shape that still exists today.

The secret to marginalization
The Ardebili dome is said to have been elaborated with its original construction, in a conception that takes into account the complex, mausoleum and hospice of his grandfather, Sheikh Safi al-Din in Ardabil, who was inscribed on the World Heritage List.

Despite the importance of the owner of the dome and its location in Jerusalem, it has not received attention in terms of restoration or research and documentation since the era of the Ottoman Empire, which Radwan Amr attributed to the sensitivities between the Ottomans and the Safavids after the death of Ardebili, and some researchers marginalized the mention of the dome to link them with the Twelver Shiites.

Amr added that the repeated Israeli occupation attacks on the Bab al-Rahma cemetery kept the dome and its neglect in the shadows out of the limelight.

Security gap
The site of the dome from the wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque provided opportunities for settlers to infiltrate it, whether by climbing its construction that reduced the distance to the fence, or by infiltrating the bottom of the ground through the lower rooms. The mosque witnessed several incidents that required the appointment of the Islamic Endowments Department as a guard over the Bab al-Rahma tower to monitor the eastern wall And the ardebili dome in particular.

Amr enumerates the infiltration attempts, starting in 1984, when one of the Al-Aqsa guards noticed a rope wrapped on the gears of the fence from the interior near the Ardebili dome, and he continued and monitored the site, and was able to discover eight Israeli gunmen, accompanied by bombs and weapons that they tried to enter into the Al-Aqsa.

There were many attempts to storm all of them across the dome through ladders and ropes, the last of which was in 2016 when the guards revealed the beginning of excavation in the Al-Aqsa wall with the aim of penetrating it through the southern room below the ardebili dome.