This paper was published as part of the Jerusalem Show IX by Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art. It was edited and reviewed by Kirsten Scheid, Rachel Dedman and Aline Khoury.
Daqqit il-m’allim (i)b’alf ulauw shalfha shalf udaqqit il-adjir ibkaff
دَقّة المعَلّم بأَلْف ولو شَلَفْها شَلْف ودَقّة الأَجير بكَفّ
‘The work (lit.: stroke) of the master-mason is worth a thousand even if he does it carelessly, while the work of the hireling deserves a slap.’
Today Jerusalem rises in glittering ‘white’ stone, merging apparently seamlessly with surrounding settlements. Even its sidewalks are paved in slippery white stone. This paper investigates local stone from the perspective of the master-mason highlighting the challenges this craft has endured and its fundamental and heavily politicised status in Jerusalem’s composition.
Historically, the climate of Palestine and the availability of construction materials shaped domestic vernacular architecture, even more than the methods and ideas the region’s series of governors brought (Canaan, 1933). On the other hand, successive rulers maintained a monopoly over construction technology and resources, with which they built distinctive self-glorifying monuments. Upon their departure people continued building in their traditional way, with no means to mobilise metals for use in quarrying and cutting large stones.
To construct a house, ordinary people collected stones from their own lands, in the process of digging a cistern or flattening fields with simple hand-tools. The by-products of stone slabs would later be used for construction. A mu’allim (master-mason), planned and built the house’s key features—windows, doors and vault—with the help of fu’all (masons). Although lacking formal training in architecture, the mu’allim would nevertheless have gathered abundant practical knowledge from his wide experience. Land-owners supervised and helped in the building of their houses (Canaan, 1933).
The active role of foreign and local churches, following the Treaty of Paris in 1956, generated political drive among the European powers for ‘religious-cultural penetration’. This, and the inauguration of the railroad connecting Jerusalem to Jaffa in the late nineteenth century, marked a turning point in the history of construction in Jerusalem (Davis, 2002). The ensuing building boom exponentially expanded the demand for skilled craftsmen and builders. Foreigners applied their architectural styles and building techniques while using local stone and working with local masons, who developed new skills from the experience. This development strengthened the relationship of the city with the townships of Bethlehem and Beit Jala (the main suppliers of Jerusalem builders), as well as with the villages of Mount Hebron, where most of the quarries were located (Davis, 2002).
By the beginning of the twentieth century, stone quarrying and masonry thrived as the main labour markets for Palestinians. According to George Nustas, the son of Jiries, their work still did not involve machines, but rather relied on tens of workers with the use of metal hand-tools. Each one would come with knowledge and the skills gained from previous experiences. The mu’allim maintained harmony among the workers. The confluence of the workers’ various skills produced high standards of work. Notably, stonemasons of this period availed themselves of a variety of limestone extracted from different areas (Canaan, 1933).
Nari—a light white stone found in the district east of Jerusalem, absorbs moisture readily and thus resists fire. Nari stones often lined the interior of buildings to absorb humidity.
Malaki—‘the royal stone’, found in (so-called) Solomon's Quarries and the Ramallah district, is soft when newly-quarried and hardens with exposure to the air. This hardness does not withstand the effect of weather, as it is liable to flake and crumb. However it is considered a favourite stone for interior dressing and building.
Mizzi yahudi—a hard stone quarried from deeper rock strata whose pressure has compacted it and made it more durable. It comes in different colours: blue, the most durable and least absorbent; red, the so-called Palestinian marble, which is considered the best quality and comes from the Suleiyib area, south of Jerusalem, but which tarnishes with time since it contains iron oxide; yellow, which comes from Deir Yassin quarries, thus called hajjar yassini; and green, which is found in the Ta’amre region east of Bethlehem, and is very expensive.
Ka’kuleh or ka’kulah—a soft whitish stone with occasional red veins is quarried in the Mount of Olives, ‘Anata and Wadi al-Nar. The ka’kuleh from the Mount of Olives is softer and whiter than that from other sources. The Wadi al-Nar stone weathers very badly.
Mizzi hilo—hard whitish stone rich in yellow veins, found in Beit Hanina and Shuafat. It comes second to mizzi yahudi in durability and non-absorption of moisture (Canaan, 1933).
Interior walls were usually built from nari, ka’kuleh or malaki, the best quality stone, while exterior walls were built from mizzi hilo or mizzi yahudi, the hardest stone. A proverb says: barra il-‘athim wa juwa il-lah’im برا العظم وجوا اللحم (the flesh inside and the bone outside).
In 1917, Colonel Ronald Storrs, British-appointed military governor of Jerusalem, responded to perceived Ottoman negligence in the city by instituting ‘architectural preservation’, and ‘urban planning’. In a move to freeze the ‘biblical’ city in time, he enacted a bylaw in 1918, mandating a variety of limestone, collectively and colloquially known as 'Jerusalem Stone', as the only material allowed on exterior walls in the city. For Storrs, a supporter of the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement, stone itself embodied biblical tradition: ‘Jerusalem is literally a city built upon rock...whose solid walls, barrel vaulting and pointed arches have preserved through the centuries a hallowed and immemorial tradition’ (Storrs, 1939).
During the British Mandate, the ‘Jerusalem Stone’ bylaw was modified several times, finding a compromise between conservationism and the city’s ever-changing needs. The availability, efficiency, and affordability of reinforced concrete as a new construction material impacted application of the law. While the Ordinance of 1936 demanded that the external walls of all buildings be ‘constructed of stone', the master plan of 1944 demanded only that 'the external walls and columns of houses and the face of any wall abutting on a road shall be faced with natural, square dressed stone.' This amendment reduced the role of stone from a construction material to a cladding material.
Following the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, a homogenising regulation demanded the most rigorous application of stone cladding throughout the entire expanded municipal area. Remote West Bank hilltops newly-colonised by settlements, which were never historically part of Jerusalem, fell within the legal boundaries of the stone bylaw (Price, 2014). They took on the appearance of natural extensions of the ‘biblical’ city, thereby supporting settlers’ claims to priority in time and space.
Today’s cladding is much thinner than Mandate-era practices. During the early Mandate period stones formed large blocks used as a construction material, while in the 1930s, concrete formed the bulk of walls and a thinner layer of stone—20cm thick—covered it. Today, Israeli building standards allow layers of sawn stone for cladding just 6cm thick (Weizman, 2007).
When the environmental hazard of stone dust restricted the quarrying industry in Israel, quarries in the Jerusalem district closed. In the West Bank the quarry industry mushroomed to cater for Jerusalem's endless appetite for stone (Weizman, 2007). The buildings that are expanding Jewish Jerusalem are paradoxically clad in the very material that both fuels the Palestinian economy, and eats away at the West Bank. Some have called limestone the 'white oil of Palestine; it is the Palestinian economy’s primary raw material and an industry that provides a livelihood for thousands of workers. Jerusalem limestone is quarried mainly from the bedrock around Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah, mainly within Area C (Price, 2014).
Cladding in ‘Jerusalem stone’ reflects British biblical obsession, prioritises Jewish habitation, affirms those inhabitants as an ethnically separate group, and seamlessly joins Zionist settlements to the Old City. Yet the very material used to clad Jerusalem’s buildings comes from West Bank sites near Hebron, Tulkarem, and Ramallah. In fact, quarrying for cladding has become a main component of the Palestinian (elite) economy, with devastating impact on the West Bank population.
References:
Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, London: Verso Books, 2007.
Tawfiq Canaan, The Palestinian Arab House: Its Architecture and Folklore, Jerusalem: Syrian Orphanage Press, 1933.
Rochelle Davis, ‘Ottoman Jerusalem: The Growth of the City outside the Walls’, in Salim Tamari (ed.), Jerusalem, 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and Their Fate in the War, Jerusalem: Institute for Palestine Studies and Badil Media Resource Center, 2002, pp. 10-30.
George Nustas, interview, 16 August, 2018.
Judy Price, White Oil: Excavations and the Disappearance, Brighton: University of the Creative Arts, 2014.
Ronald Storrs, Orientations, Nicholson & Watson, 1937.