Ayyubid beginnings Popular Palestinian tradition holds that the festival was inaugurated in the time after
Saladin's
recapture of Jerusalem from the
Crusaders in
1187. The mainstream opinion among historians is that the shrine was built by Baibars some eight decades later, and that the Saladin myth is a 19th-century reaction to Western encroachment; this, however, doesn't preclude some scholars from finding merit in the Saladin narrative.
Mamluk period In 1269, the Mamluk sultan Baybars built a small
shrine there as part of a general policy he adopted after conquering towns and rural areas from
Lebanon to
Hebron from the
Kingdom of Jerusalem. The shrines were mainly dedicated to
prophets and
companions of the Prophet, and their maintenance was funded by a
waqf, an endowment from properties that formerly belonged to the
Latin Church. In the case of Nabi Musa, the
waqf fund was secured from ecclesiastical assets expropriated in nearby Jericho. Baibars' construction inscription is still to be seen. It indicates the year the shrine was built,
AH 668 (1269-70 CE), and the fact that he "ordered the building of this noble sacred place over the tomb of Moses" while he was returning from
Hajj towards
Jerusalem. Although the sultan's secretary doesn't mention the construction, one of his biographers,
Ibn Shaddad al-Halabi, does so, albeit with little detail. Around 1820, the
Ottoman authorities had to almost fully rebuild the shrine complex, which had, over the previous centuries, fallen into a grave state of dilapidated disrepair. made the pageantry of the Nabi Musa pilgrimage a potent symbol of both political and religious identity among
Muslims from the outset of the modern period. s fly over the Nabi Musa procession for the last time, in 1917 As part of the mid-19th-century Ottoman
modernisation and reform period, the newly created local council for Jerusalem was put in charge of organising the Nabi Musa festivities. Its members, all of which belonged to the rich and influential families of the city, changed the main emphasis from the desert shrine to Jerusalem. The procession moved off from Jerusalem under a distinctive Nabi Musa banner which the Husaynis conserved for the annual occasion in their
al-Dar al-Kabira (the Great House). On arriving at the shrine, the al-Husaynis and another rising Jerusalem family of notables (''A'ayan''), the Yunis clan, were required to provide two meals a day over the week for all worshippers. Once their vows were taken, or vows previously taken were renewed, they were offered to the festival. The priestly family conducting events would provide about twelve lambs, together with rice, bread, and Arab butter, for a
communal meal every day. Sheep were sacrificed in front of the maqam door, and the blood of the victim was smeared on the threshold. people from all over the country attended the Nabi Musa festival every year.
British period For some years from 1919 onwards, pilgrims made their trek back from Jericho to Jerusalem to the sound of English military music. The anti-Jewish and anti-British
1920 Nebi Musa riots took their starting point during that year's Nebi Musa pilgrimage, with Arabs attacking Jews in the
Old City of Jerusalem and causing several deaths. The young Hajj
Amin al-Husseini, who had held an
anti-Zionist speech to the masses before the riots broke out, was pointed out by the British authorities as the principal instigator, which only helped him gain in popularity among the Arabs. but the 1931 census lists Nabi Musa as home to three Muslims, all living in one house. The 1938 village statistics lists Nabi Musa as having 967 residents (692 non-Jews and 275 Jews). The 1945 village statistics lists Nabi Musa, along with the northern Palestine Potash Commission, as having 2,650 residents (1,330 Muslims, 1,270 Jews, 30 Christians, and 20 others). In 1937, during the
Arab revolt in Palestine, Hajj Amin al-Husseini had to flee the country. Since 1995, control over the tomb itself has been allocated to the
Palestinian National Authority. After the
Oslo Accords (1993, 1995), the
Palestinian Authority took charge of organising the pilgrimage, • 1978: 968 dunams for
Mitzpe Yeriho • 1,147 dunams for tourist site "Lido Yehuda" After the
1995 accords, 1.7% of Nabi Musa's land was classified as the
Palestinian enclaves of Area A' the remaining 98.3% are designated the fully Israeli-controlled territory of
Area C. ==Description==