The Non-Muslim Cemetery ("NMC" or Christian Cemetery) is a

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite, graveyard, or a green space called a memorial park or memorial garden, is a place where the remains of many death, dead people are burial, buried or otherwise entombed. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek ...

Jeddah Jeddah ( ), alternatively transliterated as Jedda, Jiddah or Jidda ( ; , ), is a List of governorates of Saudi Arabia, governorate and the largest city in Mecca Province, Saudi Arabia, and the country's second largest city after Riyadh, located ...

in the

Hejaz Hejaz is a Historical region, historical region of the Arabian Peninsula that includes the majority of the western region of Saudi Arabia, covering the cities of Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, Tabuk, Yanbu, Taif and Al Bahah, Al-B ...

region of

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

. It is located on the King Fahd Branch Road, in Jeddah's Al-Balad district. The cemetery contains more than 400 graves. A grey sarcophagus dedicated to the French explorer Charles Huber is located in the cemetery but it is not known if it contains Huber's remains. The French explorer Charles-Xavier Rochet d'Héricourt was buried at the cemetery in 1854. The British Consul in Jeddah, James Zohrab, identified 13 British graves, five Austrians, four French Vice-Consuls and two Jewish graves at the cemetery in 1878. A single

Commonwealth War Graves Commission The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves and places of commemoration of Commonwealth of Nations mil ...

(CWGC) gravestone is in the cemetery, that of Private John Arthur Hogan of the

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

Royal Army Service Corps The Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) was a corps of the British Army responsible for land, coastal and lake transport, air despatch, barracks administration, the Army Fire Service, staffing headquarters' units, supply of food, water, fuel and do ...

. Hogan died on 3 June 1944 in the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Jean-Baptiste Lapadu-Hargues, a French soldier of the First World War is also buried in the cemetery. Cyril Ousman, the British Vice-consul of Jeddah who was shot and killed by Prince Mishari bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 1951 is also buried here. Recent burials have been rare and infrequent, and are mostly of Indian and Filipino children. Burials require the approval of the Mayor of Jeddah. The cemetery had reached maximum capacity by 2006. The cemetery is hidden from sight by high trees. There is no sign to indicate its existence. In a 2011 article for ''The Saudi Gazette'', Matouq Al-Shareef reported that locals were reticent regarding the exact location of the cemetery and the cemetery guard would only provide information with the approval of the relevant local consulate. The supervision of the site is the responsibility of Western consulates in Jeddah. The cemetery was already in existence in 1541 to bury Portuguese casualties resulting from the Ottoman–Portuguese wars. The Danish explorer

Carsten Niebuhr Carsten Niebuhr, or Karsten Niebuhr (17 March 1733 Cuxhaven, Lüdingworth – 26 April 1815 Meldorf, Dithmarschen), was a German mathematician, Cartography, cartographer, and Geographical exploration, explorer in the service of Denmark-Norway. He ...

made the first reference to a 'Christian Cemetery' in Jeddah on his 1762 map of the city drawn during the Danish Arabia expedition of the 1760s. Niebuhr's cemetery was located close to or at the exact location of the present cemetery, just outside Jeddah's city walls. The walls of the cemetery may have been built by

Muhammad Ali of Egypt Muhammad Ali (4 March 1769 – 2 August 1849) was the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Albanians, Albanian viceroy and governor who became the ''de facto'' ruler of History of Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty, Egypt from 1805 to 1848, widely consi ...

in the aftermath of the Ottoman-Saudi wars of the 1810s. The walls protected against vandalism, local dogs, and the occasional flooding by the nearby Red Sea. The cemetery was vandalised following the Battle of Jeddah in 1925. In 2018, the centenary of the end of the First World War was commemorated at the cemetery by representatives of foreign consulates in Jeddah who laid wreaths on the tombs of Hogan and Lapadu-Hargues. An attack on the cemetery using an

Improvised explosive device An improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional warfare, conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached t ...

injured several people during the annual

Armistice Day Armistice Day, later known as Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth and Veterans Day in the United States, is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark Armistice of 11 November 1918, the armistice signed between th ...

commemorations on 11 November 2020. Commonwealth graves are managed by the

1990s renovations

The cemetery had fallen into disrepair since the 1920s, but was still used for the burials of non-Muslims. A committee was formed in the early 1990s by local consulates, and a company chosen by the German consulate was engaged to refurbish the cemetery in 1995. The renovations cost 350,000 riyals and were funded by the local consulate and donations from companies and individuals. The cemetery was made level and the wall was repainted and repaired. Cenotaphs were cleaned and old concrete gravemarkers were replaced by marble tombstones. Gravemarkers of historic significance were moved against the western wall of the cemetery to maximise space. Vegetation including trees and vines were planted. In 2000, the Dutch Consulate, on behalf of the consulate committee, applied to the Saudi

Ministry of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and relations, diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral r ...

for a new burial plot.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Non-Muslim Cemetery Cemeteries in Saudi Arabia Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in Saudi Arabia Tourist attractions in Jeddah World War II cemeteries Ottoman Arabia Buildings and structures in Jeddah Attacks in Asia in 2020 Improvised explosive device bombings in 2020 Improvised explosive device bombings in Saudi Arabia

1990s renovations

See also

References

External links