Graves stretch as far as the eye can see in Iraq’s Wadi alSalam cemetery, often described as the largest in the world and silently bearing witness to life and death over 14 centuries.
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Flowers, photos and religious flags commemorate the more than 6 million people buried in the ocher sands of the Valley of Peace desert victims of war, disease, accidents and old age. Every year, pilgrims travel to the site where, for example, the remains of prophets, Arab nobles and scientists are kept.
“Oh, my father!” wails a mourner, Jamil Abdelhassan, as he prostrate over a grave in the vast mortuary in the Shiite holy city of Najaf in central Iraq.
Tears and prayers are the currency of daily life in this grim expanse of tombs, vaults and catacombs, built next to the mausoleum of the revered Imam Ali, the founding figure of Shiite Islam.
“I’m sad, of course,” said Abdelhassan, who traveled 180 km from Baghdad to pray at the grave of his father, who died in 2014. “But I’m also happy. I know that when the Judgment Day comes, My father will be with Imam Ali.
1 of 6 Aerial view shows a woman walking through an alley at the WadialSalam cemetery, Iraq Photo: Ayman Henna / AFP 2 of 6 A seller shows bottles of rose water to visitors at the WadialSalam cemetery, in Iraq Iraq Photo: Ayman Henna / AFP 3 of 6 Gravediggers prepare a grave during a funeral at the Wadi alSalam cemetery in Iraq Photo: Qassem alKaabi / AFP 4 of 6 Woman prays in front of the shrine of Imam Ali , the founding figure of Shiite Islam, is to be buried at the Wadi alSalam cemetery in the holy city of Najaf in Iraq Photo: Ayman Henna / AFP 5 of 6 Bottles of water, roses and artificial flowers are being sold to visitors to the Wadi al Salam Cemetery in Iraq Photo: Qassem alKaabi / AFP 6 of 6 Aerial view of the Wadi alSalam Cemetery in Iraq Photo: Qassem alKaabi / AFP
Tombs are being built near the mausoleum of the revered Imam Ali, the founding figure of Shiite Islam
For Shiites, Iraq’s religious majority, “it is very important to be buried near Imam Ali,” says Hassan Issa alHakim, a historian in the city of Najaf.
Sultans and soldiers, priests and prophets as well as countless ordinary citizens are buried here. Since Ali’s death in 661 AD and his burial nearby, “people stopped burying their dead in another cemetery in Najaf, AlThawiya, to bury them in Wadi alSalam,” he says .
“They believe that Ali will play the role of advocate for those around him at the Last Judgment.”
The largest cemetery in the world
Many Iraqi Shiites choose the cemetery to bury their loved ones.
“Digging a grave costs 150,000 dinars (around R$238,000) and gravestones cost 250,000 to 300,000 dinars (equivalent to between R$397,000 and R$476,000),” says Najah Marza Hamza, manager of a funeral home.
Some historians estimate that more than 6 million souls rest in the cemetery, mostly Iraqi Shiites but also Iranians and Pakistanis.
“No, there are many more! But it is impossible to quantify,” argues Hakim, former president of the nearby University of Kufa.
In a 2011 submission to UNESCO, Iraq estimated the cemetery’s area at 917 hectares (equivalent to more than 1,700 football fields) and called it “the oldest and largest cemetery in the world.”
There are no maps to guide visitors through the vast and confusing labyrinth, which is also listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest cemetery in the world. Mourners driving there sometimes cause traffic jams on the avenues that run through the vast cemetery.
At a recent ceremony, 54yearold Ahmed Ali Hamed and about 20 relatives came from southern Iraq to bury his aunt Fatima, who he said died “in her 80s.” The funeral procession consisted entirely of men, “because women don’t come to the funeral,” says Hamed.
“They wash their bodies and go home. This is our tradition. The women will come, but on another day.”
The elderly woman’s body, wrapped in a shroud, was lowered into the pit dug into the ocher earth, overlooking the holy city of Mecca.
Deaths from the wars in Iraq
Many of those buried in Wadi alSalam were victims of the violence that has plagued Iraq, including the last decades marked by dictatorship, war and sectarian bloodshed.
On one grave there is a photo of a smiling young man in an Iraqi army uniform, named in the inscription “the martyr Ahmed Nasser alMamouri.” Date of death: April 7, 2016.
Other people buried here died during earlier times of sadness and tragedy in Iraq the two wars in Iraq and, before that, the 19801988 war with Iran under Saddam Hussein.
Another fighter, identified in a marble epitaph as Hassan Karim, died a “martyr” in 1987, at the end of the grinding conflict with the Islamic Republic.
The cemetery is also the final resting place of Abu Mehdi alMouhandis, an Iraqi lieutenant of powerful Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, both of whom were killed in a US drone strike in January 2020.
More recently, the Covid pandemic has led to excess mortality, said 43yearold gravedigger Thamer Moussa Hreina.
“During the corona pandemic, we had 5,000 to 6,000 more bodies in the course of a year,” he said, looking over the area of graves.
Hakim, the historian, said the Covid death toll reflected Iraq’s darkest days.
“There are more deaths in wars and crises,” he says. “We buried up to 200 people a day.”