Incorporating a Graveyard into an Eidgah and Levelling Brick-Built Graves

Question

Question: The land adjoining the Eidgah (prayer ground for the Eid prayers) was at one time a graveyard and is recorded in the papers as a graveyard, but for a long time no dead have been buried there; there are, however, a few brick-built graves, and the land itself lies unused. May it be incorporated into the Eidgah or not, and may these brick-built graves be levelled or not?

Answer

If this land is not needed for burying the dead, lies useless, and there is a need to include it in the Eidgah — then when a grave becomes so old that the deceased no longer remains in it but has turned into earth, its ruling also changes: neither does its sanctity remain, nor is prayer there prohibited, nor do building and cultivation remain forbidden; rather, all these…

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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