A Mosque Built in an Old Graveyard Is Also a Mosque in the Sharʿi Sense

Question

A mosque has stood within the enclosure of a graveyard for eleven years, and the Friday prayer and the five daily prayers are regularly held in it; all the people of the neighbourhood keep praying in it. Some people objected that this mosque is built on graves, and they stop people from praying in it. Some people say that there were traces of graves in this enclosure, and those who saw them remember this well, but it is not known where exactly those traces were.

Answer

Building a mosque on a place endowed as waqf for burying the dead is contrary to the intention of the waqif (endower), and therefore it is forbidden. Praying in a place where graves are in front is forbidden. But if the graveyard has become old, so that the dead are no longer buried there, and the old graves are still there, but because a long time has passed the dead are no…

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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