Having shops built in an old graveyard

Question

The lands adjoining the graveyard are situated such that, most likely, no grave or the like has ever been found in them, and they lie on a definite (qatʿi) (?) and public road. If shops are built on this land and let out on rent, will there be no Sharʿi defect? Even before this, shops have already been built in this same line. Its income, too, will come to the graveyard’s expenses in the same way as that of the earlier shops has been coming.

Answer

If there is sufficient room in the graveyard, and this adjoining plot is endowed as waqf for the needs of the graveyard, and building shops on it will cause no constraint for burials, then having the shops built is permissible; the income of these shops should then be spent on the needs of the graveyard itself.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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