A waqf fed Maghrebi pilgrims in Jerusalem for 774 years, and its quarter was bulldozed in one night in June 1967

Saladin retook Jerusalem in 1187. In 1193 his eldest son, al-Afdal Ali, founded the Waqf Abu Madyan, known as the Maghrebi Waqf. It fed, clothed, sent home and buried pilgrims from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Its income came from terraced land at Ein Karem, which supplied up to 40 percent of the waqf's income. The quarter at the foot of the Western Wall was waqf, in principle inalienable for ever. In 1915 and 1916 the Palestine office of the World Zionist Organization tried to buy the quarter from the Ottoman governor Jamal Pasha. It found he had no power to sell a waqf. Israel took Ein Karem in July 1948. France then paid the waqf a yearly subsidy that carried about 400 pilgrims a year. In 1958 the Algerian residents refused French aid. After 1962 no Maghreb state took over the funding. On 9 June 1967 Jerusalem's mayor Teddy Kollek and General Uzi Narkiss ratified a decision to clear the area. On 10 June the 700 residents were evacuated within hours and told to take nothing. The 135 houses and the al-Afdaliya mosque were demolished, and rubble filled the cisterns. At least one resident died. Israel paid modest compensation to individuals, not to the community. The last block, Dar Abu Saud, came down in 1968 and 1969. Today the site is the Western Wall plaza. In 1977 the King of Morocco gave the displaced families aid, and a Moroccan flag flies on a building beside the plaza.