99. Dōgara | دوقرة

Irbid Governorate

Turbeh / Maqbarah (mausoleum) of eleven ancestral Shēkhs of the local ‘Umari and Amarath tribes.

JADIS no. 212 2073

MEGA no. 10635

Coordinates: 32°35'52.8"N 35°44'08.5"E

32.598000, 35.735694

Plan: The mausoleum is fenced by a modern stone wall right beside the village’s main congregational mosque. Long rectangular plan, divided into two square chambers in axis oriented from E to W, each chamber covered by a dome resting on arches along the walls. The arch of the W wall is open and allows access to the neighboring chamber in the W. The entrance door is in the E wall, to the right of it, is a square window opening a view of the eleven tombs in the interior. In the E exterior cemetery garden are more modest recent tombs of the related families.

Measurements: no measurement have been taken by the GJU survey due to the respect of the privacy of the family tomb.

Exterior: unknown.

Interior: unknown.

Building Materials: It is not possible to give any further details, as the original exterior walls have been covered with a pseudo-stone masonry from the outside on all four sides in the recent past. The inner walls, as far as visible from outside, are all plastered and whitewashed. Construction details: dome construction on pendentifs as accustomed in the region during the Ottoman period; compare, for instance, the domes at the maqamāt aṭ-Ṭaybeh (no. 381), ‘Ajlūn (nos. 22-23) and at other locations.

Preservation: intact and well maintained by the families until present time as it can be understood by the recent renovations. The graveyard in E front of the mausoleum is still in use for burials to present days.

Inscription(s): none known.

Date(s): Early Ottoman. The biographies of the ancestral Shēkhs buried in this crypt and their relation to the families maintaining this mausoleum could possibly investigated in more details by a critical survey of oral history.

Traveler Reports: none known.

Bibliography: For the site see Mittmann 1970, 35-36 no. 78, mausoleum unpublished.