For centuries, Palestinians in Jerusalem have celebrated the Nabi Musa Festival, a local cultural and religious event deeply embedded in the collective Palestinian memory as an iconic event. Each year, during the week before Easter, Palestinian Muslims embark on a journey from Jerusalem to the Nabi Musa shrine near Jericho. This week-long event, known as Mawsim al-Nabi Musa, or “the season of Prophet Moses,” is marked by communal prayers, festive gatherings, and a pilgrimage. It was one of several religious traditions that were celebrated in historical Palestine during different seasons throughout the year, such as Mawsim al-Nabi Ruben in Jaffa, Mawsim al-Nabi Saleh in Ramleh, and al-Mintar in Gaza.1

Although biblical texts indicate that Moses was buried in an unknown location in today’s southern Jordan,2 local Muslim tradition places the tomb of Moses—revered in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism alike—in a site near Jericho, 20 kilometers east of Jerusalem. The origins of this tradition are not entirely clear, but it seems to have become an established part of the local Muslim calendar since the time of Salah al-Din. Legend has it that Salah al-Din saw the location in a dream, prompting him to build a mosque at the site, which was later expanded by the Mamluk sultan Baybars al-Bunduqdari.3

Throughout its 10 centuries of existence, the festival underwent numerous transformations and acquired different meanings under different ruling powers as control over Jerusalem shifted from one hand to another. However, its most defining and enduring feature was the gathering of the community and the sharing of a profound sense of heritage and unity.

According to popular myth, the festival was inaugurated after Salah al-Din 's recapture of Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, although the shrine itself was not built until several decades later by Baybars. Some scholars explain this gap in time by suggesting that, by the time Baybars entered Jerusalem (1269), there must have already been an association between the site and Moses’s tomb, which motivated him to build an elaborate shrine.4

At any rate, it is widely believed that the festival was instituted by Salah al-Din for strategic purposes: to attract Muslim pilgrims and counterbalance the Christian presence during Easter. Hence, the festival served as a political measure to strengthen Muslim claims to the city and mitigate the risk of Christians rebelling, particularly over the Holy Sepulchre.5

Eight decades later, Sultan Baybars, while returning from Mecca after performing the hajj, decided to build a small shrine (maqam) at the site as part of his broader policy in conquered territories. He ordered the construction of a “noble sacred place over the tomb of Moses," as noted in the inscription still visible today, which also indicates that the shrine was built in AH 668 (1269–70 CE).6

The Nabi Musa complex is a huge rectangular building with a mosque and about 100 rooms where pilgrims were housed and fed, overflowing into tents that stretched out over the surrounding hills. On the ground floor of the mosque is the cenotaph, covered with green cloth.

In her memoir Our Jerusalem: An American Family in the Holy City 1881–1949, American Colony member Bertha Spafford Vester gives a vivid illustration of the surrounding landscape:

In the centuries following its construction, the shrine attracted pilgrims who engaged in ziyara (ritual visitation to tombs). The traditional ziyara focused on religious worship at the shrine, incorporating rural and Bedouin folk traditions. During the 12th and 13th centuries, these events proliferated throughout the region, with each event reflecting local styles and aesthetics. Rituals at the Nabi Musa shrine included dhikr, the chanting of religious eulogies, and the playing of drums, cymbals, and tambourines. The diverse crowd of worshippers consisted of villagers, Bedouins, urbanites, scholars, mystics (Sufis), city notables, and imperial officials.8

The festival underwent massive changes between Baybars’ construction of the shrine and the modern ceremonies of late Ottoman rule, when it emerged as the largest Islamic festival in the region.

The municipal councils established by the Ottomans were instrumental in organizing the festival. Subcommittees of the Jerusalem Administrative Council oversaw the celebrations. Members of the council, including prominent Muslims and non-Muslims, authorized funding for the event.

Awad Halabi, author of Palestinian Rituals of Identity: The Prophet Moses Festival in Jerusalem, 1850–1948, explains that in the mid-19th century, the festival was subject to modernization efforts by Ottoman officials and Jerusalem’s elite: “The modern organizers devised a new ritual that championed social relations and power dynamics unique to the modern era, such as the authority of urban notables over rural peoples, the power of the modern state, and a modern Islamic praxis.”9

With more emphasis placed on the festival held in Jerusalem rather than the pilgrimage itself, the ceremony transformed from a locus of traditional worship to an “official, civic pageant.”10 The modern festival projected the new social order of fin-de-siècle Jerusalem. According to Halabi:

In the modern Ottoman version of the festival, thousands of Palestinian Muslims gathered in Jerusalem the Friday before Good Friday to journey to the Nabi Musa shrine, engaging in prayers, music, dancing, and communal meals. Days before, the other cities, such as Hebron and Nablus, sent their own flags along with bands consisting of drums and cymbals. Bandsmen and banner bearers gathered in the compound of the Dome of the Rock or the Mosque of Omar.

The Anglo-Irish journalist Philip Perceval Graves described the entry of worshippers from the countryside into Jerusalem as they passed through the Jaffa Gate in his 1923 book Palestine: The Land of Three Faiths:

The procession took off from Jerusalem under the distinctive banner (holy flag) of Nabi Musa, conserved today by the Husseini family—the custodians of the shrine and, therefore, the hosts of the Nabi Musa festival—for the annual occasion in their al-Dar al-Kabira (the Great House). The procession was headed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, also a member of the Husseini family. The mufti rode on horseback immediately behind Jerusalem’s holy flag, made of green and black satin embroidered in gold. Spectators stood on both sides of the procession, with Turkish soldiers lining up the road to keep an open passage for the procession.

Other flags were also carried by the Qutub and Dajani families, who led sections of the procession. During the celebration, the Dajani family carried two flags: One held their own family crest, and the other held the symbol of King David’s Tomb.

Bertha Spafford describes the start of the procession in her memoir:

During Ottoman rule and later under the Colonial British Mandate, the festival’s activities were varied and not limited to worship and prayer, with the entertainment element gaining more weight in the festival’s calendar with time. What started as a pilgrimage to a modest shrine in the desert gradually turned into an all-encompassing festive event, which included parades, folk songs, and dancing, as well as recreational activities for kids. Dervishes from around the region came to Jerusalem for the celebration, and some carried out performances such as eating live coal, forcing spikes through their cheeks, and charming snakes.14

The festival took on great political importance during the British Mandate era, serving as a political tool for the promotion of both Arab nationalism and British colonialism. Those two contradictory agendas would intersect when “British Colonialism attends the festival,” as described by Awad Halabi in his book Palestinian Rituals of Identity.15

Trying to project Britain as a respectful guardian of Palestine’s Islamic culture, Awad explains, British colonial officials appropriated a role for themselves in the festival, such as dispatching military bands to precede the arrival of Islamic sacred banners and appointing colonial officials to assume visible roles.

Over time, the British Mandate authorities managed to influence the festival in subtle ways. Halabi writes:

Despite British sponsorship of the festival, a segment of Jerusalem’s elite—particularly the Husseini family—sought to strike a balance between preserving the festival’s national character and navigating its association with the colonial authorities. Wasif Jawhariyyeh reflects on this delicate dilemma in his memoirs: