The stone

“Jerusalem stone” is not one stone

It is a name applied to a whole family of pale limestones, dolomites and dolomitic limestones found in and around Jerusalem, used in building since antiquity. So the question “what stone is this house made of?” has several right answers depending on the course, the corner and the century. The masons who quarried and cut it were more precise than the phrase is, and their words are the ones worth knowing.

Meleke — ملكي, the royal stone

Meleke — also written melekeh or malaki — is a white, coarsely crystalline, thickly bedded limestone of the Judaean Mountains. The name is Arabic forroyal or kingly, and it did not come from a laboratory: it began in the jargon of local stonemasons, and geologists adopted it afterwards. The technical literature still uses the masons’ word.

It is quarried from the Bina Formation, a bed about ten metres thick, Upper Turonian, roughly ninety million years old. Freshly cut it is pure white. Left in the sun it goes to a light golden yellow — the colour a whole city is known for is the colour of stone ageing.

Yes, it really does harden after it is cut

This sounds like a story people tell, and it is not. Meleke is soft and quite workable when quarried — when first exposed it can be soft enough to cut with a knife — and on exposure to the air it hardens into a stone of considerable durability, one that resists erosion and takes a high polish. That single property is why a family with iron bars and hand chisels could quarry their own blocks and still end up with walls that outlasted them. It is also why so much of Jerusalem is hollow underneath: hundreds of caverns, cisterns, tombs and aqueducts were cut out of this stone precisely because it gave way to a chisel.

Mizzi — مزي, the hard one

Of the limestones around Jerusalem, two were the building stones of the Islamic period: meleke and mizzi. Mizzi is the harder — hard enough that it is called Palestinian marble — and it went where a wall takes punishment. Meleke, softer, went into the cisterns, the underground chambers and the tombs. A single house could hold both, which is the point: the builder chose by the job, not by the name.

Why the walls are a metre thick

Because the wall is not a row of enormous blocks. It is built as two faces — a carefully dressed outer face and a rougher inner one — with the cavity between them packed with smaller stone and mortar. What looks from the street like one immense block is the outer face of a composite wall, and the largest, best-cut stones were spent where they show and where they carry: the bottom courses, the corners, the arch, the lintel, the doorway.

The rectangular look people remember is not a stone type at all. It isashlar — stone cut square and laid in courses — which describes the mason’s work rather than the quarry’s.

Who is keeping it standing

RIWAQ— the Centre for Architectural Conservation in Ramallah — was founded in 1991 by the architectSuad Amiry, with a group of architects, archaeologists and planners, at a point when Palestinian built heritage had no institutional protection at all. It takes its name from the riwaq, the arcade.

Its researchers compiled a register of historic buildings across Palestine, and in its first twenty years it completed more than a hundred restoration projects, including monuments in the Old City of Jerusalem and historic streets in Bethlehem. Its approach is deliberately anti-monumentalist: the buildings that matter are the ordinary ones, the village houses and courtyards shaped by people whose names are not on anything — which is the same argument this archive makes about the record generally.

Common questions

What is Jerusalem stone?

Not one stone. “Jerusalem stone” is a name applied to a family of pale limestones, dolomites and dolomitic limestones found in and around Jerusalem, used in building since ancient times. Asking which one a house is made of is a real question with several possible answers.

What is meleke stone?

Meleke (ملكي, “royal” or “kingly”) is a white, coarsely crystalline, thickly bedded limestone from the Judaean Mountains. It is quarried from the Bina Formation, a layer roughly ten metres thick and about ninety million years old. Freshly cut it is pure white; it weathers to the golden hue Jerusalem is known for.

Does Jerusalem stone really harden after it is quarried?

Yes. Meleke is soft and quite workable when quarried — soft enough, when first exposed, to be cut with a knife — and hardens on exposure to the air into a durable stone that takes a high polish. This is why a family could cut it by hand and still get a wall that outlived them.

What is the difference between meleke and mizzi?

Of the limestones found around Jerusalem, two were the building stones of the Islamic period: meleke and mizzi. Mizzi is the harder of the two, known as “Palestinian marble”. Meleke, being softer, was worked into cisterns, underground chambers and tombs.

Why are Palestinian house walls so thick?

Because the wall is not a single row of blocks. A traditional wall is built as two faces — a dressed outer face and a rougher inner one — with the cavity between them packed with smaller stone and mortar. What reads as one enormous block is the outer face of a composite wall.

Sources

• Meleke — lithology, the Bina Formation, and the mason’s vocabulary ↗
• Jerusalem stone — why it names a family of stones, not one stone ↗
• RIWAQ — Centre for Architectural Conservation, Ramallah ↗
• RIWAQ’s Registry of Historic Buildings in Palestine ↗