5-Endless Bliss Fifth Fascicle - Hakikat Kitabevi

who shuns this responsibility by underestimating the fard and
argues that it would be fundamentalism to bury a corpse or that
it would be better to cremate it like the disbelievers called
Buddhists, Hindus and Communists, or by scientific reasoning,
will lose his îmân (belief) and become a murtad.]
It is not permissible to put it on the ground, in a building, or
in marble without digging the earth. If it is not possible to take a
person to land who has died on a ship, it is not fard to bury him.
Two people cannot be buried in one grave unless it is
inevitable. Before a corpse has rotted and its bones have
become earth, someone else’s corpse cannot be buried in its
grave. If it is impossible to dig another grave, the bones (of the
former) are put together (on one side of the grave) and earthed
up; then the latter can be buried in the other side of the grave.
When the corpse rots and changes into earth, another corpse
can be buried in the grave. If the plot of land does not belong to
Waqf and if it is someone’s property, the owner can use this
land as a field or build a house on it. The fatwâ states so, too. It
is written in the section about manual afflictions in Hadîqa,
“After the corpse has rotted and become earth, it is permissible
to bury someone else in its grave or to cultivate the place of the
grave or to build a house on it.” If graves remain under the
waters of a flood or river, it is not permissible to unearth the
corpses (or bones) to bury them somewhere else.” If an
abandoned cemetery of disbelievers no longer bears any sign
of disbelievers, Believers may be buried or a mosque may be
built there. As a matter of fact, the building plot of Masjîd-i Nabî
in Medina used to be the disbelievers’ cemetery. The graves
were dug, the bones were taken out and buried somewhere
else.
It is written in Jâmi’ul-fatâwâ, “The depth of the grave must
be equal to the length between a man’s chest and feet. It is
better if it is as deep as a man’s height.” The grave must be
deep so that water will not leak into it, scent will not ooze out of
it, and beasts will not be able to dig it up. It must be equal to the
corpse’s stature in length, and its width must be half its length.
The grave’s length must be perpendicular to the direction of
qibla. It is sunna to make a lahd. A lahd is a niche dug on the
qibla side of the grave and all along the grave. It must be large
enough to receive the corpse in width and depth, after the grave
has been dug. The corpse is put on its right side in the lahd.
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