What a Muslim cemetery looks like, and how Muslims are buried

A Muslim cemetery looks plainer than most people expect. There are no mausoleums, no statues, no family tombs, and often no upright stones at all. The graves run in rows that may sit at an odd angle to the road, each one a low mound or a strip of lawn with a small marker at the head, and the markers look alike. Visitors sometimes read that plainness as neglect. It is deliberate, and most of it goes back to the first generation of Muslims.

This article describes what you will see in a Muslim cemetery or a Muslim section of an American cemetery, how a burial is done, and why. Where the schools differ, it says so, and leaves the decision with the family and their scholar.

What do Muslim graves look like?

Four things make a Muslim grave recognisable.

The graves face the qibla. Every grave is dug so that the person inside lies on their right side facing Mecca, the direction of prayer. The rows are laid out for that, which is why a Muslim section inside a larger cemetery is often turned at an angle to the rest of the grounds. From most of the United States the qibla is roughly to the north-east.

The graves are low. The Sunnah is to leave the filled grave slightly raised, so it is seen and not walked on, and no higher than about a hand's span. In Sahih Muslim (969a) Ali reports that the Prophet ﷺ sent him to leave "no high grave without levelling it". Many Muslim cemeteries shape the soil into a gentle mound; lawn cemeteries settle it flat.

Nothing is built over them. Jabir reports in Sahih Muslim (970a) that the Prophet ﷺ forbade plastering a grave, sitting on it, or building over it. That is why there are no tombs, kerb sets, slabs or enclosures, and why even the grave of the Prophet ﷺ himself was not made prominent, as Aisha explains in Sahih al-Bukhari (1390).

The marker is small. A stone at the head of the grave, so it can be found again, is established practice; the Prophet ﷺ placed one himself, as explained in what Islamic tradition says about grave markers. What the stone may say is where scholars differ and cemeteries make their own rules. Most Muslim sections in the United States ask for a flat or low granite marker with the name, the dates and at most a short supplication, the stone described in Muslim headstones for graves.

The result is a field of graves that look like one another, which is intended: a grave is meant to remind the visitor of their own death, not to rank the dead by what their families could afford.

Why do Muslim graves face Mecca?

Because the living pray facing the Ka'bah in Mecca, and the dead are laid the same way. The schools agree on the practice: the body is placed on its right side with the face toward the qibla, as the Shafi'i manuals summarised by SeekersGuidance put it, and as the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America advises groups laying out a cemetery in the United States. Ask the office which way the rows face before you buy a plot; the answer should be the qibla, not the road.

How are Muslims buried?

A Muslim burial is quick, simple and done by the community rather than by professionals alone.

1. Washing. The body is washed, usually an odd number of times, by Muslims of the same sex or by a spouse. Many mosques have a washing room.
2. Shrouding. The body is wrapped in plain white cloth, the kafan. The manuals commonly give three sheets for a man and five for a woman, without stitching or ornament.
3. The funeral prayer. Salat al-janazah is a short standing prayer, with no bowing or prostration, said in congregation with the body in front, at the mosque, the funeral home or the graveside.
4. Carrying and lowering. The body is carried to the grave and lowered, often by close male relatives, who may enter the grave to lay it on its right side facing the qibla. The words said as the body is placed, in Sunan Abi Dawud (3213), are "in the name of Allah, and upon the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah".
5. Closing the grave. Boards, stone slabs or unfired bricks are leaned over the body so that the soil does not fall on it directly, and the grave is filled by hand. Everyone present may add three handfuls of earth. Many recite the verse that describes the burial itself, Surah Ta Ha 20:55:

مِنْهَا خَلَقْنَاكُمْ وَفِيهَا نُعِيدُكُمْ وَمِنْهَا نُخْرِجُكُمْ تَارَةً أُخْرَىٰ

Minhā khalaqnākum wa fīhā nuʿīdukum wa minhā nukhrijukum tāratan ukhrā. From it We created you, into it We shall return you, and from it We shall bring you out once more.

6. Supplication. Those present stand and ask forgiveness for the deceased before leaving.

There is no viewing, no embalming unless the law requires it for transport, and no cremation, which is prohibited across the schools. A casket is used only where the cemetery or the state insists on one.

What is a Muslim grave like inside?

Two shapes of grave are described in the tradition. In the lahd, a niche is cut into the qibla-side wall at the bottom of the shaft, and the body is laid in the niche, which is then closed with boards or bricks. In the shaqq, a narrower trench is dug in the floor of the grave and the body is laid in it under a lid. Ibn Abbas reports the Prophet ﷺ saying, in Sunan Abi Dawud (3208), that "the niche is for us and the trench is for others", so the lahd is preferred where the soil will hold it.

American cemeteries dig with machines, so the niche is rare and the trench common. The arrangement the City of Des Moines approved for the Muslim section of its Glendale Cemetery in 1999 is a good picture of the compromise: a standard grave opening, the lowest two feet narrowed by hand to a cavity twenty-four inches wide, the body laid in that cavity under a board, and relatives permitted into the grave briefly to position it. The same document records the other adjustment a Muslim burial needs: the city amended its cemetery ordinance so that families whose religious practice forbids a burial vault or liner could decline one.

How deep and how big is a Muslim grave?

The tradition sets a purpose rather than a measurement. The Shafi'i manuals describe the ideal grave as deep enough for a man to stand in with his arms raised, and the minimum as deep enough to hide the smell and keep animals off. After Uhud, when the wounded could not dig a grave for each man, the Prophet ﷺ told them, in Sunan Abi Dawud (3215) and Jami' at-Tirmidhi (1713), to dig wide and well and bury two or three together, the one who knew the most Qur'an first. Sharing a grave is a concession for necessity, not the norm.

In practice an American cemetery digs to its own standard: Des Moines specified ninety-six inches long, thirty-eight wide and sixty deep, a foot shallower than usual because no vault had to fit.

How soon after death are Muslims buried?

As soon as it can be arranged, ideally the same day or the next. Abu Hurayrah reports the Prophet ﷺ saying, in Sahih al-Bukhari (1315), to hurry with the funeral: if the person was righteous, you are sending them on to good. The tradition has no three-day rule and no required waiting period.

In the United States the delay is rarely religious. A burial needs a signed death certificate and a burial permit, an open cemetery and a dug grave, and after an unexpected death a medical examiner's release. Muslim funeral homes and cemeteries are organised to clear those steps within a day where the law allows. Burial abroad usually means embalming, a sealed casket and a longer wait, which most scholars permit under necessity.

Muslim cemetery or Muslim section?

A dedicated Muslim cemetery is owned by a mosque, an Islamic society or a Muslim company. The whole ground is laid out to the qibla, vaults are not required, and the marker rules are usually strict: often flat granite only, uniform size, no portraits, sometimes nothing left on the graves at all.

A Muslim section is a part of a municipal or private cemetery licensed to a local Muslim community. It is laid out to the qibla inside a ground that is not, which produces the angled rows, and it follows two sets of rules: the cemetery's on markers, foundations and lawn care, and the community's on top. Vault and casket requirements and the right of relatives to enter the grave are negotiated, as in Des Moines, and differ from one city to the next. Where no Muslim section exists, scholars generally permit burial in a general cemetery, with the body still facing the qibla.

Either way the cemetery office, not the funeral home, holds the marker rules. The questions to ask are in cemetery rules for Islamic headstones.

What you will not see, and what you may leave

You will not see photographs on most markers, figures, benches over graves, or lights and ornaments. Flowers depend on the ground: scholars read the palm frond the Prophet ﷺ placed on two graves differently, and lawn cemeteries remove anything that stops the mower. The etiquette of a visit is in visiting graves in Islam.

What you will see on a newer grave is a temporary marker, usually a numbered stake, which fades or moves within months. The permanent stone goes in when the ground has settled, as described in when to set the headstone.

Before you choose a plot

Visit the cemetery or the section and look at the rows. Check that they face the qibla, that the markers in place are the kind your family would want, and that the rules allow the name, the dates in both calendars and the supplication you intend to cut. After a burial, write down the section, row and plot number before the temporary marker goes.

Then design the stone within those rules. The words families use, with transliterations, are in the words on a Muslim headstone, and the two calendars in Hijri and Gregorian dates. You can design the marker in the studio and take the dimensioned drawing to the cemetery office for approval; if you would rather have a maker handle the stone and the cemetery, Islamic headstones near me explains what to ask.