Abandoned Jewish Cemetery

A crumbling 19th-century Jewish cemetery on the edge of the medina, remnant of Asilah's Sephardic community

The abandoned Jewish cemetery near the edge of the medina is a quiet, melancholy remnant of Asilah's Sephardic Jewish community, which lived in the town from at least the 16th century until the mid-20th century. The cemetery's tombstones carry Hebrew inscriptions, many now partially legible, dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The site is overgrown and not formally maintained. It sits just outside the medina walls on the landward side, a short walk from the main entrance gates. The condition of the cemetery reflects the fate of many Jewish heritage sites in Morocco — communities have largely gone, but the physical traces remain, suspended in a kind of respectful neglect.

Visiting requires only that you approach it as you would any cemetery: quietly and respectfully. The site is open and unguarded. For travellers interested in Jewish heritage and the history of Sephardic communities across the Mediterranean, it adds significant depth to an Asilah visit.

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A story
Asilah's Jewish community was largely Sephardic — descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 who settled across North Africa. At its peak in the 19th century the community numbered several hundred families; by Moroccan independence in 1956 most had emigrated, many to Israel. The cemetery, no longer maintained, is one of the last visible traces of a community that lived here for nearly five centuries.