Until the hearses began to arrive, the crowd of thousands — three city blocks full of kneeling African Muslims and New Yorkers — was sad but quiet.

When the pallbearers began to unload the plain pine caskets, each one a little bigger than the next, women in headscarves let out deep sobs. Several men wiped tears from their eyes, and held each other up by the shoulder. Prayers rang out between mouthed recitations of the “Al-Fatiha,” the opening of the Koran.

In unison, the crowd lost its reserve. The reality of the death toll had hit home once again as it had so many times over the last four days: Nine children and one woman died of smoke inhalation or complications from the three-alarm fire on Woodycrest Avenue in the Bronx on the night of March 7.

An overheated space heater started the blaze, which raged unimpeded up a wooden stairwell, trapping the victims on the upper floors.

There were survivors, too. Several adults and eight children managed to escape, with one mother and two children jumping from the second floor onto concrete or into the arms of neighbors.

“You have Malians, Sarakuli, Fulani, Hausa, African American, Carribean, Solof …” a man wearing a skull cap, Dawud Ahad, 57, said of the African ethnicities he saw around him. “It’s a reflection of the oneness of the Creator of the Heaven and Earth, and the Divine.”

The mourners began arriving outside the Islamic Cultural Center on 166th Street in the morning. Some were relatives or neighbors of the large Soumare and Magassa families that were halved by the fire; others had heard about the tragedy through word of mouth or the extensive coverage in the local newspapers and on television.

Staff from the mosque laid out large blue tarpaulins so the crowd could perform the noon prayer before the funeral service began.

Muslims performed their ceremonial ablutions in alleyways or on curbs with bottles of water. After the prayer — one of five that Muslims perform daily — the caravan of seven hearses began to arrive.

The coffins were brought into the mosque for no more than 15 minutes, while the imam led the congregation in the Salat Al-Janazah, which is a short prayer mourners say over bodies before they are buried. The bodies of Moussa Magassa’s five children were taken afterward to a cemetery in New Jersey, where they were buried facing Mecca. The wife and four children of Mamadou Soumare will be flown back to Mali, the homeland of all the victims.

“We are all mourning, together,” a neighbor of the victims from Gambia, Neneh Nobe, 23, said. “All Muslims, all the black people are here. The Americans have been very nice, especially the Bronx. They have been there every day.”

Cardboard boxes were passed among the crowd, and most of the donations were $10 and $20 bills. The imam of the Islamic Cultural Center, Moussa Wague, said the families have received more than $180,000 in donations, as well as an offer to rebuild their ravaged house. Mayor Bloomberg and other dignitaries, including the fire commissioner, Nicholas Scoppetta, and the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, attended the service. The City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, and the public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, wore black headscarves in observation of Muslim tradition.

The grieving fathers didn’t speak as they boarded buses for the burial in New Jersey, but their faces were tense with pain; they were led by the hand and didn’t appear to notice the crowds around them.

A Harlem imam, Konate Souleimane, said the men were very spiritual about the deaths.

“We were shocked and surprised,” he said. “We mourners, we’re crying, … but they came to us and said, ‘Don’t cry.’ They said, ‘We know God did it. He is the only one who knows.'”