The Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian - Syria

Mar Musa or Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi (literally "the monastery of saint Moses the Abyssinian") is a monastic community of Syriac Catholic rite, situated near the town of Nabk, approximately 80 kilometers north of Damascus, on the Eastern slopes of the Anti-Lebanon. The main church of the monastic compound hosts precious frescoes dating to the 11th and 12th century AD.

An ancient building, stone circles, lines and tombs were recently discovered near the monastery in 2009 by archaeologist Robert Mason of the Royal Ontario Museum. Mason suggested that the ruins may date back 10,000 years and were likely constructed in Neolithic period. Further excavation and research, into this discovery, has been halted due to the threat of violence caused by the Syrian civil war.

The area was first inhabited by prehistoric hunters and shepherds because of its natural cisterns and pastures ideal for herding goats. Later, Christian hermits used the grottoes for meditation, and this created the first small monastic center. According to local tradition St. Moses the Abyssinian was the son of a king of Ethiopia. He refused to accept the crown, honors, and marriage, and instead he looked towards the kingdom of God. He traveled to Egypt and then to the Holy Land. Afterward, he lived as a monk in Qara, Syria, and then as a hermit not far from there in the valley of what is today the monastery. There he was martyred by Byzantine soldiers. The story says that his family took his body, but that the thumb of his right hand was separated by a miracle, and was left as a relic, now conserved in the Syrian church of Nabk.

The monastery of St. Moses existed from the middle of the sixth century, and belonged to the Syrian Antiochian Rite. The present monastery church was built in the Islamic year 450 (1058 AD), according to Arabic inscriptions on the walls, which begin with the words: "In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate". The frescoes go back to the 11th and 12th centuries. In the fifteenth century the monastery was partly rebuilt and enlarged, but by the first half of the nineteenth century it was completely abandoned, and slowly fell into ruins. Nevertheless, it remained in the ownership of the Syrian Catholic diocese of Homs, Hama, and Nabk. 

Source: Wikipedia | Image credits: 1 2 3 4