104 Items
East facing elevation of the east wall of the tower and adjoining room
These images show the second external elevation of the tower at the SE corner of the cloister.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Tower
View of the 1938 Church of Mar Elian
This church was built in 1938 over the Byzantine sarcophagus of Mar Elian on the site of the earlier shrine. In 2002 it was discovered that the cement cladding enclosed a mud brick structure. When the church was surveyed and the cement was stripped back to alleviate a damp problem, it became clear that the church had become fundamentally unstable. It was dismantled in 2004 and the salvaged materials were used in the rebuilding of a new church on the model of the 1938 structure to the west of the shrine. The new building was made of stone and a traditional mud brick chapel was constructed over the sarcophagus, which remained in situ.
Type: Architecture
Tags: 1938, Architecture, Church, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Mar Elian, Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Sarcophagus, Shrine, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Views of the south wall of the monastery cloister
These views show the south side of the monastery wall from the tower in the east to the new cemetery extension to the west.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Syria
The door to Dayr Mar Elian
The door to Dayr Mar Elian is one of the most ancient features still extant at the site. It is stone built, like the earliest courses of the wall on the south side, and inset in the later mud brick wall. The door is low to impede entrance as a security feature from earlier periods and the arch above the entrance has curved roundels with foliate motifs. Note in some of the pictures that there are bloody handprints above the interior door, these have been made by people sacrificing animals at the monastery and leaving handprints in fulfilment of a vow made to the saint.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Architecture, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Syria
Eid Mar Elian 2001
Every September 9th the feast day of Mar Elian ("Eid Mar Elian") is celebrated at Dayr Mar Elian. As the saint is venerated as both a Christian saint (Mar Elian) and a Muslim Sheikh or holy man (Sheikh Ahmed Khoury - Sheikh Ahmed the Priest) several thousand people from Qaryatayn and the neighbouring villages attend the mass held in the cloister. This is presided over by the local Syrian Catholic Metropolitan and the Sheikh of Qaryatayn. These pictures start by showing the preparations for the event the day before the pilgrims arrive, before showing the events of the day itself. Msgr. Georges Kassab and Sheikh Assad are shown addressing the crowds attended by assorted Christian clerics, including Fr. Jacques Mourad, Prior of Mar Elian and Fr. Paolo Dall'Oglio, the Abbot of Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi. On this occasion a small display was constructed in the church to explain about the forthcoming archaeological excavations and to educate local people about the processes of archaeology so that they were happy that the project would not impact on their worship at the tomb of Mar Elian.
Type: Ethnographic information/Social History
Tags: Church, Eid Mar Elian, Ethnographic information, Mar Elian, Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Sheikh Ahmed Khoury, Social History, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Gathering information on local history
Over the duration of the project efforts were made to talk to local people to collect their memories of the monastery. The older inhabitants of Qaryatayn could remember the small mud brick shrine that stood over the sarcophagus until the modern church was built on the site in 1938. The eastern range of the cloister had also had a range of mud brick rooms until the 1980s, when termite damage caused them to collapse leaving only the south east tower and one other chamber still standing. Until this collapse the monastery was inhabited by Bayt Habib, a Christian Bedu clan. Members of this family, especially the family patriarch Abu Nasif, were amongst the most knowledgeable of the local informants.
Type: Ethnographic information/Social History
Tags: Bedouin, Bedu, Dayr Mar Elian, Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project, Ethnographic information, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Social History, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Visits of Cardinal Musa Daoud to Dayr Mar Elian
Cardinal Musa Daoud was formerly Syrian Catholic Metropolitan of Homs before being elevated to the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate in 1998. However he swiftly resigned the Patriarchate after being named Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches in November 2000, a post that he held until 2007. As a native of Meskaneh in Homs province, the Cardinal had a special devotion to the shrine of Mar Elian and visited it annually to celebrate a mass at the site. Here two such visits in 2001 and 2003 represented in these photographs.
Type: Ethnographic information/Social History
Tags: Cardinal Musa Daoud, Church, Dayr Mar Elian, Ethnographic information, Mar Elian, Mar Elian esh-Sharqi, Monastery, Qaryatayn, Social History, Syria, Syrian Civil War
Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi
Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi is the western of the two famous Umayyad palaces built to the east and west of Palmyra. This palace was built on the site of an earlier building and the stone tower still extant from that earlier phase has an inscription suggesting that it may have been part of a C6th monastery complex. The Qasr ("little castle") was built of mud brick, field stone and bricks and the whole was covered with a layer of stucco. The façade was covered with stucco decoration that was excavated from the site in the early C20th and reconstructed in Damascus as the façade of the National Museum. The frescoes and a number of stucco figurative three dimensional sculptures taken from the site are now on display in the National Museum.
Type: Architecture
Tags: Byzantine, Castle, Fresco, Khan, Monastery, Palmyra, Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, Sculpture, Stucco, Syria, Umayyad
Dayr al Hayek 
Dayr al Hayek means "the monastery of the weaver" and is a cave south of Deir Mar Musa. The archaeological evidence found in the cave suggests that it was inhabited by a hermit in the early phase of the monastery when it was a lava. This means that the monks lived in cells/caves around the central monastic buildings and came together only for communal prayer at specific times. The cave was named due to the fact that a loom was discovered there. A new building now envelops the cave as an annexe to the main monastery of Deir Mar Musa.
Type: Landscape
Tags: An Nabk, Cave, Dayr al Hayek, Deir Mar Musa, Lavra, Mar Musa al-Habashi, Monastery, Syria
Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi
These views of the monastery are from the south, looking north. The western part of the monastery on this side is believed to date back to the Roman period and is now used as a kitchen and the south eastern part is a new addition to the monastic library and additional bathroom facilities. On the northern side of the monastery is the chapel, which dated back to the C6th although the roof was raised and it was altered in the C11th. The fortified section to the west has been attributed to the C14th-C15th.
Type: Architecture
Tags: An Nabk, Architecture, Church, Deir Mar Musa, Mar Musa al-Habashi, Monastery, Syria