2024, സെപ്റ്റംബർ 18, ബുധനാഴ്‌ച

Mar Mattai Monastery

Location

Mar Mattai monastery is located atop Mount Maqlub (also known as Mount Alfaf), 820 meters high, in the North of the Niniveh Province and 38 kilometres from Mosul, 36°29′24″ N. and 43°26′34″ E.

Seated on the shelf of a rocky peak, this Syriac-Orthodox monastery offers an exceptional double view. As seen from the valley, it appears as being suspended between the earth and the sky and leads us to meditation. On the other side, from its terrace, it offers a 180° panorama and seems to be keeping a watchful eye on the world below, the world of the Niniveh people and never-ending bustle.

Here is undoubtedly the heart of one of the most beautiful area of antique Christian Assyria. This Syriac-Orthodox (Jacobite) monastery, assumed as being one of the largest of whole Mesopotamia, can in terms of influence and majesty compete with some of the biggest Syriac-Orthodox monasteries of Tur Abdin, the « mountain of the worshippers », in modern-day southeastern Turkey.

History

The monastery became quite early subject of the Syriac-Orthodox jurisdiction, and it is assumed to have sheltered thousands of monks from the end of the 4th century onwards. In fact, it could be possible that this shoud concern not only the monastery but the whole Mount Maqlub, also known as the « Mount of the thousands ». This actually gives us quite an idea about the influence of the Syriac-Orthodox Church and of Mar Mattai Monastery in the Northern part of Mesopatamia and beyond. As place or residence of the Maphrian of the East, after after he left from Tikrit (Maphrian is the title for the Syriac-Orthodox Church’s prelate in Mesopotamia. The Maphianate of the East ended up in 1859), the monastery developed close links with the Malankara-Syrian Church in India.

Although it was regularly attacked by the Kurds, in particular in the 12th and 14th century, the monastery became of place of resistance as much as a shelter for local and regional Christian people, who were being persecuted. Thus, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Shem’on XXII Paul, went there to get some assistance and some rest in 1918, after the Assyrian-Chaldean genocide in the Ottoman Empire, whereas 60000 Assyrian people from his own community in Urmia (Persia) were forced to a dreadful exodus to Mesopotamia

https://www.mesopotamiaheritage.org/en/monuments/le-couvent-de-mar-matta/

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