In March in two consecutive years I explored the treeless plateau in the Judaean desert, above the Dead Sea escarpment, and below the Horcania range of mountains. In 2020 I was accompanied by my daughter, Amber, and in 2021 by my son, Yonatan. This empty plain or basin, known as Bikat Horcania in Hebrew and Buqê’ah in Arabic, was not always so deserted of people. On both occasions, although we sought out several sites in the valley itself as we proceeded southwards from the Jerusalem-Jericho highway, our destination was the observation point for the monastery of Mar Saba, which clings stupendously to the western cliff of the Kidron valley where the river passes through a deep gorge. Only on the second occasion did we make it to see the monastery!
Left: Camels on the desert road. Right: donkeys finding shade in a dry wadi.
Our journey began as we passed An-Nabī Mūsā, believed by local Muslims to be the tomb of the prophet Moses (Musa in Arabic). Although the Torah, in Dvarim (Deuteronomy 34:6) records that Moses "was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor" (east of the Jordan ) and that "no one knows the place of his burial to this day," in Islam, in a hadith narrated by Abu Hurairah, when Moses chooses the time of his death, he asks Allah to "let him die close to the Sacred Land so much so that he would be at a distance of a stone's throw from it," to which Abu Hurairah adds, "Allah's Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, said, 'If I were there, I would show you his grave below the red sand hill on the side of the road.'" The hadith is inconclusive and in Islam, Moses' burial place is also considered to be unknown. However a local tradition arose, perhaps because there are red sands in the area of the Judaean desert nearby, especially associated with Ma'ale Adumim, that placed the tomb of Moses at the site of the present maqam (shrine) of Nabi Musa, although it is not known when this tradition first emerged.
What is known for sure is that it was in 1269, after the Mamluk conquest of the region, that sultan Baibars al-Bunduqdari built a small shrine on the spot, as part of his general policy of dedicating shrines to the prophets and the companions of Mohammed wherever he had ousted the Crusaders. The shrines' maintenance was funded by a waqf (endowment) established with properties sequestered from the Latin Church―in the case of Nabi Musa, from nearby Jericho.
As well as being the name of the shrine, An-Nabī Mūsā is the name of a seven-day long religious festival that was celebrated annually by local Muslims. Local tradition holds that the festival was inaugurated after Saladin's recapture of Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, predating the building of the shrine, but this is most likely a myth evolved in reaction in reaction to Western encroachment in the nineteenth century; it asserts that Saladin, after defeating the Europeans, wanted to ensure that future Crusades would not conquer Jerusalem under the guise of the large annual Easter pilgrimage to the city. Whatever the truth of the matter, in modern times the holiday was popularly associated with Saladin as a symbol for the victorious struggle against Western encroachment and interference. However the tradition of gathering in Jerusalem before the festival, followed by a collective pilgrimage to Nabi Musa, is a mid-19th-century innovation which, by the 1920s, took on increasingly political connotations.
In any event the annual festival―despite being a Muslim festival, but in keeping with the myth associating it with Easter―began on the Friday before Good Friday in the calendar of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. After arriving at Nabi Musa the pilgrims would pass three days in feasting, prayer, games and visits to Maqam Al-Ra'i, the nearby tomb of Moses' shepherd, Hasan Al-Rai'i (the allegory of Moses and the Shepherd is a story from the poet Rumi’s work Masnavi, a Persian poem about a conversation on Moses' condemnation of the shepherd’s devotional prayer). They were then entertained, as guests of the waqf, before triumphantly returning to Jerusalem on the seventh day―the day the Orthodox Christians celebrated Holy Thursday. The next day, which coincided with Orthodox Good Friday, the crowds went in procession to Al-Aqsa Mosque, before finally dispersing from Jerusalem later that day and the next (Orthodox Easter Eve), with flags and music. James Finn, the British Consul in Jerusalem (1846–1863), described the pilgrimage:
The Neby Moosa pilgrimages—to the reputed tomb of the prophet Moses, near the Dead Sea (on the West)—have been instituted so as to coincide with the Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre, and the influx of devout Moslems was doubtless intended to counterbalance the effect of so many thousands of sturdy Christians being present in Jerusalem. The Moslems come from every part of the Mohammedan world—from India, Tartary, even to the confines of China, from all the countries of Central Asia, and also from Egypt, Nubia, Morocco, the Eastern shores of Africa, as well as from Arabia proper and the Turkish provinces in Europe and Asia. These pilgrims—for the most part extremely fanatical, and in a high state of religious excitement—are a formidable and dangerous body of men. During the continuance of the Russian war these Moslem pilgrims were wrought up to an extra pitch of fervour and ostentatious demonstration. There was always danger lest, in the crowded streets and bazaars, through which they forced their processions, they might come into collision with some equally fervid pilgrims on the Christian side. In this case a passing fray might, in the twinkling of an eye, be turned into downright fight, and fight could scarcely end otherwise than in massacre. We always breathed more freely when the Moslem pilgrimages were over, and when their noisy drumming and shouting were at an end, and the usual quiet of Jerusalem was restored.
The festival, which had established its traditional form the start of the Ottoman era in the 16th century, was changed during Ottoman reforms in the mid-nineteenth century, with the main focus moving from the shrine at Nabi Musa to Jerusalem. The newly-created local council for Jerusalem was put in charge of organising the festivities, which centred on the Temple Mount (Haram ash-Sharif), with the mufti of Jerusalem playing an increasingly distinct role, culminating in the appointment of the al-Husseini clan as official custodians of the shrine and hosts of the festival from the end of the nineteenth century. At the same time various personalities began to exploit the festival to incite against non-Muslims. At this time, the procession would leave Jerusalem under distinctive banner which the al-Husseini kept for the occasion in their al-Dar al-Kabira (the Great House). On arriving at the shrine, the al-Husseini and other notables were required to provide two meals a day over the week for all worshippers. It was customary to bring young boys aged around five years or older to be circumcised at Nabi Musa, or at Nabi Rubin, near Palmachim, during the annual celebrations there. Sheep were sacrificed in front of the maqam door. An estimated 15,000 Muslims from all over the country attended the Nabi Musa festival each year at this time.
The British mandatory administration in Palestine actively encouraged the Arabs to attack the Jews. Colonel Waters Taylor, financial adviser to the Military Administration, met with al-Husseini a few days before Easter 1920, and told him he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world...that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols [Chief Administrator in Palestine, 1919-20] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force, 1917-19, then High Commissioner of Egypt] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.
Al-Husseini took the Colonel’s advice and instigated a riot. The British withdrew their troops and the Jewish police from Jerusalem, and the Arab mob―whipped-up by al-Husseini with an anti-Zionist speech before the planned procession―attacked Jews and looted their shops, killing six Jews and injuring more than 200. Due to his overt role in instigating the pogrom, the British arrested al-Husseini (along with many Jews), but he still managed to escape to Transjordan, being sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in absentia. A year later, however, British Arabists convinced Jewish High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, to pardon al-Husseini and to appoint him Mufti.
Samuel met with al-Husseini on April 11, 1921, and was assured “that the influences of his family and himself would be devoted to tranquility.” Three weeks later, however, riots in Jaffa and Petah Tikvah, instigated by the Mufti, left forty-three Jews dead. The Haycraft Commission evaluated the cause of the riots in favour of the instigators, establishing a mould which has never been discarded since: “The fundamental cause of the Jaffa riots and the subsequent acts of violence was a feeling among the Arabs of discontent with, and hostility to, the Jews, due to political and economic causes, and connected with Jewish immigration.” It was too late to put the cat back in the bag, even if the British had so-desired. Following the riots, al-Husseini consolidated his power and took control of all Muslim waqf funds in Palestine, as well as all mosques, schools and courts; no Arab could reach an influential position without being loyal to the Mufti. As the “Palestinian” spokesman, al-Husseini wrote to then Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, in 1921, demanding that restrictions be placed on Jewish immigration and that Palestine be reunited with Syria and Transjordan. Churchill issued the White Paper of 1922, which tried to allay Arab fears about the Balfour Declaration. Although acknowledging the need for Jewish immigration, the White Paper established the familiar limit of the country’s 'absorptive capacity on immigration' (a limit which was applied only to Jewish immigrations, whilst the borders were freely open to Arabs. Although not pleased with Churchill’s White Paper, the Jews accepted it while the Arabs rejected it.
Left: Haj Amin al-Husseini, 1929 [American Colony (Jerusalem), Photo Dept, public domain]
Right: Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel, GCB, OM, GBE, PC [By Walter Stoneman, for James Russell & Sons, public domain]
Meanwhile al-Husseini had been transforming the annual Nabi Musa festival from a religious one focused on Jerusalem and the shrine to a nationalist event of the whole of mandatory Palestine, a tool for his national and political machinations. By now, even Christian Arabs came to Jerusalem during the festival to support the nationalist cause. During the Arab revolt of 1937, al-Husseini had again to flee the country. With the Mufti abroad and the revolt crushed by the British army, the annual festival shrunk in scale and lost its political dimension; this decline has not been reverted until the present day.
After the 1951 assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan by a Palestinian Arab connected to the al-Husseini family, the Jordanians―who had annexed Judaea and Samaria along with the Old City of Jerusalem―suspended the mass gathering in Jerusalem and the procession, allowing only for the celebrations at the shrine to be held. After the 1967 Six-Day War, the pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Nabi Musa was only authorised again in 1987, but after the outbreak of the First Intifada in December of that year, it was again prohibited. With the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, control over the shrine was allocated to the Palestinian National Authority, which also took charge of organising the pilgrimage―which had a nationalist political flavour―though without any events taking place in Jerusalem. It took place between 1997 and 2000, but was banned after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000, only being allowed once more in 2007.
Because sovereignty of the shrine rests today with the Palestinian Authority, although the shrine sits in Area C, we are unable―as Jews―to enter its confines, and have to make do with the view from outside. The complex―a large building with multiple domes and courtyards―still displays Baibars' inscription from the thirteenth century, which reads, "The construction of this Maqam over the grave of the Prophet Moses who spoke to God was ordered by his majesty, Sultan Dhaher Abu El-Fateh Baibars, in year 668 Hijri [1269-1270 CE]." One of Baibars' biographers, Ibn Shaddad al-Halabi, briefly mentions his construction of the shrine. Throughout the late mediaeval period, hostels for travellers were built adjacent to the shrine, and the complex in its present form was completed in the fifteenth century. Around 1820, the Ottoman authorities almost fully rebuilt the complex which had fallen into dilapidation.
Continuing south after Nabi Musa, the desert is dry and dusty, without shade trees, and with very little vegetation, although in 2020 it was unseasonably green with flowering plants that had not shown themselves for decades in some cases. The only life to be seen are herds of camels unflappable in the searing heat, groups of donkeys desperately waiting out the heat of the day in the shade of the walls of dry wadis, and occasional herds of goats, their Bedouin goatherd hiding on the ground in the shade of one of them!
Soon we came to a hill marked on maps since time immemorial as Karm A-Samra, which exhibits signs of habitation. Karm A-Samra has only once been investigated, in the spring of 1954, when the attention of Frank Moore Cross Jr. and Józef Milik, who were excavating in nearby Qumran, was drawn to a number of archaeological sites in the Horcania basin. At Karm A-Samra they found the remains of an agricultural fortress enclosure from the Israelite Kingdom Iron Age II period. They found an open cistern and the remains of three dam complexes and terraces, and Cross and Milik tentatively identified the site as Secacah (סְכָכָה), one of the six desert cities of the tribe of Judah (Joshua 15:61), which is also mentioned several times in the Qumran Copper Scroll, 3Q15 4-5, in reference to the hiding places of the treasures mentioned in that scroll. The description of Secacah in the Copper Scroll includes a dam and an aqueduct. However others locate Secacah at Qumran.
Karm A-Samra has defensive walls forming an enclosure 68 metres by 40 metres paralleled by inner walls, similar to casemate walls common in Iron Age Palestine, though with notable differences. Where soundings were made a single stratum was revealed with homogeneous Iron Age II sherds, the most notable of which was a royal stamped jar handle thought to date to the 7th century BCE.
[Credit: Cross, F. M., and J. T. Milik. "Explorations in the Judaean Buqê'ah." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 142 (1956): 5–17.]
Half a kilometre south after Karm A-Samra, with the peak of Horcania, with its ruins on its peak, close by, we turned to the west across the plain towards the climb uphill towards Mar Saba. First a few words about Horcania, which I hope to make the subject of a future blog. Horcania, or Hyrcania (known as Khirbet el-Mird in Arabic), was apparently built by John Hyrcanus or his son Alexander Jannaeus in the second or first century BCE. The first mention of the fortress is during the reign of Salome Alexandra, the wife of Jannaeus, around 75 BCE. Josephus writes that, along with Machaerus and Alexandrion, Hyrcania was one of three fortresses that the queen did not give up when she handed control of her strongholds to the Pharisees. The fortress is mentioned again in 57 BCE when Alexander of Judaea, son of Aristobulus II, fled from the Roman governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, who had come to suppress the revolt Alexander had stirred up against Hyrcanus II. Alexander intended to re-fortify Hyrcania, but eventually surrendered to Gabinius, who razed the fortress. Hyrcania is next reported in 33–32 BCE, being used in an uprising against Herod the Great led by the sister of Herod's executed former rival Antigonus. The fortress was retaken and extended; it became notorious as a place where Herod imprisoned and killed his enemies, ultimately including his own son and heir Antipater.
In 2020 Amber and I approached Mar Saba along this track, past Horcania. The whole plain is dangerous, both because it is a military area used for exercises, and because―contrary to its deserted appearance―shootings of trekkers by Arabs are not unknown. On that occasion we proceeded gingerly along the dirt track―only just passable without a 4x4―stopping at an impossibly steep rise which looked like it would defeat our car. Having seen no signs of human life until then, we found there a group of Jews and Arabs in discussion outside their 4x4s. The Arab guide warned us that although the famous view of the monastery was only a kilometre over the rise, it was extremely dangerous for us to go unaccompanied or unarmed. They had no room in their vehicle for us to join them, and our car wouldn’t be able to follow, so we called off our visit.
So it was, a year later, that Yonatan accompanied me, armed with his assault rifle. We didn't think we would have need of its firepower, but its 4x scope would serve well for close-up viewing of the famous monastery. As we approached the steep slope which had defied me a year earlier, we were pleased to see it had been remodelled at a lower angle with spoil from the excavation of tunnels for the Kidron River rehabilitation project, a joint project of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. For years, the sewage from Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority flowed into Nahal Kidron, causing severe environmental damage in the Judaean Desert. The Kidron River starts from Mount Scopus in Jerusalem and descends into the Judean Desert through the Horcania plain and down to the Dead Sea. The wastewater seeped into the groundwater and the banks of the stream were filled with construction waste and garbage. This 800 million shekel project aims to remove the problem, by pumping the wastewater through effluent treatment plants, the resulting purified water being used to irrigate Israeli and Palestinian date plantations. In order to avoid damaging nature and the ancient monastery of Mar Saba, a 1.3 kilometre tunnel, six metres wide, and at a depth of about 60 metres, has been dug through this inaccessible area, diverting the flow away from the monastery and around archaeological and heritage sites.
We drove uphill, sliding in the talc-fine powdery limestone and chalk spoil, and reached the point at which we could go no further without a 4x4. I didn't tell Yonatan until afterwards that I had read the note of a trekker on Amud Anan strongly suggesting leaving a guard with one's car! But having come thus far, and not having met a soul either on foot or in a vehicle, we parked up and walked the last half-kilometre. It was a short walk, but very hot, and as we reached the summit of the hill we began to see the canyon of the Kidron river dropping away and, on the opposite bank, first the Beit Sofia (Bayt Şūfīyah) cave-cells to the north of the monastery, named for Saint Sabbas' mother, and then the monastery itself, clinging to the cliff face of the Kidron Valley.
The Holy Lavra of Saint Sabbas, known in Syriac (and in Arabic and Hebrew, for that matter) as Mar Saba, is a Greek Orthodox monastery, founded by Sabbas the Sanctified in 483 CE. The Monastery contains two churches: the first is dedicated to St Nicolas and was built in 491 CE, and the second is dedicated to the Annunciation and was completed in 502 CE. Today, the complex houses fewer than two dozen monks, but at its peak it had five hundred. It is considered to be one of the oldest inhabited monasteries in the world, and contains the oldest known biblical translations into Arabic, dating back to 885 CE. It also still maintains many of its ancient traditions, including a restriction on women entering the monastery compound. Traditionally women could only enter the Women's Tower outside the compound, to the south, which was built, according to tradition, by Sabba’s mother. We didn't enter the monastery on this trip―something in any event impossible with the type of weapon Yonatan was carrying (see box below about visiting), but hope to arrange a visit to see the remarkable churches, chapels and cells inside the compound n a future date. Thus the pictures of the interior are not mine, and are suitably credited below.
Safety when visiting Mar Saba | Visitors―whether to the monastery itself or just to the observation point to its east―are advised to take great care. The area is accessible only through an IDF military area and advice should be sought from the military before proceeding. It is advisable to make the trip with a group, preferably with a guide, and certainly with someone armed and trained in its use. It is not possible for Israeli citizens to access the monastery from the west, since the access is through Area A which is forbidden to Israelis and under Palestinian Authority control. From the observation point on the east bank of the Kidron, it is possible to hike down a staircase in the cliff, cross the stream on a bridge, and climb a long staircase on the other side to enter the monastery. It is also possible to access the monastery via the blue-marked trail north of the observation point on the east of the Kidron. In any event a hand gun should accompany you, but you will have to deposit it at the gate of the monastery for safe-keeping. Larger weapons are not allowed at all. You are not advised to conceal a weapon on entering the monastery. The monastery is closed for visitors on Wednesdays and Fridays (the monks' fast days).
Sabbas was the son of a military commander, born in 439 CE at Moutalaske near Caesarea of Cappadocia in what is now Turkey. He was left in the care of his uncle, at age five, when his parents went to Alexandria on military business. Entering a local monastery at the age of eight, he was a gifted child who quickly learned to read and became an expert on the Holy Scriptures. Sabbas resisted his parents' pressure to return to the world and enter into marriage, and became a monk. Sabbas went to the monastery of Saint Euthymius the Great, east of Jerusalem, but Euthymius sent him to Abba Theoctistus, the head of a nearby cenobitic monastery (stressing community life), where he lived in obedience until the age of thirty. After the death of Theoctistus, his successor blessed Sabbas to seclude himself in a lavra (a cluster of cells or caves for hermits, with a church and sometimes a refectory at the center), except on Saturdays, when he would come to the monastery to participate in divine services and eat with the brethren. After a time Sabbas received permission not to leave his hermitage at all, and he lived in isolation in the cave for five years. This cave―marked by an ironwork cross―can be seen from the monastery on the eastern side of the Kidron creek.
When Euthymius―who had remained Sabbas' spiritual mentor―died in around 473 CE, Sabbas withdrew from the lavra and moved to a cave near the monastery of St Gerasimus of the Jordan. After several years, disciples began to gather around Sabbas, seeking the monastic life. As the number of monks increased, the lavra at what is now Mar Saba sprang up. But because some of his monks opposed his rule and demanded a priest as their abbot, he withdrew to the a lavra which he had built near Tekoa, south east of Bethlehem. In these lavras the young monks lived a cenobitic (communal) life, but the elders a semi-eremitical (secluded) one, each in his own hut within the precincts of the lavra, attending only the solemn church services.
Sabbas founded thirteen monasteries in total, and was ordained by Patriarch Salustius of Jerusalem in 491, and appointed archimandrite of all the monasteries in Palaestina Prima in 494. He died in the year 532, and his feast day is on 5 December.
Despite its protective walls and remote situation, the monastery was plundered by the Persians in 614 CE, and the monastery's graveyard contains the relics of many monks and clerics who were killed by them. The monastery was restored in 629 only to be plundered by Barbarians in 796, after which it was further fortified in the following century. Monks were again slaughtered when the Abbasids took over the rule from the Umayyads. When the Crusaders arrived to Palestine in the twelfth century, they expanded the fortifications, but they also seized the relics of Saint Sabbas and took them to St Anthony's in Venice. They remained in Italy until Pope Paul VI returned them to the monastery in 1965 as a gesture of repentance and good will towards Orthodox Christians; rather than being returned to the original tomb, they are now displayed in the main church.
[Credit: adriatikus CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3561446]
In 1504, the Serbian monastic community of Palestine purchased Mar Saba, which at the time was abandoned due to Bedouin raids. The Serbs controlled the monastery until the late 1630s, and the significant financial support the monastery received from the Tsar of Russia allowed them to run the monastery semi-independently from, and against the will of, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. This Serbian control enabled them to play an important role in the politics of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, often siding with the Arabic laity and priests against the Greeks who dominated the episcopate. Serbian control of the monastery eventually ended in the 1600s when a massive building program coincided with the cutting off of financial support from Russia, leading to great debts, which forced them to sell the monastery to the Patriarch of Jerusalem. In Ottoman times the monastery was often raided by local Bedouins and, after it was damaged in an earthquake, it was restored by Russia in 1840.
Details of the many, vari-styled buildings in the monastery
Mar Saba was the home of several key ecclesiastical figures. The Georgian monk and scribe Ioane-Zosime moved to Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, around 973 CE, taking several parchment manuscripts with him. Mar Saba was also the home of St John of Damascus, who worked as a high financial officer to the Muslim Caliph Abd al-Malika, as well as being a key personality in the Iconoclastic Controversy. Around the year 726, he wrote letters to the Byzantine emperor Leo III the Isaurian refuting his edicts prohibiting the veneration of icons. His tomb lies in a cave under the monastery.
Mar Saba is also important in the historical development of the liturgy of the Orthodox Church, since its form of services became the standard throughout the Eastern Orthodox Church and those "Uniate" or Eastern Catholic Churches under the Roman pope which followed the Byzantine Rite. Although this liturgy has undergone further evolution, it is still referred to as the Typicon of Saint Sabbas.
Mar Saba, an incredible architectural flower in the desert!
