Assyria Times
May 16 2009
The Great Monastery of St. Gabriel in Captivity
5/16/2009 11:22:00
A long-standing land dispute between the Syrian Orthodox community in
south-east Turkey and the local villagers has finally turned into a
legal battle attracting international attention. The disagreement has
been closely monitored by the European Union for some time, and US
President Barack Obama and the State Department are monitoring the
dispute.
By Prof. Gabriel Sawma
In a remote village near Midyat, South East Turkey, a land dispute
with neighboring villages is threatening the future of Mor Gabriel,
one of the World’s oldest Christian monasteries, also known as the
monastery of St. Gabriel, a property of the Syrian Orthodox Church
(Suryani).
In August 2008, three mukhtars (low level elected officials with
limited authority) in Midyat, filed a criminal complaint with a local
prosecutor against the Monastery of St. Gabriel alleging it `illegally
appropriated territory by building a wall.’ (See US Department of
State, 2008 Human Rights Report: Turkey.)
On September 4, a Cadastre court ruled against the monastery and
reclaimed all but 30 percent of the monastery’s lands. Official papers
from the 1950s documented the provincial administrative board’s
approval of the monastery’s borders.
St. Gabriel Monastery was founded in 397. It has 3 monks and 14
nuns. It also has 12,000 ancient corpses buried in a basement
crypt. On the details of this conflict, see the Wall Street Journal
article at
While this episode is sponsored by the Turkish government who
initiated the whole conflict, the question arises as is this a first
step towards the Islamization of the remnants of Christians found in
the region of Tur Abdin (an Aramaic term means the mountain of
worshippers), or using the normal tactics through a campaign of
intimidation to make the remaining Christians leave Turkey and
converting the Monastery into a mosque or a museum.
For Christians, Turkey is an important country. According to the
Bible, it was in the Turkish town of Antioch that the folConversion of
Christian Churches into Mosqueslowers of Jesus were first called
Christians. The first adherents to Christianity were Syriac speaking
people of the Aramaean ancestry, including the Syrian Orthodox Church
(Suryani) and the Church of the East (popularly know as the Nestorian
Church or the Assyrian Church.)
Turkey is the birthplace of Apostles and Saints, including Paul of
Tarsus, Timothy, St. Nicholas of Myra, and many others. St. Peter went
on missionary journeys farther into the Gentile world [Turkey].
Christianity spread into the region primarily along the route from
Tarsus through the Cilician Gates, Caesarea (Mazaca; modern Kayseri),
became a leading center of Christianity, and several important figures
in the early Church (e.g., Basil the Great, Gregory of Nysa, Gregory
of Nazianzus) were from Cappadocia [Turkey]. Among the Biblical towns
in modern Turkey are Laodicea (near Pamukkale), Sardis (east of
Izmir), and Philadelphia (Alasehir), Thyatia (Akhisar), Ephesus,
Smyrna (Izmir), and Pergamum (Bergama). The first seven Ecumenical
Councils were held in present-day Turkey including the Councils of
Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon.
The cave of the Seven Sleepers is located in Turkey [a story written
by the Syriac bishop of Edessa, John of Seruj (died 521)], see
, the story also appears in the
Quran 18:9-26. Turkey houses the Seven Churches of Asia, where the
Revelations to John were sent. Apostle John took Virgin Mary to
Ephesus in Turkey.
But Turkey has long embraced Islam. Today one percent of the
population is non-Muslim and their number is dwindling. Killing of
Christians under the Ottoman Turks is well documented. Michael the
Syrian recorded the destruction of his hometown, Melitene (Malatya) in
1057. He writes, The Turks
"began to massacre without pity" and "to torture the men that they
might show them hidden things"; and many died in torment…The Turks
stayed at Melitene for ten days, devastating, and pillaging. They
burnt the wretched city, devastating the surrounding area…and
burning the whole country." "Everywhere the Christians had been
delivered to the sword or into bondage interrupting thus the
cultivation of the field so that bread was lacking. The farmers and
workers had been massacred or led off into slavery and famine extended
its rigors to all places. Many provinces were depopulated."
In 1140s, the Turks captured Edessa, killing or enslaving virtually
its entire population, estimated at forty-thousand. Michael the Syrian
lamented on this event. He writes:
"Edessa remained a desert…drunk with blood, infested by the corpses
of its sons and daughters! Vampires and other savage beasts ran and
entered the city at night to feast on the flesh of the massacred, and
it became the abode of jackals; for none entered there except those
who dug to discover treasure."
More than two hundred years later, Bar Hebraeus commented by saying:
"The dioceses of the West are laid waste…Antioch was in a state of
lamentation and tears." He said Aleppo, Edessa, and Harran "all of
which are laid waste…the seven dioceses which are round about
Melitene, in none of which does a single house remain".
When the Mamluk leader, Baybars, captured Antioch in 1268, he wrote to
the city’s ruler, who had fled earlier:
"You would have seen the crosses in your churches smashed, the pages
of false Testaments scattered, the patriarch’s tombs overturned. You
would have seen your Muslim enemy trampling over the place where you
celebrate Mass, cutting the throats of monks, priests and deacons upon
the altars, bringing sudden death to the patriarchs and slavery to the
royal princes." (See Micheau, "Copts, Melkites, Nestorians and
Jacobites".)
Egypt was not spared from the massive execution of the Copts in
1321. Muslim historian Al-Maqrizi recorded the mobs, which attacked
the Christians: "Then they destroyed the Church of St. Mennas in the
Hamra, which had from ancient times been much revered by the
Christians…the people climbed the walls, opened the gates and took
money, vessels and wine jars out of the church; it was a terrible
occurrence. Thereupon they went from the church in the Hamra after
they had destroyed it to the two churches near Seven Wells, one of
which was called the Church of the Maidens, and was inhabited by a
number of Christian girls, and by monks."
Al-Maqrizi witnessed the mobs and recorded that: "in the district of
Al-Bahnasa there were many monasteries now destroyed…near Suyut, on
both the dams there are said to have been 360 monasteries and the
traveler went from Al-Badraishin to Asfun, continually in the shade of
the gardens. Now this part laid waste, and deserted by the
inhabitants…The houses are all destroyed and forgotten, though in
former times they were so populous and their monks so numerous… what
were once the thousand monks of Bu Fana were now reduced to two". (See
Evett, Churches and Monasteries.)
During the thirteenth and fourteenth century, following the conversion
of Mongol leaders to Islam, conditions of the Christians became
intolerable. One Mongolian edict states that:
"The churches shall be uprooted and the altars overturned and the
celebration of the Eucharist shall cease and the hymns of praise and
the sounds of calls to prayer shall be abolished; and the chiefs of
the Christians and the heads of the synagogues of the Jews and the
great men among them shall be killed."
When Ibn Battuta visited Ephesus about 1330, he recorded that "the
cathedral mosque, which was formerly a church greatly venerated by the
Greeks, is one of the most beautiful in the world. I bought a Greek
slave girl here for forty dinars." (See Vryonis, Decline of Medieval
Hellenism.)
In 1480, Ottoman forces committed notorious massacres against the
Christians and their clergy. In Italy, the Turks destroyed the city of
Otranto, killing twelve thousand and executing leading clergymen by
sawing them. In 1570, they did the same thing to the Christians of
Cyprus. Some of the punishment methods used included impaling,
crucifixion, and flaying.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth century more massacres of
Christians took place under the Ottoman Empire. The French ambassador
reported in 1895 that `Asia minor (Turkey) is literally in
flames¦They [the Turks] are massacring all the Christians without
distinction.’ (See Sebastien de Courtois, Forgotten Genocide `
Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2004). In 1915, the New York Times
reported that `the roads and the Euphrates are strewn with corpses of
exiles, and those who survive are doomed to certain death. It is a
plan to exterminate the whole Armenian people.’
In 1914, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople recorded 2,549
ecclesiastical buildings, including 210 monasteries. By 1974, the
locations of only 913 were still known. Four hundred sixty-four had
completely disappeared, 252 were in ruins, and 197 were in fairly
sound condition.
Ethnic cleansing continued through the early 1920s. The Turkish city
of Smyrna was destroyed in 1922, `causing the deaths of a hundred
thousand Greek and Armenia Christians in what had been the City of the
Gaour.’
In 1924, the Syrian Orthodox (Suryani) population of Edessa (today
Urfa) was approximately 2,500. Today no Christian exists in
Edessa. The town has become the center of Turkey’s ruling Islamist
party. So is Mardin, in the outer provinces of rural Islamic country,
Azekh, Diyar Bakr, Midun, Basibrina, Hah, Zas, Issfis, and the rest of
south-east Turkey. The Christian population left for Europe, United
States, Canada, Latin America, and Australia.
Visiting Diyarbakr in 1997, William Dalrymple reported finding
literally the city’s last Armenian Christian, `a very old lady called
Lucine,’ who had not spoken since her husband was killed. She is being
taken care of by a Kurdish Muslim, who said `Her mind is dead.’
The Catholic Encyclopedia reports that, in 1907, the city of Amida
(Diyarbakr) was still fourty percent Christians with numerous bishops
and clergy from all ranks: `It has about 35,000 inhabitants, of whom
20,000 are Mussulmans (Arabians, Turks, Kurds, etc.), 2,300 Catholics
(Chaldeans, Amenians, Syrians, Melchites, Latins), 8,500 Gregorian
Armenians, 900 Protestant Armenians, 950 Jacobite Suryans (Suryani),
900 Orthodox Greeks, and 300 Jews. Diyarbakr possesses an Armenian
Catholic bishop, a Syrian Catholic bishop, a Syrian Jacobite bishop, a
Chaldean Catholic archbishop, and a Greek Orthodox metropolitan under
the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Antioch.’ (See Catholic
Encyclopedia `Diocese of Amida,’ )
In 1933, another Muslim massacre hit the Nestorian (Assyrian) people
in Iraq. The Catholicos protested by saying that: "Men, women and
children were massacred wholesale most barbarously by rifle, revolver
and machine gun fire…Priests were killed and their bodies
mutilated. Assyrian women were violated and killed. Priests and
Assyrians young men were killed instantly after refusing forced
conversion to Muhammadanism…Pregnant women had their wombs cut and
their babies destroyed…" (See R.S. Stafford, The Tragedy of the
Assyrians, Gorgias Press, Piscataway, NJ).
Conversion of Christian Churches into Mosques
Islam has been converting Churches into Mosques, aggressively. When
Muslims occupied the Middle East in the seventh century; they
performed a mass confiscation of churches and turning them into
mosques. Upon taking a city, they demanded that half of the churches
be converted into mosques. One of the major shrines in Eastern
Christianity was the church of John the Baptist in Damascus,
Syria. Pope John Paul II visited the Great Mosque of Damascus
(popularly known as al Masjid al-Umawi) in 2001; he was aware that he
was visiting the site of the Great Church of St. John.
Of the forty-two churches Christians had in Damascus, Muslims
confiscated twenty-eight; they left fourteen churches for the
Christians who constituted the majority of the population. This
phenomenon should be stressed in light of claims by modern-day writers
anxious to present Muslims as infallibly tolerant of the religious
practices of their subjects.
Muslim Turks annexed the great church of Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople, which became the principal mosque of the Ottoman
Empire.
The Church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), (Turkish: Ayasofya); Latin:
Sancta Sophia or Santa Sopientia), constructed between 532 and 537 on
the orders of the Byzantine Emperor Justinianus. It was a former
patriarchal basilica, later a mosque. It was the seat of the
Patriarchal church of Constantinople and the Grand Church of the
Eastern Orthodox Church of the Byzantine Empire.
The Hagia Sophia was officially turned into a museum in 1935 by
Ataturk and is now open to visitors of all faiths. Turkish authorities
refuse to return the Church to the Christians of Turkey.
The great Jacobite Church of Amida (modern-day Diyarbakr) became the
courtyard of The Great Mosque of Diyarbakr.
The tomb of a Jacobite Patriarch at Nineveh was confiscated and turned
into the mosque of Jonah (Nabi Yunis). (See The Decline of Medieval
Hellenism, 197. For Amida, see The Chronicle of Edessa at
htm.
The Ottoman Empire never stopped confiscating churches and converting
them into mosques. When they occupied Budapest, all the churches but
one became mosques. In Cyprus, the Gothic Cathedral of Famagusta
became the Turkish mosque of Lala Mustafa Pasha.
A relatively significant surge in churches converted into mosques
followed the 1974 Turkish Invasion of Cyprus. Many of the Orthodox
churches in Northern Cyprus were confiscated, and many are still in
the process of becoming mosques.
Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, originally known as the Saint Nicolas
Cathedral and later as Ayasofya Mosque of Magusa, the largest medieval
building in Gamagusta. Built between 1298 and c.1400 it was
consecrated as a Christian cathedral in 1328. The cathedral was
confiscated by the Ottoman Turks and converted into a mosque.
The Armenian Cathedral of Edessa, which was lost during the 1915
massacres of Armenians, Syrians, Nestorians, and Chaldeans, became a
mosque, with a mihrab punched into the south wall to indicate the
direction of Mecca. (See From The Holy Mountain by Dalrymple). There
no churches in Edessa in use today.
In Egypt, the columns of an older Christian Church can be seen in the
structure of the ninth-century Ibn Tulun Mosque, which is considered
one of the world’s largest mosques.
One of the most attractive churches in Istanbul was the Eski Imaret
Mosque; a former Eastern Orthodox Monastery converted into a mosque by
the Ottoman Turks after the conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul) in
1453. The Turkish name is "the mosque of the old soup kitchen. The
complex comprises of a church and monastery. After the Armenian
Genocide of 1915, the Kurds who were active participants in the
massacres, confiscated churches in what they call know Kurdistan; it
includes a large portion of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran. All the
churches were confiscated and became mosques.
In many instances mosques were established on the places of Jewish or
Christian sanctuaries associated with Biblical personalities. The
second Caliph `Umar laid the foundation of al-Aqsa Mosque on the
Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism; Dome of the Rock,
another Muslim mosque, was also built on the Jewish Temple Mount.
The Temple Mount (Heb., Har Habayit; Arabic, Haram El Sharif (or the
Noble Santuary). According to Jewish traditions, Temple Mount location
was the site where Abraham offered his son Isaac in sacrifice. It was
built by King Solomon in the tenth century BC. The Temple was
destroyed in 586 BC by the Neo-Babylonian king
Nebuchadnezzar. Following the Babylonian Exile, the Jews returned to
Jerusalem and started building the second Temple on the same site,
with the aid of the Persian King Cyrus. In the last quarter of the
first century BC, the Temple was refashioned into an edifice of great
splendor.
In 70 AD, The Temple was destroyed by the Romans; the Jews left
Jerusalem for Diaspora and the Temple was deliberately left in ruins
until the rise of Islam and the conquest of Jerusalem in 638 under the
leadership of `Umar Bin al-Khattab, the second Caliph who ordered the
clearing of the site and the building of a "house of prayer".
In 688, the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the
Rock. Few years later, a large mosque was built at the southern end of
the Haram, which came to be called al-Aksa after the Quranic name
attributed to the entire area.
The al-Aksa was last rebuilt in 1035 and has since undergone several
restorations; more recently 1938-42; and again in 1969. Muslim
interpreters of the Quran believe that verse 17:1 alludes to the
al-Aksa Mosque. The verse reads the following: " Glory to God who did
take his servant from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose
precincts we did bless, in order that we might show him some of our
signs: for He is the one who heareth and seeth all things." Islamic
interpreters of the Quran refer to this verse as "Issra’ & Mi’raj",
which means that the Prophet visited this Masjid (mosque) on a night
and from there he ascended to heaven where he met Jesus, Moses, and
the rest of the prophets.
The Descend of Dark Age on Turkish Christianity The Syrian Orthodox
(Suryani) community uses ancient Aramaic in its liturgy. Historically,
this community lived in the villages of Tur Abdin and its surroundings
before the rise of Islam. In 1920 the population of the Syrian
Orthodox church had contracted to seventy thousand; their estimate
number in 1995 was 10,000. Today the number is less than 2,000. The
head of the community is referred to as metropolitan (Timotheos Samuel
Aktash); he resides at the Monastery of St. Gabriel near Midyat. The
Syrian Orthodox community along with the Nestorian Church community
(the Assyrian Church, or the Church of the East) lived in that region
for over 3,000 years, long before the Muslim conquest of the seventh
century. They were among the earliest converts to Christianity and
speak Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
The Constitution of Turkey and laws provide for freedom of religion;
however, the government imposes significant restriction on the
Christian minorities. A government agency, the General Directorate for
Foundations (GDF), regulates activities of non-Muslim religious groups
and their affiliated churches, monasteries, synagogues, and related
religious property including Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox,
Jewish, Syrian Christian (Suryani), Chaldean, Bulgarian Orthodox,
Georgian, Protestant and Maronite foundations.
`Numerous religious groups have lost property to the government and
continued to fight ongoing government efforts to expropriate
properties. Many such properties were lost because the law allows the
GDF to assume direct administration of properties that fall into
disuse when the size of the local non-Muslim community drops
significantly. The government expropriated other properties that were
held in the name of individual community members who emigrated or died
without heirs. The GDF also took control of non-Muslim foundations
after the size of the non-Muslim community in a particular district
dropped below the level required to elect foundation board members.’
(See U.S. Department of State, 2008 Human Right Report on Turkey:
109.htm
Turkey’s attempt to shrink the property of the Monastery of
St. Gabriel is a preliminary step to take control of the Monastery and
to intimidate the remaining Christian community in the region to leave
the country.
Turkey is the only country on earth, whose population is ninety-nine
percent Muslims. There is no other country in the world who has
structured its policies aimed at the extinction of Christians like
Turkey did. Yet, in the eyes of Western politicians, Turkey is
considered a secular state: But is Turkey a secular state?
¢ On March 1, 2003, Turkey’s parliament voted not to allow the
U.S. to use Incerlik Air Force base and Turkish territory to open a
second front against Saddam Hussein. U.S. offered Turkey 26 billion
dollars to allow use of its territory to open a second front. Turkey’s
prime minister then asked for $6 billion more to change the
parliament’s vote! A U.S. Treasury Department negotiator called it
`extortion in the name of alliance.’ The U.S. refused.
¢ Turkey is an Islamic and anti-Christian nation. In 1914-1918, The
Ottoman Turks committed genocides against Armenians, Syrian Orthodox,
Syrian Catholic, Nestorians (Assyrians), Chaldean and other
Christians, killing 1.5 million Christians and refuses to recognize
the Armenian Genocide and other Christian Genocides.
¢ In September 1955, Turkey initiated a massive program against the
Greek Christians in Istanbul which resulted in most of them leaving
Turkey.
¢ Prime Minister Erdogan has taken actions culminating in his
anti-Israel and anti-Semitic actions at the Davos World Economic Forum
held this year in Switzerland.
¢ Turkey started a war against Cyprus ended in the occupation of
the country during the 1970 invasion and the settlement of 180,000
illegal Turks in Cyprus.
¢ Turkey refuses to grant autonomy to Kurdish minority (between 15
and 20 million).
¢ Turkey confiscated several thousand properties illegally from the
Eastern Orthodox Church and closed the Halki Theological School in
1971.
¢ In 2008, the ruling party AKP with the help of the Nationalist
Action Party (MHP) succeeded in removing from the constitution the
quarter-century-old law banning the headscarf in Turkish
universities. The Turkish Supreme Court later struck the removal of
the ban. The headscarf ban has been in existence since the early 1980s
as part of the new military-backed constitution. In 2005, President
Gul’s wife, who was refused admission in Ankara University because she
wears a headscarf. She challenged the ban before the European Court of
Human Rights but failed to get a ruling in her favor. Two daughters of
Prime Minister Erdogan, who are currently studying in the US, were
suspended from teaching posts in Turkey because they were wearing
headscarves.
The Last Stand in Turkey
Turkey is embarking on a policy of making itself a Christian-free
nation. Christian population has tried various strategies to maintain
their existence in Turkey, but none shows great hopes of
success. Members of the Syrian Orthodox church in Europe built homes
in the region of Tur Abdin for the purpose of re-establishing their
congregation. The Leadership in Deir Mor Gabriel is seeking a relief
from the Court to stop the process of confiscating portion of the
property belonging to the monastery.
Recently, the Syriac Universal Alliance (SUA), `an umbrella
organization of all the national Federations of the Aram[a]ean
(Syriac) people’ sent open letter of appeal to the Prime Minister of
Turkey, Recep Tayyib Erdogan, requesting his mediation to `prevent the
injustice and relevant [court] cases dismissed to the benefit of the
Aram[a]ean people’. The SUA wants to `ensure this case does not end up
in the European Court of Justice.’
This effort by the Syrian Orthodox church community to regain the
property of St. Gabriel is probably the last stand of the community to
live in peace in that region. Like other Middle Eastern Christians,
they have tried every possible way to survive and flourish, and their
efforts have largely failed.
The most catastrophic episode in recent years has been that of Iraq’s
Christians, who, in 1970, represented six percent of the Iraqi
population. That number is shrinking now to below one
percent. Christians of Iraq made up of twenty percent of Iraq’s
teachers and many of its doctors and engineers.
All over the Middle East, Christians are dwindling in number. There
are few countries where Christians are vulnerable, such as Syria,
Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan. Any change towards radical Islamization,
may have dreadful effects on the minorities. In Egypt, Islamic
Brotherhood is gaining political and social power that might drive the
remaining ten to thirteen million Copts to choose between mass
migration and conversion.
The birth of Christianity in the Middle East, and their monasteries
and churches will, nevertheless, continue in Europe, The United
States, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, and Canada. The Syrian
Orthodox Church has been expanding in those countries; new European
monasteries in the same Middle Eastern traditions have been erected:
St. Ephrem in the Netherlands; More Augin rises in Switzerland, The
magnificent churches of Sweden; The Great Church of Virgin Mary in
Paramus, New Jersey and the Cathedral of St. Marks in Teaneck, New
Jersey and the rest of the churches spreading all over the United
States from Michigan, to Massachusetts, Florida, New York, Rhode
Island, Illinois, California, Oregon, Georgia, Arizona, and Canada.
Gabriel Sawma is Professor of Middle East Constitutional Law and
Islamic Shari’a. He is an expert on Islamic marriage contracts and
Islamic divorce. Editor of an International Law website:
Author of "The Qur’an: Misinterpreted,
Mistranslated and Misread. The Aramaic Language of the Qur’an."
Author of an upcoming book on Islamic
Divorce in US Courts. Email: [email protected]; Links:
http://www.a ssyriatimes.com/engine/modules/news/article.php?st oryid=3376
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
