House of Saint Ananias
| House of Saint Ananias كنيسة القديس حنانيا |
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|---|---|
 Chapel of Saint Ananias |
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| Construction year: | 1st century |
| Location: | 33 ° 30 ′ 41 ″ N , 36 ° 19 ′ 3 ″ E |
| Location: |
Damascus Damascus , Syria |
| Purpose: | roman catholic church |
The House of Saint Ananias ( Arabic كنيسة القديس حنانيا, DMG Kanīsat al-Qiddīs Ḥanāniyā 'Chapel of Saint Ananias') is an ancient house in the old Christian quarter of the Syrian capital Damascus . It is believed to be the house where Ananias baptized Saul (later Paul of Tarsus ).
The pilgrimage site is located on Hanania Street, named after the saint, a little north of the Bab Sharqi (Eastern Gate), which borders the straight street of the old town of Damascus ( Via Recta ) to the east. This chapel is six meters below modern street level at the level of the Roman street. According to tradition, remains of the house of Ananias are said to have been preserved on the right side of the chapel; the chapel itself, built on a cross-shaped floor plan, dates from the Byzantine period.
The building served as a mosque in Ottoman times, which was eventually no longer used and fell into disrepair. The Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land acquired the house in 1820 and converted it into a chapel. During the persecution of Christians in 1860 , it was destroyed and rebuilt in 1867. The 1973 restoration gave the chapel its current form.
The chapel is considered to be the only Christian church from the 1st century that survived in what is now the predominantly Islamic city. It has a very simple structure, consisting of two small stone-walled rooms, with only an altar, a few icons and a few pews. The pictures tell the story of the conversion of the apostle Paul . It represents the simplicity of the early Christians and is one of the earliest surviving churches in which services are held to this day.
Eustaches de Lorey carried out excavations in the Franciscan Ananias Chapel in 1921. The Byzantine Holy Cross Church (or Mousallabeh) was left to the Christians by Caliph al-Walid I as a replacement for the Church of John the Baptist ( Great Mosque ) claimed by the Muslims . The building that al-Walid ceded was a former Byzantine church that had been converted into a mosque. This previous building came from the time of Emperor Theodosius; older Spolia had served as building material. The excavation revealed an apse; According to the excavators, the church was built on the site of a pagan temple, from which a Greek inscription for the "sky god of Damascus" and an altar with a bull relief in Roman style were found. The epigraphically named sky god is identified with Ba'alšamin and the inscription in the 2nd / 3rd Dated 17th century AD. It is not possible to say whether the temple stood on the site of the later church or whether spoils from the site of the temple of Jupiter were brought here as building material. One could also assume that the pagan temple was built on the site of an older (archaeologically undetectable) early Christian house church.
literature
- Peter's pupil: Syria - past and present . In: In the land of the Lord. Franciscan magazine for the Holy Land , vol. 73, 2/2019, pp. 54–75, here pp. 64–66 ( The Chapel of St. Ananias ). ( PDF )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Andreas Feldtkeller : Syria . EVA, Leipzig 2011, p. 73.
- ^ Christian Sites in Damascus - Habeeb Salloum . hackwriters.com
- ^ Edmond Pottier: Report on the travaux archéologiques en Syrie et a l'École française de Jérusalem . In: Syria 4 (1923) , pp. 316–323, here p. 319; Gaston Contenau: L'Institut français d'archéologie et d'art musulmans de Damas . In: Syria 5 (1924) , pp. 203-211, here p. 205.
- ↑ Herbert Niehr : Baʻals̆amem: Studies on the origin, history and reception history of a Phoenician god . Peeters, Leuven et al. 2003, p. 101 f.
- ↑ Petrus Schüler: Syria - Past and Present , 2019, p. 65.