Saidnaya
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صيدنايا Saidnaya |
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| Coordinates | 33 ° 42 ′ N , 36 ° 22 ′ E | ||
| Basic data | |||
| Country | Syria | ||
| Rif Dimashq | |||
| ISO 3166-2 | SY-RD | ||
| height | 1340 m | ||
| Residents | 25,194 (2004) | ||
| Website | www.saydnaya.com ( Arabic ) | ||
 view on the city
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Saidnaya , also Sednaja, Sednaya, Seidnaya, Sardeneye, Maʿarrat Saydnaya , Arabic صيدنايا, Aramaic ܣܝܕܢܝܐ, is a village in the Syrian administrative district ( muḥāfaẓa ) governorate Rif Dimaschq . It is located 20 to 30 kilometers north of Damascus in the Qalamun Mountains at an altitude of around 1500 meters.
Buildings and monasteries
There are numerous monasteries and churches of various Christian denominations in Saidnaya . These include early Christian sanctuaries such as the Elias grotto and the Ephraim monastery (Mor Aphram monastery). The latter is one of the oldest monasteries in the world and is now the seat of the Patriarch of Antioch , head of the Syrian Orthodox Church .
On October 14, 2013, a 12.3 m high, 32 m high statue of Jesus with a base was erected in Saidnaya, which is considered to be the tallest such statue in the Middle East. It is the work of the Armenian sculptor Artusch Papojan and was financed with funds from the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Federation .
population
The majority of the local residents are Christians . The city is mentioned in several places in the Bible and is considered to be the "heart of Syrian Christianity".
Pilgrimage Church of St. Mary
Saidnaya is well known for the pilgrimage church of St. Maria. According to legend, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (482-565) was hunting north of Damascus. A gazelle he was chasing suddenly turned into an apparition of Mary, the Mother of God, and ordered Justinian to build a monastery on this site. He started building immediately; the first previous buildings of the monastery “Our Lady” that stands there today are dated to 547 AD. The monastery standing there today was mostly built in the modern era. The 30 or so nuns who currently live in and manage the monastery describe it as the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery. An icon with the image of the Blessed Mother, which the Evangelist Luke is said to have painted, is kept in the monastery, wrapped in many cloths . Because of its holiness, it is not revealed. On the feast of the birth of the Virgin Mary (September 8th) the monastery is the destination of numerous religious visitors every year. At this Christian pilgrimage site, which is said to be one of the most important after Jerusalem and next to Damascus and Maalula , many people are said to have been healed of their ailments. Some of these stories can also be read in the monastery itself. The figure of Mary is venerated by both Christians and Muslims.
The cherubim
There is also a monastery on the summit of the highest mountain in the area, the 2000-meter-high Cherubim Mountain, named after the cherubim angel type . Here you can find remains of sacred buildings. There is a church from Byzantine times and the large new building of a monastery on the summit. From there you have an extraordinary view of the country.
Saidnaya Prison
The Saidnaya Military Prison is located southwest of the city. According to a report by Amnesty International based on the testimony of 84 contemporary witnesses, between 5,000 and 13,000 civilians have been executed there on behalf of the Syrian regime under Bashar al-Assad since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2011 .
literature
- Frank Rainer Scheck, Johannes Odenthal: Syria. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. 4th edition. DuMont, Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7701-3978-1 , p. 174.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ statue of Jesus erected on Syrian hilltop. The Guardian , Nov. 2, 2013.
- ↑ pravoslavie.ru
- ↑ saydnaya.amnesty.org
- ↑ Amnesty on Syria: Report on mass executions with 13,000 dead. In: Spiegel Online . February 7, 2017, accessed June 9, 2018 .
- ↑ theguardian.com
- ↑ bbc.co.uk
- ↑ Press report (terrain model). RP-online.de, February 7, 2017