Maalula

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معلولا / Maʿlūlā
Maalula
Maalula (Syria)
Maalula
Maalula
Coordinates 33 ° 51 ′  N , 36 ° 33 ′  E Coordinates: 33 ° 51 ′  N , 36 ° 33 ′  E
Basic data
Country Syria

Governorate

Rif Dimashq
ISO 3166-2 SY-RD
height 1400 m
Residents 2762
Culture
Patron saint St. Thecla
City festival Exaltation of the Cross (September 14th)
Maaloula-VillageView.jpg

Maalula ( Arabic معلولا, DMG Maʿlūlā , Syriac ܡܥܠܘܠܐ, Aramaic מעלולא, from Aramaic ܡܥܠܐ maʿlā , German 'entrance' ) is a place in Syria . It is located about 56 km northeast of Damascus in the Qalamun Mountains, which are part of the Anti-Lebanon . The residents of Maalula spoke a New West Aramaic dialect until they were expelled in 2013 by the civil war in Syria . According to the census, 2762 people lived in Maalula in 2004, around 70% Christians , while in 2019 it was only around a third of them.

The local Christians and their churches

The Christians, who together made up about 70% of the population before the civil war, belong to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch . The town is known in the Middle East for the celebrations of the Exaltation of the Cross on September 14th.

In the village is the Greek Orthodox monastery Mar Thekla , which is built around the grotto and tomb (Maġarat Mār Taqlā) of Saint Thekla . However, the former Ayathekla church in the Turkish town of Silifke also claimed to be home to the saint's grave.

On the hill above the village is the monastery of Saints Sergius and Bacchus of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church , which was probably built in the 4th century and is dedicated to the martyrs Sarkis (Sergius) and Bacchus . Her feast day is October 7th. A special feature of the monastery church, which tradition says is the oldest in the world, is the altar plate in the form of a pagan sacrificial altar, that is, the altar plate is shaped so that the blood is collected when an animal is sacrificed and at one point on the altar plate exit. This part of the building is said to come from a pagan temple, i.e. from pre-Christian times.

The place is visited by all Syrian Christian denominations and by Christians from Lebanon. There are also many Sunni Muslims among the pilgrims . Western tourists are drawn to the mountain backdrop. Maalula is the birthplace of the Syrian Curia Bishop François Abou Mokh in the Melkite Patriarchate of Antioch .

In the Syrian civil war

Hotel Safir above Maalula, destroyed in September 2013

In September 2013 Maalula was attacked and captured by units of the Islamist al-Nusra Front , whereupon several Christian residents of the town were executed. Six young Christians were kidnapped and five of them executed by opposition forces, while the sixth never showed any sign of life again. Three of the executed Melkites from the monastery of Saints Sergius and Bacchus were buried on September 13, 2013 in the cemetery of the al-Zeitoun church in Damascus. The Syrian army finally succeeded in repelling the attackers, whereby the Safir Hotel, which was located next to the Melkite monastery on the hill and which served as the base for the rebels, was razed to the ground. While many Christians initially tried to stay out of the conflict that broke out in 2011, they were now drawn into the war. The Islamists took the place again on October 21, 2013, killing 13 people and injuring many. On October 28, 2013, government troops retook Maalula.

On December 3, 2013, the al-Nusra rebels took the place again and took 12 Orthodox nuns hostage. They were held in Yabrud for three months until they were released on March 9, 2014 as part of a prisoner exchange, for which 150 women were released from government prisons. On April 14, 2014, the government troops with the support of Hezbollah succeeded in retaking Maalula and driving out the Islamists. As part of this operation, Yabrud had also come under government control shortly before. 17 soldiers of the Syrian army died.

Residents of Maalula participated on the side of the government army in the defense and recapture of the place, which was devastated by the fighting and arson by the rebels. Several villagers died in the fighting. The buildings built house after house out of wood and clay in the historic town center burned down and were largely destroyed. They cannot be faithfully restored with modern equipment, as the alleys are only accessible with pack animals. The Islamists also deliberately destroyed churches and Christian symbols. Parts of the destroyed facilities on the sacred buildings have since been repaired, including the broken altar of the monastery church of St. Sergius and Bacchus. Destroyed icons have partly been replaced by copies or are to be replaced, whereby a documentation from the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation from 2001 is to serve as an aid. In place of the destroyed icons in the Orthodox Monastery of St. Thekla, there are now icons from Russia donated by Russian officers and soldiers. The mosque of Maalula was also badly damaged in the fighting. At the time when the Islamists occupied the place at the end of 2013, the Melkites managed to get some of their art treasures from the churches in coffins , which were supposed to have been dead, from Maalula to safety from the rebels.

Almost the entire Christian population fled from the Islamist rebels, mostly to Damascus and the surrounding area. It was only possible to return after the reconquest in April 2014. In June 2019, 190 destroyed houses in Maalula were rebuilt, with support from the Roman Catholic Church of Italy, but 130 buildings were still in ruins or were just being rebuilt, and by over 3000 believers (both churches present in the village) in front of the During the war, only 800 lived in Maalula. By May 2019, around a third of the population had returned from before the war. The past coexistence of Christians and Muslims in Maalula is described as peaceful for generations. Since Muslim residents helped the rebels to conquer the place and the conquerors celebrated, Christians who have returned to Maalula doubt that it is still possible for the Muslims to coexist with the Christians in Maalula. It was not until April 2017 that the bodies of five of the six residents of Maalula in the Lebanese part of the Qalamun Mountains kidnapped, tortured and executed by al-Nusra in September 2013 were found and brought back to Syria. The funeral mass in Damascus was held by the Melkite Catholic Patriarch Gregory III. Laham before the dead were brought to Maalula and buried. Four of the dead were Melkites and one was Orthodox.

Joseph I , Patriarch of Antioch and the whole of the Orient and head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church united with Rome , expressed his anger at the "Christians in the unsuspecting" to Matthias Matussek in 2018 in view of the persecution of Christians in Maalula and other parts of Syria by the rebels West ”who would be“ lied to about the situation here ”. The Melkite priest Taufik Eid from the St. George's Church in the monastery again pointed out that Maalula once reflected the coexistence of religions and was of no strategic military importance. Rather, according to his words, the Islamist rebels wanted to target and destroy a known symbolic place of Christianity in Syria and the Aramaic language.

Art theft by the rebels

In autumn 2014 it became known that the IS terrorist organization brought iconography objects from Maalula into the international art trade in order to finance their weapons. The objects came from the Melkite monastery of St. Sergius and Bacchus. Five stolen icons were confiscated on the Syrian-Lebanese border in January 2018. They were brought first to Damascus and then back to Maalula.

The disappearance of the Aramaic language

According to the linguist George Saarur from Maalula, Western Aramaic , which was only spoken in Maalula and two other villages, is dying out as a result of the chaos of war. A large part of Maalula's young Christians now live in Damascus and other places where Aramaic does not play a role in public life and is no longer passed on to the children, who now grow up exclusively with Arabic. According to Saarur, 80% of Maalula's Christians no longer speak Aramaic, and the remaining 20% ​​are over 60 years old. The 80-year-old Mayor of Maalula, Elias Thaalab, sees the preservation of Aramaic as very important, but admits the young people's lack of language skills. There are attempts to promote Aramaic skills in kindergarten, but there are only 30 children there, compared to around 100 in the past.

Apart from Maalula, Western Aramaic was or is only spoken in two other villages: in the partly Sunni-Muslim and partly Christian Orthodox village of Bacha'a (Arabic as-Sarcha ) and in the predominantly Muslim Jubb-'Adin (other transcription Jubb'adin). Bacha'a, the Aramaic neighboring village from which the Islamists conquered Maalula, was completely destroyed in the war, and all survivors fled to other parts of Syria or Lebanon. The Muslim Jubb'adin, in which 75 residents died in the fight against the Islamists, on the other hand, never fell under the control of the rebels and was not destroyed, so that a large part of the residents remained in the village. Thus, Jubb'adin is that of the three western Aramaic-speaking villages in which Aramaic has recently recorded the least decline.

economy

In the area around Maalula, among other things, fruit is grown, especially apples.

and display information about the image
View from the east over the city center (2007).

Literary processing

The location is used by the writer Rafik Schami as one of the settings in his novel The Dark Side of Love . Rafik Schami tells traditional stories from Maalula in Malula: Fairy tales and fairy tales from my village (1987).

literature

Web links

Commons : Maalula  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fabian von Poser: Voices of the Lord. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 21, 2003.
  2. ↑ Maalula - a village in the Qalamun Mountains. Sachmet - A website for Egyptologists and globetrotters. WordPress / Nisarg, accessed April 30, 2020.
  3. ↑ a b c d Daniele Rocchi: Syria: the challenge faced by the Christian population of Maaloula, where there's no more time to look back. SIR Agenzia d'informazione (Agensir.it), June 18, 2019.
  4. ^ Funeral of Christians killed in Maloula takes place in Damascus. Orthodox Christianity, September 14, 2013.
  5. ^ Saints Sergius and Bacchus (Mar Sarkis and Mar Bakhos). Aid to the Church in Need, ACN International. (With pictures of the destruction, from May 2015). Christians of Syria, ACN Syria, accessed April 28, 2020.
  6. ^ Syria rebels withdraw from ancient Christian town of Maaloula. BBC News, September 6, 2013.
  7. ↑ Islamists defeat two Christian villages in Syria, 13 people killed ( Memento from December 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Barnabas Fund, October 29, 2013.
  8. ↑ Umberto Bacchi: Syria Nun Kidnapping: Greek Orthodox Patriarch Urges Release of Maaloula Sisters. International Business Times UK, 3rd December 2013.
  9. ^ Salma Abdelaziz and Ashley Fantz: Reports: 13 nuns freed by kidnappers in Syria. CNN, March 9, 2014.
  10. ^ Syria rebels driven from Christian town of Maaloula. BBC News, April 14, 2014.
  11. ↑ Syria sanctuaries try to return to normalcy after invasion. ANBA (Brazil-Arab News Agency), September 11, 2019.
  12. ↑ The struggle for survival of the Syrian Christians. Bayerischer Rundfunk , December 25, 2019.
  13. ↑ a b Impressions from the destroyed Maalula in Syria. "They celebrated when we fled". Lord's Day , December 3, 2014.
  14. ↑ a b Peter 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. 71–75 ( A trip to Christian sites: Sednaye and Ma'alula ). ( PDF )
  15. ^ A b Matthias Matussek : Visiting the martyrs. The daily mail , October 2, 2018.
  16. ↑ a b Language of Christ in Danger. George Saarur warns that Aramaic has become a language of the ancients. Wiener Zeitung, June 1, 2019.
  17. ↑ Karin Leukefeld : You want to extinguish us Christians. Katholisch.de, June 17, 2014.
  18. ↑ Syria - remains of five Christians abducted four years ago by rebels in Maaloula finally laid to rest. 2nd May 2017.
  19. ↑ Arabi Souri: Maaloula Receives Bodies of 5 Christian Martyrs Killed in Lebanon by Nusra Front. Syria News, April 26, 2017.
  20. ↑ The story in the first: The plundered inheritance. ARD documentary about stolen art treasures, October 20, 2014, 10:45 p.m.-11: 30 p.m.
  21. ↑ Icons captured by terrorists being returned to Syria. Orthodox Christianity, January 11, 2018.
  22. ↑ Destroyed Bacha'a. Help for the Aramäerdorf Maaloula eV, December 6th 2018 with linked Youtube-Video Destroyed Bacha'a in Syria .
  23. ↑ Jubb'adin in Qalamoun. Interview by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi with a resident of Jubb'adin. May 13, 2019.