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The Monastery
of
Saint
Mary
El-Sourian is
a Coptic
Orthodox monastery located
in Wadi
El
Natrun in
the Nitrian
Desert, Beheira
Governorate, Egypt.
It
is
located
about
500
meters
northwest
of
the Monastery
of
Saint
Pishoy.
The
monastery
is
dedicated
to
the Virgin
Mary and
carries
her
name.
In
scholarly
references
from
the
nineteenth
century
it
is
generally
called
the
convent
or
monastery
of
Saint
Mary
Deipara.
It
is
better
known
nowadays
as
the Syrian
Monastery or
the monastery
of
the
Syrians (Syriac Dayr
al-Suryān)
because
it
was
mainly
used
by
monks
of
the West
Syriac
rite from
the
8th
to
the
14th
century.Wadi
Natrun.
The
exact
date
of
the
monastery's
foundation
is
unknown.
Most
sources
seem
however
to
agree
that
its
foundation
took
place
in
the
sixth
century
AD.
The
establishment
of
the
monastery
is
closely
connected
to
the Julianist
heresy,
which
spread
in Egypt during
the
papacy
of Pope
Timothy
III
of
Alexandria.
The
Julianists
believed
in
the
incorruptibility
of Christ's
body.
This
was
in
contradiction
with
the
teaching
of
the
Orthodox
Church,
which
held
that Christ had
taken
human
flesh
that
prevented
him
from
being
ideal
and
abstract,
and
therefore
corruptible.
Yet,
in
the monasteries of Scetes,
a
majority
of
the monks embraced
the
Julian
heresy.
In
reaction,
those
who
did
not
follow
the
heresy
obtained
permission
from
the
governor
Aristomachus
to
erect
new
churches
and
monasteries,
so
that
they
could
settle
apart
from
the
Julianists.
These
new
facilities
were
often
built
alongside
the
old
ones,
even
keeping
the
same
name
but
adding
to
it
the
word Theotokos,
thus
recognizing
the
significance
of
the
incarnation,
which
the
Julians
seemed
to
minimize.
The
Syrian
Monastery
was
therefore
established
by
those
monks
of
the
Monastery
of
Saint
Pishoy
who
rejected
the
Julian
heresy.
At
the
time
of
its
construction,
they
called
it
the Monastery
of
the
Holy
Virgin
Theotokos.
Towards
the
beginning
of
the
eighth
century
AD,
the
monastery
was
sold
to
a
group
of
wealthy Syrian merchants
from Tikrit,
who
had
settled
in Cairo,
for
12,000
dinars.
These
merchants
converted
the
monastery
for
use
by Syrian monks,
and
rebaptized
it Monastery
of
the
Holy
Virgin
of
the
Syrians.
This
could
be
one
of
the
sources
of
the
monastery's
modern
name.
Yet,
it
is
also
possible
that
the
monastery
had
already
been
inhabited
by
Syrian
monks
since
the
fourth
century
AD,
which
could
trace
the
monastery's
name
to
that
period.
The
Syrian
Monastery,
like
the
rest
of
the
monasteries
in Scetes,
was
subject
to
fierce
attacks
by
desert Bedouins and Berbers.
The
fifth
of
these
attacks,
which
took
place
in
817
AD,
was
particularly
disastrous
to
this
monastery.
The
monastery
was
then
rebuilt
in
850
AD
by
two
monks,
named
Matthew
and
Abraham.
In
927
AD,
one
of
the
monastery's
monks,
known
as Moses
of
Nisibis,
traveled
to Baghdad to
ask
the Abbasid caliph Al-Muqtadir to
grant
tax
exemption
to
the
monasteries.
Moses
then
traveled
through Syria
region and Mesopotamia in
search
of
manuscripts.
After
three
years
of
traveling,
he
returned
to Egypt,
bringing
with
him
250 Syriac manuscript.
This
made
of
the
Syrian
Monastery
a
prosperous
and
important
facility,
possessing
many
artistic
treasures
and
a
library
rich
in Syriac texts.
Inside
the
monastery,
there
is
a
large
door
known
as,
the Door
of
Prophecies or
Gate
of
Prophecies,
that
features
symbolic
diagrams
depicting
the
past
and
the
future
of
the
Christian
faith
through
the
eyes
of
Christian
monks
of
the
tenth
century.
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