An ancient Christian monastery, which in all likelihood dates back years before Islam spread across the Arabian Peninsula, has been discovered on an island off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, officials said Thursday.
The monastery on Siniyah Island, part of the Sheikh of the sand dunes of Umm al-Quwain, sheds new light on the history of early Christianity along the shores of the Persian Gulf. years, long before its desert expanses gave rise to a thriving oil industry that led to a unified farmhouse to the towers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Both monasteries have been lost to history over time, as Christian scholars slowly switched to Islam as this religion has become more prevalent in the region.
Today, Christians remain a minority in the Middle East, though Pope Francis arrived Thursday in neighboring Bahrain to promote interfaith discussion with Muslim leaders.
For Timothy Power, an associate professor of archaeology at the University of the United Arab Emirates who helped research the newly discovered monastery, the UAE is today a “melting pot of nations. “
“The fact that something similar happened here 1,000 years ago is indeed remarkable and is a story worth telling,” he said.
The monastery is on the island of Siniyah, which protects the Khor al-Beida swamps in um al-Quwain, an emirate about 30 miles northeast of Dubai along the Persian Gulf coast. The island has a series of sandbars that protrude like crooked fingers. . In one, in the northeast of the island, archaeologists discovered the monastery.
Carbon dating of samples discovered at the base of the monastery dates from between 534 and 656. The prophet of Islam Muhammad was born around the year 570 and died in 632 after conquering Mecca in present-day Saudi Arabia.
Seen from above, the plan of the monastery on the island of Siniyah suggests that early Christian worshippers prayed in a single-nave church on the monastery. The internal rooms appear to involve a baptismal font, as well as an oven for baking bread or hosts for communion rites. A nave also housed an altar and an installation for communion wine.
Next to the monastery there is a momentary construction with 4 rooms, probably around a courtyard, the space of an abbot or even a bishop in the early church.
On Thursday, the site was visited by Noura bint Mohammed al-Kaabi, the country’s minister of culture and youth, as well as Sheikh Majid bin Saud Al Mualla, chairman of the Department of Tourism and Archaeology of Umm al-Quwain and son of the emirate. . rule.
The island remains part of the homes of the ruling family, protecting the island for years to allow the discovery of ancient sites.
The UAE Ministry of Culture sponsored the excavations, which continue at the site. A few hundred meters from the church, a set of buildings that, according to archaeologists, belongs to a pre-Islamic village.
Elsewhere on the island, piles of clams discarded during pearl hunting form large, industrial-sized hills. Nearby is also a village that the British blew up in 1820 before the Dominion became part of what is known as the Trucial States, the forerunner of the United States. Emirates Árabes. La destruction of this village led to the creation of the Umm al-Quwain fashion deal on the mainland.
Historians say that the first churches and monasteries spread along the Persian Gulf to the shores of present-day Oman and as far as India. Archaeologists have discovered other churches and monasteries in Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
In the early 1990s, archaeologists discovered the UAE’s first Christian monastery, on Sir Bani Yas Island, now a nature reserve and luxury hotel off Abu Dhabi, near the Saudi Arabian border. It also dates back to the same time as the new discovery at Umm al-Quwain.
However, evidence of early life along the Khor al-Beida swamps in Umm al-Quwain dates back to the Neolithic era, suggesting continuous human profession for at least 10,000 years, Power said.
Today, the domain near the swamp is known for the cheap liquor shop at the emirate’s Barracuda Beach Resort. built a bridge to Siniyah Island for a genuine $675 million real estate development.
Power said the progression stimulated the archaeological paintings that uncovered the monastery. This site and others will be fenced in and protected, he said, it’s unclear what other secrets from the afterlife remain hidden under a thin layer of sand on the island.
“It’s a desirable discovery because, in some ways, it’s a hidden story, it’s nothing widely known,” Power said.