The Monastery of Mor Abrohom and Mor Hobel

The Monastery of Mor Abrohom and Mor Hobel lies on a hill about one kilometre East of the city of Midyat. The monastic establishment is enclosed by tough modern walls and it includes three churches, two of which dates before the Arab conquest. According to the local tradition, it was founded in the fifth century as a daughter house of the major monastery of Mor Gabriel by two monks, Abrohom and Hobel. Abraham in question is the fourth-century miracle-worker of the Highest Mountain (in the Ṭūr ‘Abdīn), the master of M. Barsawmo, the Chief of the Mourners. Hobel was a pillar saint (stylite) who lived in the time of Philoxenos of Mabbugh, whom he was able to embrace by making his pillar bend down. Another tradition affirms that its monastic church was among those built by the emperor Anastasius in the Ṭūr ‘Abdīn (Keser Kayaalp, Elif. Church Architecture of Late Antique Northern Mesopotamia. Oxford Studies in Byzantium. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2021: 209).

In the year 1165 CE, one of Mor Abrohom and Mor Hobēl’s monks, Yesu, who was also a distinguished writer from the Ṭūr ‘Abdīn, left a beautiful mark in the Syriac literature as a priest of the monastery. There are further evidences of the monastery being an active and vibrant community in the 15th century, when twenty monks lived there under the monk Behnam, and throughout its history it brought three bishop to the Syriac Church. Unfortunately, not much is known of its subsequent historical vicissitudes, while most of the original structure is gone and there is no trace of Mor Hobel’s stylite column. The monastic complex, as it is visible today, in fact, is the result of an extensive restoration that took place in the late nineteenth century (Hans Hollerweger et al., Lebendiges Kulturerbe : Turabdin : Wo Die Sprache Jesu Gesprochen Wird. Freunde des Tur Abdin, 1999: 108-9). Worthy of note is the collection of rare liturgical manuscripts still preserved at the monastery, and many of which – in Arabic, Syriac and Arabic Garshuni – have been recently digitized by Hill Museum & Manuscript Library and Centre Numérique des Manuscrits Orientaux (https://hmml.org/collections/repositories/turkey/mor-abrohom-monastery/).

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