Monastery of Mār
Mīkā’ēl Friend of the Angels:
Fourth Century of our Lord
دير
القديس ميخائيل رفيق الملائكة
المؤسس في الجيل الرابع الميلادي
Monastery
of Saint Mīkā’ēl Companion of the Angels
Founded in the Fourth Century of Nativity
AA.17 The Chaldean Monastery of Mār Gīwargīs
Until a few years ago, this Chaldean monastery was located outside Mosul, some 10 km to the northeast of it but it is now part of the expanded city (see the map in section A above). Probably the monastery was originally a diocesan church of a village that still preserved its Aramaic name, Ba‛wīrā (*Bēt-‛abra “place of crossing”), because of its location near the Tigris. The villagers would have moved nearer to the river and in this case the church expanded to become a monastery. Ba‛wīrā is known since the 10th century, the Patriarch ‛Abd-Īšō‛ I (963) being its former priest. Though the village is mentioned in sources in subsequent centuries, the first clear mention of the “monastery of Mār Gīwargīs near Mosul” occurs in 1610 in a manuscript owned by the monastery. Fiey saw an inscription on the outside gate of the church mentioning a restoration of the building undertaken by Patriarch Nicolas Zay‛ā in 1843; Fiey 1965-1968, vol. II, p. 524–531. During my visit, I found a fragment of an Arabic inscription in the garden of the monastery in a quite damaged condition, which mentions “…the sanctuary … the new partition and the gallery”. The fragment must be the inscription referred to by Fiey. The monastery, which belongs to the Chaldean congregation, witnessed other restorations, including those of 1908 (AA.17.06, AA.17.05 and AA.17.06) and of the 1930s (AA.17.01 to AA.17.03), while the church was renovated in 1924 (AA.17.02).
