Al Nabek

Al Nabek lies in the Qalamoun mountains north of Damascus, on the road towards Homs. East of the town, the monastery of Mar Musa al-Habashi stands among the rocky slopes, reached by a steep path. Its church preserves medieval wall paintings and inscriptions, testimony to a Syriac Christian community that made a home in this austere landscape.

Tradition associates the monastery with Saint Moses the Abyssinian, a hermit who lived in the sixth century. The church was built in the eleventh century, and its painted decoration includes a striking Last Judgement. The monastery was enlarged in the fifteenth century, but its community eventually dwindled, and it was abandoned in the first half of the nineteenth century. Its buildings and paintings preserved traces of the religious life that had flourished in the mountains above Al Nabek.