Our Lady of Saidnaya Monastery

According to tradition, Justinian I, hunting near Saidnaya, pursued a gazelle up a mountain where the Virgin Mary appeared and told him to build a church; the German and Arabic Wikipedia speak of two visions that set the site and the design. Justinian dedicated the monastery on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. The Arabic Wikipedia adds that monastic life there dates from the 5th century. The sources give the distance from Damascus as 40 km (English) or 30 km (Arabic).

In the Middle Ages Saidnaya was a popular destination, featured in Latin pilgrim accounts including Thietmar's Liber peregrinationis and Burchard of Strasbourg's Itinerarium. These describe the icon as "incarnate" from the neck down and exuding holy oil, a feature absent from Arabic-language sources. An earthquake partly damaged the monastery in 1759, and Druze rebels may have damaged it in 1860. By 1883 only the apse of the medieval church survived; it is incorporated into the modern church. A side room with a painting fragment has been dated to the 12th or 13th century.[1][2][3]

The main chapel holds numerous icons and a wooden iconostasis in front of the altar. The pilgrimage shrine, separate from the chapel, contains the icon of Mary called Shaghoura ("the Illustrious"), kept hidden behind an ornate niche with silver doors and flanked by later icons. Silver crosses and other ex-votos left by pilgrims hang on the walls. The Arabic Wikipedia mentions a library of hundreds of books and manuscripts.[1][2][3]

The monastery is run by nuns; the Arabic Wikipedia speaks of about one hundred. Every 8 September pilgrims come for the feast of Our Lady of Saidnaya – Christians and Muslims according to the German and Arabic Wikipedia, Christian pilgrims according to the English.[1][2][3]

All three sources state that the monastery was damaged during the Syrian civil war; the German Wikipedia calls the damage severe. None gives a year or details.[1][2][3]