Zoroastrian Foundations to Syriac Monasteries in Upper Mesopotamia

by Fr. Dale Johnson

On June 21st, 1991, I was standing in the main sanctuary of Mor Gabriel Monastery in Midyat, Turkey, finishing the midnight prayers along with the community of nuns and monks. We were just about ready to begin the morning prayers and a beam of light, so strong and pure, shot through the doorway of the northern altar area and onto the floor of the main sanctuary. I  marvelled at the concentration of the beam.  After prayer, about 40 minutes later, I went to inspect the beam which  had now nearly disappeared. I saw that the sunlight first came through a rectangular window in the eastern wall. The bright morning sun had risen and was arching its way up into the morning sky.  

The next morning, which was June 22nd,  I stood in an area where I could observe the stone window shaft. Just as the sun rose, a minute or so after 6 am, I saw the sun rise and cast its light almost directly through the window. The doorway between the inner sanctuary and the main sanctuary was in a perfect position to allow the light to pass through and out onto the main sanctuary floor. On this morning, for about a minute, the light partially hit the inner sactuary wall before it moved over to pass through out and onto the main sanctuary floor. Each morning thereafter, it took longer for the light to line up correctly and beam itself onto the sanctuary floor. I also noticed that the light seemed less focused each day. 

The window and the doorway, acted like a lens that had to be lined up to create a peculiar phenomenon that occurs only once a year. I was easy to see that the phenomenon occurred on the summer solstice. Standing inside the church that morning was like standing inside an ancient stone timepiece that was aligned to detect the date of the summer solstice one day each year. 

I had to return to the United States to stay with Archbishop Samuel in New Jersey for a couple of months preparing for my ordination. So, I was not able to investigate the Nevertheless, I continued to research this phenomenon I observed in Mor Gabriel Monastery. 

The next year I returned to the monastery and observed the phenomenon again during the summer solstice. For several weeks I noticed the location of the rising sun and for a few weeks thereafter. On only one day of the year did the light shine perfected and directly through the stone lens. Malphono Isa Gulten told me that he know of a report that years ago there was brass plate on the floor exactly where the light hit. I could see that the floor had been repaired in that area. In fact, Isa and several of the monks and I had a friendly argument about my theory about the phenomenon. I said that I believed that part of the eastern wall had been built by Zoroastrians prior to 397 AD, the founding date of the monastery. Because Zoroastrians were fire worshippers and students of the stars and the sun, they built the eastern wall in such a way as to act like a celestial clock. All but Malphono Isa disagreed with me. On June 21st, 1992, we watched the sunlight lass through the window and doorway exactly at 6 am and hit the spot predicted by me and Malphono Isa. This led to further investigation into the Zoroastrian origins of the monastery. 

Some scholars such as Cumont suggest that the Zoroastrians were the Wise Men we read about in the gospel stories. Their priests are called magi and they followed the signs of the stars to locate the Christ child. 

Isa and myself found several Zoroastrian stones around the monastery that were once bases for pillars. They had a distinctive shape characteristic of Zoroastrian architecture. Andrew Palmer noted the same in his book, Monks and Masons on the Tigris. We expanded our search and located a Zoroastrian altar at Mor Malke monastery. It was sitting out in a courtyard area. Later that summer we traveled up to Hasen Keph on the Tigris river and found a monastery ruin.  

In the ruin which had once been a place where the late Archbishop Samuel and his mother found refuge during the Turkish assault on Christians in 1915, we found further evidence of a Syriac monastery built upon Zoroastrian ruins. The eastern wall was positioned in such a way that it was aligned to the sun´s position at the summer solstice. We also found previously undiscovered stone artifacts including  a Syriac inscription indicating the founding the the Christian monastery. Also we found several stone Syriac crosses carved in stone.  
 
In the years following I noted several other Syriac monasteries where this architectural phenomenon was present. Although altered by Christian monks, the monastery of Salah shows evidence of a stone window in an  eastern wall aligned to the sun´s solstice position. The history of Salah, that I have published in my book on the Monks of Mt. Isla, (lulu.com/barhanna), tells a story of Persian conflict with Christians. Many monks were martyed by Persian soldiers because they refused to convert to the Zoroastrian faith . Jacob of Salah memorialized these martys by the life of mourning at this site. 

The monastery of Mor Malke has been destroyed so many times, it was difficult to determine if it had once had a window built by Zoroastrians. Yet, the stone altar in the courtyard, suggested that there had been Zoroastrian activity at that site prior to Christian development. Future work at the site could reveal other interesting finds supporting a prior history. 

At the monastery of Hah, a Zoroastrian ruin, a few hundred yeards from the present church dononstrates clear evidence of a celestial clock built into the architecture. Local Christians report the structure as having belonged to the religion of the Sassanid Persian conquerors in the 3rd and 4th centuries. The church of Hah was built by the Wise Men who were returning from offering gifts to the baby Jesus according to tradition. They were carrying back to Persia swaddling clothes of Jesus. When they burned the cloth in a fire it turned into nine golden medalians with the faces of each of the Wise Men.  Previously,  six of the Wise Men had stayed behind in Hah and three Wise Men followed the star to Jesus. When they returned to Hah, the nine men were so amazed by the miracle in the fire that they built a church in commemoration of the event. A restoration of the monastery in 1999 does show Zoroastrian stonework underneath the floor of the foyer of the church. The eastern wall has no evidence of celestial orientation. 

In the monastery of Dier Zaferon in Mardin, the window in the eastern wall in the northern sanctuary has been filled in. Yet clearly it had been aligned to the solstice sun. Nearby and below the level of the main sanctuary, is evidence of Zoroastrian architecture. As stone ceiling, characteristic of Zoroastrian construction, is in sharp contrast to the barrel vaulted ceilings of the later construction of the Christian era. 

An archeological dig began in the year 2000 at the Syrian Orthodox Church in Nisibis. Although conducted by the government, it has already shown evidence of Zoroastrian stonework which was later reused in the church. Turkish archeologists I have talked to  are reluctant to identify anything pre-Islamic. Bishop Jacob of Nisibis is buried under the church. His stone coffin shows evidence of Zoroastrian stonework remarkably similar to the Zoroastrian stone altar at Mor Malke. The eastern wall shows evidence of where a window once was located aligned to the solstice sun.