Written by George Arab

Translated by Lina Yahya Raydan



NNA - Message and Heritage Qannoubine League Volunteers made a new discovery within the program of unveiling architectural sites, caves and hermitages which humans had inhabited in the valley throughout history.


The volunteers arrived on February 3, 2014, to the Qilai burial site, after a two-year-pursuit, to determine this site of which aged persons of the valley frequently spread the word about.


The site is located in the cliff of the valley - East of the "Monastery of Our Lady" in Qannoubine - and is one of the caves and hermitages which witnessed the spiritual life at the vicinity of the above mentioned monastery.


Qannoubine League Publishing and Media Secretariat issued a statement which included the forthcoming preliminary information about the site.


The statement said, “The site is a two-cavity burial hermitage connected by an internal tunnel on an altitude of 25 meters. Reaching the place is considered a real dangerous adventure which corrosion of the cliff increased its perils and pushed us to use ropes in order to climb the fragmented slope.


The site includes two cavities: the first is located at the eastern side and it contains bones, skulls and human skeletons which prove that it had been used as a cemetery.


The diameter of the cavity circular opening is about one meter and a half, and its interior area does not exceed three square meters (3 m2).


At the entrance of the tomb, human beings had built stones of three layers of half a meter width. The tomb inside the cavity is no more than two walls built in an open crypt of 30 cm high and 50 cm width in which the corpse was buried.


This tomb cavity extends west via a narrow tunnel of about 40 cm diameter to connect to another cavity of an area of an approximate 4 square meters of flat ground built and prepared by human beings to reside and sit on over an open ground overlooking the valley and the watercourse of its sacred river amid oak, pine and Elah trees.


Is this site a hermitage or just a cemetery? Who was buried in it? These were two of the many questions that came to our minds. However; facts led us to the following answers:


- Sure it is a cemetery due to the presence of human skeletons.

- Transmitted public words did not mention the identity of the persons who were buried in this cave.

- The Western flat cavity holds signs of the presence of a human being inside it who built his tomb next to him to the east side.

Had a foreign ascetic or one of the valley's residents resided the western cavity (hermitage)? There is no text that confirms any of the two possibilities.


Regardless of the truth of who took that site as a hermitage, he no doubtedly had experienced extreme asceticism represented by the narrowness of the hermitage, perils of the location and almost total lack of living agricultural resources."


The statement reiterated thanks to "Wadih al-Absi who supports this important program of the cultural survey project, which allows the follow-up detection of the landmarks related to the spiritual and human history of the Sacred Valley, and publishes the findings in illustrated elegant volumes in six languages".


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