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Lost in the sand: Christian monastery ‘pre-dating Islam’ found in UAE
By Jon Gambrell
Siniyah Island, UAE: An ancient Christian monastery possibly dating as far back as the years before Islam spread across the Arabian Peninsula has been discovered on an island off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.
The monastery on Siniyah Island, part of the sand-dune sheikhdom of Umm al-Quwain, sheds new light on the history of Christianity along the shores of the Persian Gulf. It marks the second such monastery found in the Emirates, dating back as many as 1400 years – long before its desert expanses gave birth to a thriving oil industry that led to a unified nation home to the high-rise towers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
Sheikh Majid bin Saud al-Mualla, front right, and other officials at the ancient Christian monastery on Siniyah Island, United Arab Emirates.Credit: AP
The two monasteries became lost to history in the sands of time as scholars believe Christians slowly converted to Islam as that faith grew more prevalent in the region.
Today, Christians remain a minority across the wider Middle East, though Pope Francis is in nearby Bahrain this weekend to promote interfaith dialogue with Muslim leaders. The four-day visit, only the second by a pope to the Arabian Peninsula, is aimed at improving ties with the Islamic world.
For Timothy Power, an associate professor of archaeology at the UAE University who helped investigate the newly discovered monastery, the country is a “melting pot of nations”.
“The fact that something similar was happening here 1000 years ago is really remarkable and this is a story that deserves to be told,” he said.
Ruins of a church, centre left, form part of the monastery complex uncovered on Siniyah Island in Umm al-Quwain, UAE.Credit: Umm al-Quwain Tourism/AP
The monastery sits on Siniyah Island, which shields the Khor al-Beida marshlands in Umm al-Quwain, an emirate some 50 kilometres north-east of Dubai along the coast of the Persian Gulf. The island, whose name means “blinking lights” likely due to the effect of the white-hot sun overhead, has a series of sandbars coming off it like crooked fingers. On one, archaeologists discovered the monastery.
Carbon dating of samples found in the monastery’s foundation date between 534 and 656. Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was born around 570 and died in 632 in present-day Saudi Arabia.
Viewed from above, the monastery on Siniyah Island’s floor plan suggests early Christian worshippers prayed within a single-aisle church at the monastery. Rooms within appear to hold a baptismal font, as well as an oven for baking bread or wafers for communion rites. A nave also likely held an altar and an installation for communion wine.
Next to the monastery sits a second building with four rooms, likely around a courtyard – possibly the home of an abbot or even a bishop in the early church.
Emirati officials visit the ancient Christian monastery on Siniyah Island in Umm al-Quwain on Thursday.Credit: AP
The find was announced on Thursday, when Noura bint Mohammed al-Kaabi, the country’s culture and youth minister, and Sheikh Majid bin Saud al-Mualla, the chairman of the Umm al-Quwain’s Tourism and Archaeology Department and a son of the emirate’s ruler, visited the site. The island remains part of the ruling family’s holdings.
The Culture Ministry has sponsored part of the dig which continues. Nearby archaeologists found a collection of buildings they believe belongs to a pre-Islamic village.
Elsewhere on the island, piles of tossed-aside clams from pearl hunting form massive hills. Not far away sit the remains of a village that the British blew up in 1820 before the region became part of what was known as the Trucial States, the precursor of the UAE. That village’s destruction brought about the creation of the modern-day settlement of Umm al-Quwain on the mainland.
Historians say early churches and monasteries spread along the Persian Gulf to the coasts of present-day Oman and all the way to India. Archaeologists have made similar finds in Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The first Christian monastery in the UAE was found on Sir Bani Yas Island, off the coast of Abu Dhabi, in the early 1990s. Today a nature reserve and site of luxury hotels, it dates to the same period as the new find in Umm al-Quwain.
Evidence of early life along the Khor al-Beida marshlands in Umm al-Quwain dates as far back as the Neolithic period – suggesting continuous human habitation in the area for at least 10,000 years, Power said.
Today, the area is better known for the low-cost liquor store at the emirate’s Barracuda Beach Resort. A further $US675 million ($1 billion) real estate development is planned for the island.
Power said that development spurred the archaeological work that discovered the monastery. That site and others will be fenced off and protected, he said.
“It’s a really fascinating discovery.”
AP