Reason for the name
Named after Maryam’s mother, bint Imran, May Allah be pleased with her.
Builder
The Byzantines.
History
Between 1131 and 1139 AD.
Shape and details
The church characterized by a rectangular building with three corridors, the largest of which is the middle.
The church floor paved with marble and the roof consists of several vaults intersecting a number of rectangular stone pillars, and in the middle of the ceiling, there is an altar covered with a semicircular dome. It characterized by a lack of decoration, this is because of the influence that it suffered from St.Benedictos. The decoration Concentrated in the altar of the work of Philip Kaplan in 1954, scenes of the birth of Christ and the embrace of Mary peace be upon him after he descended from the cross according to their belief. There is also a decoration in the crowns of the church columns where it sees the head of ox as the symbol of St. Luke, a statue that embodies the upper half of the human body and symbolizes St. Matta and some incomplete crowns. The church contains a cave on top of which a new stone dome and a small altar in front of it. According to the Christians, believe that the cave is the place to determine the birth of Mary peace be upon her and that is why the Crusaders built the church, there is a room containing the icon of the birth of Maryam.
As for the remains of the archaeological excavations, it revealed a pool with two basins and a causeway separating
them, Roman wells, the ruins of a medical temple, the ruins of a Byzantine church and the church’s magnificence and several caves, that were used as wells, and some pottery, coins and mosaic floor of the Umayyad period. The church contains a pool (Hasda), which Christians believe from one of the miracles of Jesus peace be upon him, and there are in the east of the monastery toilets, also a beautiful garden contains a statue of Father Lavigeri, founder of the Order of the White Fathersm the garden place the monastery of nuns built by the Crusaders.
It said that the church was originally a pagan temple built by the Byzantines in a church in the fifth century AD.
According to Christian belief that the land of the church inhabited by Yoaquim and Hanna the parents of Mary, peace be upon her, as for the origin of the historical church, it was in 530 churches named Mary Virgin and then burnt by the Persians, rebuilt and named to the Church of Hanna.
After the conquest of the city, Salah alddin change it to Rebat Alsaleheen, and a school of jurisprudence education of the Shafi’i in 1188 AD was called the AlSalahia School. Between 1821 and 1842 got an earthquake of the city and
destroyed, the walls of the monastery and after the earthquake the Ottomans took the stones of the walls and made a military barracks next to the monastery. In 1855, the end of the Crimean War and the victory of the Ottomans and Russia, Sultan Abdul Majeed gave Napoleon III this monastery in recognition of France’s efforts to defend the Ottoman Empire, the monastery handed over in 1856 by the administrator Kamel Pasha, a school established there in 1878 and became an Ecclesiastical in 1882.
In World War I, the seminary converted into an Islamic college known as the College of Salahaddin by the leader Jamal Pasha, but they did not do any harm in the church and remained
unchanged. In 1917, when Jerusalem occupied by Britain, they established a library and a museum there. As for visiting the monastery is available on all days except Sunday, the place closed at 12 o’clock for two, and there are
fees for entry only for the children of the area.