Dayro d'Mor Daniel

Dayro d'Mor Daniel

Mor Daniel monastery, know as the Upper monastery, is built on a mountain known as Jabal 'Ayn al-Safra (Yellow Spring Mountain) near the village of Basakhra near Mosul, Iraq. Mor Daniel's Monastery was built on top of the mountain in a beautiful spot in the latter part of the fourth century. From all directions, it overlooks the vast plains of Nineveh, Mosul and Marga. Its ruins which still stand show that it was a large monastery and the cistern, hewn in rock on its western side, is too large. It was attended by many monks, and, for more than ten centuries, remained an abode of asceticism and devotion. In church history it is called Upper Mor Daniel's Monastery because there was another monastery below known as Lower Mor Daniel's Monastery, a convent for nuns. 

In 1261, the faithful Syriacs of Basekhraye and other villages in Mosul plains, fled to this monastery for refuge because of lack of safety in the district and Mosul. At the end of the thirteenth century Maphryono Barsoum al-Safi and his students stayed in it for sometime. In the Middle Ages, the monastery was known as Dayr al-Khanafis "The Beetles' Monastery" and Bar Hebreaeus called it Dayro d- Habshushyotho (The Beetles' Monastery) in the middle of the thirteenth century. The name came from a mysterious phenomenon about this monastery is that each year for three days its walls and roofs become blackened by tiny beetles creeping like ants. When these days draw near, the monks take out the furniture, food and other stuff to protect them from the beetles and return them to their former places in the monastery after the three days are over. These beetles still appear on its walls during its festival on October 20 during the prayer of the tishmesht chanted at the close of the Mass, it was still thriving at the beginning of the fourteenth century.