MAR SABA. 
The Convent of St. Saba is about four leagues to the south-east of Jerusalem. The 
surrounding country is desert. The road from the City leads over a succession of yellow 
and bald hills, at a distance resembling mountains of sand, and the valleys are in general 
mere collections of the stony wrecks of those hills. Bird, beast, and man, equally shun 
this arid region, and the only living things seen there are an occasional tribe of Bedouins, 
who make as short a stay as possible. Their black encampments even contribute to the 
general melancholy of the scene . 1 
The immediate approach to the Convent is striking. “ It was night,” says one of its 
describers, “ when after having descended into the bed of a ravine, where the Kidron 
passes to the Dead Sea, and arriving at the foot of the Mountains of St Saba, we saw 
the Convent above us, by the uncertain light of the moon. It looked a lofty and 
colossal structure, rising in stories or terraces, one above another, against the sides of 
the mountain to its summit, and there crowned with towers. We ascended flights 
of steps, climbed up a ladder, crept through a small door only large enough to admit 
one at a time, and found ourselves in an antechamber, surrounded by above a hundred 
Greek pilgrims. 
cs The next morning my first step was to the principal tower, which commands a 
view of the whole Convent. All round, and particularly in the mountain opposite, 
were ranges of grottoes, once the residence of anchorites.It was a fortunate 
moment for the picturesque of the scene. It was Passion Week, and the concourse 
of pilgrims was considerable. An old white-bearded monk, leaning on his staff, was 
toiling up the side of the hill, leading a long procession of devotees. Below, apparently 
growing out of the rock, was a large palm-tree, said to be planted by the hands of the 
saint in the fourth century. Half-way down the slope was a cemetery .” 2 
History, and probably legend, contributed its share to the effect. In a Chapel, behind 
an iron grating, in one of the grottoes, was a pile of skulls. The tradition of the Convent 
said they were those of hermits, who, to the amount of several thousands, had been 
slaughtered by the Osmanlis . 3 
Monasteries in every part of Europe have been generally built in picturesque situations, 
as was natural when the founders had their choice of ground. But in the East security 
necessarily became a principal object; and in the midst of a lawless population, whether 
under settled government, or the mere wanderers of the wilderness, the Monks were 
compelled to build their houses as strongholds, and their strongholds among rocks. 
The Monastery of St, Saba looks down upon a succession of precipices and defiles. In 
older times it might stand a siege, and even now would be nearly impregnable to the 
1 Correspondence d’Orient. 2 Stephens’s Incidents of Travel. 3 Game’s Letters. 
