Al-Shahhara Church (Our Lady of the Annunciation), Mizyeneh

Al-Shahhara is a small Greek Orthodox church in the village of Mizyeneh, at the entrance to Wadi al-Nasara, the Valley of the Christians, below the hill the village was built on. Its proper name is Our Lady of the Annunciation, and locals also call it the miraculous church. The long, barrel-vaulted building is made of the area’s black basalt. Nobody knows when it was built; it is said to be more than a thousand years old.

Where the name comes from

The church stood in the middle of Shahhara, a village that has since been abandoned. What remains is the church, the Shahhara mill, traces of a few houses and the graves around them. The evidence for the name is the inscription on a silver liturgical tray dated 1814, kept in the church.

What to see

Inside, the nave is 15 metres long; outside, the building measures 20 by 10 metres. It holds liturgical vessels from 1814, icons dated 1861 and the remains of a carved wooden iconostasis, the screen of icons in front of the altar, from 1889. The font, altar table and iconostasis in use today are carved basalt, following the style of Syria’s historic churches.

In 2004 and 2005, under the priest Boutros Hazzouri, the church was restored inside and out. Cement and paint were stripped from the walls, the stones cleaned and the joints repointed, and the building returned to its old look. In the 1970s, as the village grew, a larger new church was built against the old one. The Annunciation Complex added later includes a care home, a nursery named after Saint John the Russian and the Church of Saint Spyridon, opened in 2017.

The stories

The stories told about the church are part of its record. Ringing bells was banned under the Ottomans, it is said, so the priest climbed the highest hill in the village and rang the bell there. Accounts of light seen at the church from the 1920s onwards are recorded in the Patriarchate’s bulletin of 1956.

When to go

The church has two feast days: the Annunciation on 25 March and the Dormition of the Virgin on 15 August. Emigrants from the village come back for them, and the church is at its busiest. Visitors are received through the week at set times; the hours have to be asked at the door or in the village.

Do not miss

The wooden remains of the old iconostasis. Beside the new basalt screen, the carving from 1889 shows the same work done twice: once in wood, once in stone.