Our ancient town of Qara

            A house for the earliest Christians

Our village of Qara, located in the mountainous Qalamun range once had 11 churches (3 that still exist today) and a bishopric. Since the onset of Christianity this town was a bastion for orthodoxy. Today we are but 500 Christians on a population of 20 000. What happened? To this question we’ll try to give a satisfying answer  in two parts: first we’ll talk about how Christianity evolved here, secondly we’ll speak about the difficulties Qara suffered over time. The following facts were gathered by two people from the village: a historian and his cousin and research from Mother Agnes Mariam.

“Qara” is an Aramaic word. It means “the great cold” because a cold wind tends to blow here from the West. Our village is a long stroke of land of 55km that stretches on a plateau between the Anti-Lebanon mountain range on the West and the Qalamun mountain range on the East [1] (see map right here).The altitude of our village is about 1300m above sea level.

Qara is located between Homs, Damascus and the Lebanese region of Baalbek. It was a strategic area for the Romans because anyone who wanted to reach Europe through modern Turkey had to pass by our town [2]. (It is probable that St Paul, and other Apostles passed by Qara on their way to Antioch).

In 150 A.D. Qara had its first Bishop. Around 325 A.D. the Qari Bishop Macarius participated to the council of Nicaea. Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine, spent a night in the city of Yabroud, located at 20km to the north of Qara – of which some people say it is the oldest city of the world – in 326 A.D, on her voyage to Jerusalem. She transformed the pagan temple in our village to the Church of Saint Nicholas. Today this church houses the biggest mosque of our town. The reign of Julien the Apostate caused a lot of suffering for the inhabitants of Qara around the year of 363 A.D.

Bishop Dada of our village participated to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. Throughout the first centuries Qara remained immune towards the Monophysite [3] influences and thus remained faithful to the faith of the Apostles. Around 570 A.D. our town became dependent to the Metropolitan of Damascus. At this point there is a great gap in time of what we can now by certainty; we thus reach the year of 1454 A.D. where we see that the Qari Bishop Zazai assisted a conference on the discussion of the Easter date in Damascus. We then again make a leap in time until 1628, the year of Qara’s last Bishop, Josehp Naama; due to Ottoman persecution there were not enough Christians in Qara anymore to justify a personal Bishop.

1719 – to the present: There were Catholics in Qara and in the neighboring village of Yabrud. In the old days we were responsible for Yabrud, but now the roles had changed and we became dependent of the Yabrudi Catholics. In 1810 the Qara-Yabrud episcopate was broken, and we then became dependent of Homs, who was dependent of Baalbek (in Lebanon). But that alliance also broke when a priest, sent from Baalbek to gather money, was robbed on the road. Then the episcopate evolved to its present form: the Greek-Melkite Catholic episcopate of Homs, Hama and Yabroud. It’s first bishop was Michael, then Flavianus, after him Basilius, Johanna, Dyonisius, Ibrahim, Isidor and finally our present bishop Mgr. Johanna Abdo (see him on the picture with Pope Francis).