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Hyrcania

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Built upon an imposing, the Hyrcania Fortress in the Judean Desert is artificially leveled hilltop situated approximately 17 km southeast of Jerusalem and 8 km southwest of Qumran and the Dead Sea, this was one of a series of desert-fortresses first established by the Hasmonean dynasty in the late 2nd or early 1st century BCE—named in honor of John Hyrcanus—and later rebuilt and enlarged by Herod the Great. The most famous, and luxurious, of these strongholds are Masada and Herodium. Shortly after the death of the latter in 4 BCE, Hyrcania lost its importance and was abandoned. It would then lie desolate for nearly half a millennium, until the establishment of a small Christian monastery among its ruins in 492 CE by the monk Holy Sabbas, an expression of the monastic movement that took shape in the Judean Desert with the rise of the Byzantine period. Dubbed Kastellion, or “Little Castle” in Greek, the monastery remained active past the Islamic conquest of Byzantine Palestine around 635 CE but was apparently abandoned by the early 9th century. The site is known also by its Arabic moniker, Khirbet el-Mird, or “Ruins of the Fortress.” Attempts were made in the 1930s to revive the monastery, but harassment by local Bedouin cut short the venture.

Press release from the Hebrew University.

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