The Mar Saba monastery in the Judaean Desert was founded by Sabbas the Sanctified in 483, and has operated continuously ever since. It had a major library, home to manuscripts in Arabic, Syriac, Greek, Georgian and other languages under the Umayyads and later. 1/
Mar Saba is where the biblical scholar Morton Smith reported in 1973 that he had discovered a Greek manuscript purporting to be an epistle of Clement of Alexandria and containing the only known references to a "Secret Gospel of Mark". 2/
Older even than Mar Saba is Mar Mattai, a Syriac Orthodox Church monastery on Mount Alfaf in northern Iraq, located 20km northwest of the city of Mosul. Founded in 363 A.D. by Mar Mattai the Hermit, it was famous for its large library with many important Syriac manuscripts. 3/
Mar Mattai's rich libraries have held thousands of manuscripts throughout its long history. However, many manuscripts were lost to a devestating fire in 480 AD and in attacks over the centuries from hostile enemies. Today, there are only 224 manuscripts left in its library. 4/
The oldest and by far the most important monastic library surviving from antiquity is that at Saint Catherine's Monastery - officially called the Sacred Autonomous Royal Monastery of Saint Katherine of the Holy and God-Trodden Mount Sinai - founded in 548 AD. 5/
The monastery was built around what is traditionally considered to be the location of the burning bush seen by Moses. Empress Consort Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, ordered the Chapel of the Burning Bush to be built at the site, enclosing the still-living bush. 6/
St Catherine's is perhaps the only monastery that includes a mosque in its grounds, created by converting an existing chapel during the Fatimid Caliphate. In regular use until the era of the Mamluk Sultanate in the 13th century, it is still used today on special occasions. 7/
The great library at St Catherine's today contains some 3300 manuscripts in the Old Collection, not including the manuscripts that came to light in 1975, collectively known as the New Finds, and the many documents in the archives. 8/
The monastery has been Greek throughout its history, and this is reflected in the library. But it has also been the destination of monks and pilgrims from many lands, who left behind manuscripts in their languages, as gifts to the monastery and for use by future pilgrims. 9/
Today the library at St Catherine's Monastery contains manuscripts in eleven different languages, with important collections in Arabic, Syriac, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Georgian, Armenian, Ethiopic and Old Slavonic. 10/
In May 1844 and February 1859, Constantin von Tischendorf visited the monastery and discovered the Codex Sinaiticus, dating from the 4th century. Together with the Codex Alexandrinus & Codex Vaticanus, it is one of the three oldest largely complete manuscripts of the Bible. 11/
Shortly afterwards, Codex Sinaiticus left the monastery for Russia in disputed circumstances, although records show the monastery received 9000 rubles from Tsar Alexander II. The Codex was sold by Stalin in 1933 to the British Museum and is now in @britishlibrary in London. 12/
In 1892, Agnes S. Lewis discovered a late-4th or early-5th century palimpsest of the Gospels in St Catherine Monastery's library that became known as the Syriac Sinaiticus and is still in the monastery's possession. This manuscript is the oldest copy of the Gospels in Syriac. 13/
The St Catherine's library also holds the Ashtiname of Muhammad, also known as the Covenant of Muhammad, a charter granting protection to the followers of Jesus the Nazarene, given to the monks of Saint Catherine's. It is sealed with an imprint representing Muhammad's hand. 14/
The most important manuscripts at St Catherine's have all been filmed or digitized, and so are accessible to scholars. With assistance from Ligatus, a research center of the University of the Arts, London, the library was extensively renovated, reopening at the end of 2017. 15/
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