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palestinian orthodox christians celebrating palm sunday in gaza today, via quds news network

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the church of saint george monastery in al-khader, palestine. this is one of the two major shrines of st. george in palestine, the other being in lydda. saint george is believed to have been imprisoned here, and the chains which fettered him are believed to have provided him with his healing powers. pilgrims may place a chain around their neck then step through it with the help of resident clergy to prevent mental illnesses.

saint george is the patron saint of palestinian, lebanese, and syrian christians. for muslims in those and surrounding areas, he's been syncretized with extra-quranic prophet al-khadir. they've also been syncretized with other biblical and mythical figures, including the jewish prophet elijah. so it's no surprise that, like many middle eastern religious sites, this church has historically been a place for pilgrimage for christians, muslims, and jews alike. palestinian christians and muslims continue to patronize the site today - they both picnic on the monastery's grounds on saint george's feast day.

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nabi musa (prophet moses) mosque/maqām in jericho governorate, palestine. local muslim tradition holds that moses was buried here. where exactly this tradition comes from is unknown.

every year, one friday before good friday in the greek orthodox calendar, a yearly pilgrimage from jerusalem to nabi yusha takes place, after which a festival in moses's honor is held. this began in the mid-19th century, though palestinian tradition holds that its origins lay in saladin's recapture of jerusalem from crusaders in 1187. this continues to hold symbolic importance today. the structure itself was likely built by mamluk sultan baybars eight decades later.

since the 1967 occupation, the pilgrimage was prohibited for 20 years (most likely due to association with the 1920 nabi musa riots) before being permitted again. since then, it's been prohibited on and off - most recently after the second intifada in 2000, before being renewed in 2007.

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300 page book from 1989 about palestinian costume archive.org/details/palestiniancostu0000weir

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New Post has been published on https://massispost.com/2024/04/azerbaijanis-completely-destroy-kanach-zham-church-and-ghazanchetsots-cemetery-in-shushi/

Azerbaijanis Completely Destroy “Kanach Zham” Church and Ghazanchetsots Cemetery in Shushi

SHUSHI — Between December 28, 2023 and April 4, 2024, St. John the Baptist church (S. Hovhannes Mkrtich), a 177 year old landmark in Shushi was destroyed, Azerbaijan’s most egregious violation yet of a December 2021 ICJ order, the Caucasus Heritage Watch reports. Built by Armenians in 1847, the church, also known as Kanach Zham (Green Chapel), was damaged amidst the 2020 war. In the aftermath of the war, the Baku diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church laid claim to the building and pledged restoration. Nevertheless, the church is now gone. At the entrance to the belfry, building inscriptions in…

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Shibam - This ~1,700-year-old walled city in Yemen is considered to be the oldest vertically constructed city in the world. Its trapezoidal buildings (most were built in the 16th century) are made of mud bricks and need constant maintenance due to rain and wind erosion.

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photos of dachas by Fyodor Savintev, published in Dacha: The Soviet Country Cottage (2023)

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maghen avraham synagogue in beirut, lebanon. it was completed in 1925 on the ruins of an older synagogue that was destroyed in an earthquake in 502 ce. it's the only surviving synagogue of the 16 which were in beirut.

lebanon's jewish community consisted of musta'arabi jews, who went to present-day lebanon after the jewish-roman wars and had been "arabized", and expelled sephardic jews, who integrated into musta'arabi communities. the synagogue gradually fell to disuse as lebanese jews began to flee the country after the 1958 lebanon crisis, 1967 war, and later the lebanese civil war due to worsening conditions and reactionary antisemitism.

wadi abu jamil - beirut's former jewish quarter - was caught up in the civil war, as it stood between largely muslim and largely christian areas of the city. the neighborhood and particularly maghen avraham along with the remaining jewish families were famously protected by the PLO at the time, which lead to israeli suspicions that there were "palestinian weapons" hidden inside of it (there weren't); culminating in an israeli bombardment damaging it further in 1982.

it was restored with assistance from lebanese-jewish diaspora in 2010. (chairs were installed in 2019.) beiruti jews who immigrated to montreal, quebec reconstituted themselves into a congregation of the same name.

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Entrance to the Archangel Michael Monastery in Prilep.

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Orthodox church in the grotto of abandoned stone quarry near Moscow

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carved mother-of-pearl shells from bethlehem, palestine, dating to the mid 19th century.

mother-of-pearl carving is a traditional craft in bethlehem; said to have been brought over by franciscan monks from italy in the 15th century. bethelehemi carved shells depicting themes from the new testament were popular souvenirs for christian pilgrims. the tradition is still going strong today.

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Songo Mnara: A Lost City Reveals the Grandeur of Medieval African civilization

Some of the world’s greatest cities during the Middle Ages were on the eastern coast of Africa. Their ornate stone domes and soaring walls, made with ocean corals and painted a brilliant white, were wonders to the traders that visited them from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. They were the superpowers of the Swahili Coast, and they’ve long been misunderstood by archaeologists. It’s only recently that researchers outside Africa are beginning to appreciate their importance.

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I’m noticing a lot of “discoveries” like this have been happening lately; in fact, I just posted one. At least this article overtly states the “assumption” underlying the tone of surprise from Western academia:

For Horton and Wynne-Jones, excavating Songo Mnara is a rare privilege — it’s a mostly-undisturbed site, largely ignored by scientists and locals alike. Partly, it’s been preserved so well because archaeologists from an earlier era didn’t believe it was a legitimate African ruin — they believed the architecture was too sophisticated, and therefore had to have been crafted by Arab traders who wanted an outpost. That idea has long been disproven, and now the archaeological community accepts that the vibrant Swahili culture was purely African in origin, and that the cultural influences from the Middle East cut both ways. The Swahili Coast and its luxurious arts and goods were an enormous influence on their neighbors ringing the Indian Ocean.

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📍 Masjid Al-Haram Extension, Makkah.

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the depopulation of the palestinian village of kawkab al-hawa is far from the only case in which a palestinian village was violently, entirely depopulated during the 1948 nakba. it's also not the only case in which neighboring kibbutz residents advocated for and even themselves participated in the destruction of houses, nor is it the only case in which elements of the village were only kept so they could serve a neighboring tourist attraction. however, it is a conspicuous case of all of the above, combined.

kawkab al-hawa happens to sit by belvoir castle, one of the best-preserved crusader castles in palestine. the village itself had been testified to in some shape or form from antiquity - the crusaders had referred to the village with the frankish name "belvoir", hence the name of the castle. after saladin retook it, the village as we know it today expanded into and around the castle's confines. by 1945, the castle had been in ruins for centuries, while the rural village housed 300, mostly farmers.

in the words of meron benvenisti: "In the Israeli context, it is preferable to immortalize those who exterminated the Jewish communities of Europe (in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries) and murdered the Jews of Jerusalem in 1099 than to preserve relics of the local Arab civilization with which today's Israelis coexist...Arab buildings spoil the myth of an occupied land under foreign rule, awaiting liberation at the hands of the Jews returning to their homeland."

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vainakh tower architecture is a historic style of architecture characteristic to chechnya and ingushetia. they've been noted as far back as the 1st century, but most we see today were built between the 15th-17th. the towers are built with stone blocks, range from 10-25 meters high, and feature walls which taper the higher the tower reaches. they were multi-purpose, used as silos, residence, and fortresses. wealthier families usually had at least one built for their community.

these towers, located in niy, ingushetia, are clustered together because they were built for defensive purposes. the "pyramid roofs" are unique to ingushetia, but similar roofs can be seen in other types of caucasian architecture, such as in nearby ossetia.

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2015 Bhutan (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) by Mark Huffman

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Malbork Castle in Poland   

Is a 13th-century Teutonic castle. It is the largest castle in the world measured by land area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.