Bkerké
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Bkerké (Arabic: بْكِرْكِي) is the episcopal see of the Maronite Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch of the Maronite Church in Lebanon, located 650 m above the bay of Jounieh, northeast of Beirut, in Lebanon.
Though now exclusively used by the church, the area was owned by the noble
History
Ottoman tax records indicate Bkerké (called Bikarkiyya) had 15 Christian households and five bachelors in 1523, 20 Christian households in 1530, and 12 Christian households and four bachelors in 1543.[3]
The earliest building on the Bkerké site was a monastery constructed in 1703 by Khattar al-Khazen. In 1730,
Since its creation around 858 AD, the see of the
The monastery was renovated in 1970 by Patriarch Paul Peter Meouchi. Patriarch Anthony Peter Khoraish added the external gate in 1982, and in 1995 Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir built a new wing to house the archives and serve as a museum. He also established tombs for the patriarchs and decorated the church with ornate windows.[6]
An old book references a convent, called Kourket, that was likely in this same area, if not on the same site. According to these (likely sensationalized) stories, the convent, founded around 1755, had high death rates, blamed on the air of the region. In 1775, a traveler, who spent the night outside the convent walls, observes a body being secretively buried and tells the local ruler. He sends a contingent of horsemen to gain access to the convent, where they discover "abominations which make the hair stand on end". The founder of the convent, Hendia, had "destroyed her nuns, sometimes to get their property into her hands, at other times, because they showed themselves refractory to her orders...". After this discovery, she was jailed and escaped from multiple convents.[7]
References
- ^ An Interview with Cheikh Malek el-Khazen. CatholicAnalysis.org. Published: 28 July 2014.
- ^ Bkerke El Khazen waqf. Khazen.org. Retrieved: 29 November 2014.
- ^ Bakhit 1972, p. 275.
- ^ "Bkirke". ikamalebanon. Archived from the original on 5 March 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
- ^ "The Maronite Patriarchate". Archived from the original on 2020-04-09. Retrieved 2016-03-17.
- ^ "تاريخ دير بكركي" [History of Bkerké Monastery]. Bkerké Lebanon (in Arabic). Archived from the original on 11 October 2014. Retrieved 12 November 2019.
- ^ The Cabinet of curiosities, or Wonders of the world displayed: Forming a repository of whatever is remarkable in the regions of nature and art, extraordinary events, and eccentric biography. With forty-three illustrations. Piercy & Reed. 1840.
Bibliography
- Bakhit, Muhammad Adnan Salamah (February 1972). The Ottoman Province of Damascus in the Sixteenth Century (PhD). School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.