SW News: Close on the heels of Pope Francis’s visit to Bahrain, the remains of an ancient Christian monastery were unearthed beneath the ruins of a 300-year-old mosque in the Persian Gulf island nation. The remnants of the structure are thought to have been built between the sixth and eighth centuries before the advent of Islam.

It was a team of Bahraini and British archeologists who unearthed the ancient structure’s remains. The dig is expected to shed more light on the Christian heritage of the Arabian Peninsula. It was on the island of Muharraq that the monastery’s remains were dug up. According to Salman Al-Mahari, Director of Museums and Antiquities at the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, said, “it will be very exciting for the country to discover tangible evidence of a Christian presence dating back to the first millennium, under a mosque that is about 300 years old”.

Interestingly, in 2021, the same group of archeologists found some Christian artifacts, which included glazed terracotta items bearing a small cross and other stone objects. This was the first time that solid physical evidence regarding the advent of Christianity was unearthed although there is documentary proof.

Al-Mahari said that within their oral traditions, there are mentions of Christianity and its heritage in Bahrain. There are several place names with a Christian origin such as a village named Dair, which means monastery in Arabic. “We have read about them in historical sources since the 5th century, but we have not found anything tangible before that. That is why the discovery of the 'monastery' is the first physical evidence in the country, these are the first archaeological remains related to this period,” he said.

Early in November, the ruins of yet another Christian monastery were unearthed on the island of Al-Sinniyah in the United Arab Emirates, lending further credence to the fact that Christianity predated Islam in the Arab nation. The ruins in Umm Al-Quwain show evidence of a church, refectory, water storage facilities and individual cells probably used by monks.