The Holy Lavra of Saint Sabbas, known in Arabic and Syriac as Mar Saba and historically as the Great Laura of Saint Sabas, is a Greek Orthodox monastery overlooking the Kidron Valley in the Bethlehem Governorate of Palestine, in the West Bank, at a point halfway between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea.
The monastery was founded by Sabbas the Sanctified in 483, on the eastern side of the Kidron Valley, where – according to the monastery’s own website – the first seventy hermits gathered around the hermitage of St Sabbas. Later on, the laura relocated to the opposite, western side of the gorge, where the Church of Theoktistos was built in 486 and consecrated in 491. The constant growth of the community meant that soon after, in 502, the Church of the God-bearing Virgin Mary, in Greek Theotokos, was built to serve as the main church of the monastery. Saint Sabbas’ Typikon, the set of rules applied at the Great Laura and recorded by the saint, eventually became the worldwide model of monastic life and liturgical order known as the Byzantine Rite.
