adventure travel & photography
Destinations: Pakistan ◦◦ India ◦◦Turkey ◦◦ Egypt ◦◦ Bulgaria ◦◦ Mongolia ◦◦ Bangladesh ◦◦ Jordan ◦◦ Russia ◦◦ Turkmenistan ◦◦ Iran ◦◦ Kazakhstan ◦◦ Japan ◦◦ Hong Kong ◦◦ Greece ◦◦ Ukraine ◦◦ Syria ◦◦ Morocco ◦◦ Italy ◦◦ Mauritania ◦◦ Oman ◦◦ Algeria ◦◦ Faroe Islands ◦◦ Indonesia
Type: Photo stories ◦◦ Places ◦◦ Documentary ◦◦ Black and White ◦◦ Limited Edition Fine Art Prints ◦◦ Unlimited Edition Fine Art Prints ◦◦ Seascapes ◦◦ Urban ◦◦ Thousand Voyages Video Collection
Tours/Expeditions: List with all our scheduled tours and expeditions
- The story
- Purchasing Fine Art Unlimited Edition Prints, RM Licenses, and/or the Whole Publication
- Purchasing RM 4K video footage - Thousand Voyages Video Collection
- Travel to Syria
The story
I had the honor and opportunity to lead two groups to Syria - in 2022 and 2023. On both occasions, we visited Mar Sarkis Monastery in Maalula, the largest of three villages near Mount Qalamun, where Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus Christ, is still spoken.
Join our tour in Syria
Legend has it that Jesus once passed through this 3,000-year-old village, where religion intertwines with folklore. Aramaic can still be heard here today, 2,000 years later. Due to the complex history and geography of the area, the language sounds somewhat like Arabic with a Hebrew accent (listen to the voice in the video below). The story of Aramaic is significant, as it was once one of the world's greatest languages, although it now has very few native speakers.
Nowadays while some residents of Maalula take pride in speaking the same language that Christ preached in, many consider it to be simply the language of everyday life and nothing extraordinary. In the Syrian Orthodox Church, services are conducted in Syriac, a modern form of Aramaic. Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, and all evidence suggests that Aramaic was Jesus's mother tongue.
Join our tour in Syria
At Mar Sarkis Monastery, we had the opportunity to listen to sermons in Aramaic. On the second visit, the sermon was delivered by a young girl who was not a nun.
A prayer in Aramaic at Mar Sarkis Monastery, Maalula, Syria
During our first visit, we were fortunate to speak with a priest who had recently returned to the monastery after spending a significant portion of the Syrian civil war in Lebanon.
The most ancient Syriac-Aramaic gospels are now known as the Vetus Syra or Old Syriac texts. Only two representative manuscripts have survived. One is from the Library of the Convent of St. Mary Deipara in the Natron Valley of Egypt, now referred to as the Curetonian text. The other was discovered by Agnes Smith Lewis in Saint Catherine's Monastery at Mount Sinai in 1892 and is known as the Sinaitic Syriac text.
Join our tour in Syria
The village of Maalula itself has suffered greatly from the war, including the monastery. During our visit, extensive reconstruction work was underway, but many private homes and buildings remained destroyed.
Mar Sarkis Monastery was constructed in the fifth century on the remains of a pagan temple. It is believed to have been founded before the time of Emperor Constantine due to the rare survival of a horseshoe-shaped altar table. The monastery houses two of the oldest icons in the world, one of which depicts the Last Supper.
Purchasing Fine Art Unlimited Edition Prints, RM Licenses, and/or the Whole Publication
All images in the publication and/or photo gallery are available for purchase as Fine Art Unlimited Edition Prints and/or licensed using Rights Managed Image Licensing. The publication may also be available for purchase as a single unit, including the text, photos, videos, or music (if available), as one complete publication that you can use on your website, in a magazine (print or online), or on other platforms.
Please check the corresponding sections for more information:
Purchasing RM 4K video footage - Thousand Voyages Video Collection
All the videos on this page are part of the Thousand Voyages Video Collection and are offered as rights-managed 4K stock footage. You have the option to purchase entire clips, typically a few minutes in length, or individual parts of the clips as separate footage, ranging from 10 to 60 seconds.
If you are interested in making a purchase, please first read the Thousand Voyages Video Collection - FAQ and then send an email to me at pavel@thousandvoyages.com with the link to the page where you found the video clip, either on this website or on my Vimeo account page - https://vimeo.com/pavelgospodinov.
You can find all publications on this website that include embedded videos here.
Travel to Syria
I organize and lead small groups to Syria through my licensed travel agency "Thousand Voyages" Ltd.
You can find out more about the guided tours here.
A list of all scheduled tours can be found here.