User talk:Antou96/sandbox

<1-- EDIT BELOW THIS LINE --> Cathedral of Saints Constantine and Helen-Syria / Yabrud In the center of Yabroud is the Cathedral of Saints Constantine and Helena, which is considered one of the greatest and oldest churches in Syria.

On the history of the church, researcher and father Mitri Haji Athanasiou says to the Tourism and Society Bulletin: “The church in the past was an Aramaic pagan temple in the first millennium BC dedicated to the god Baal Shamin, the sun god. It was large in the era of the Bassian dynasty 212-235 and its columns were replaced with huge posts so that it could carry its arches that exceed seven meters, and then it was dedicated to the worship of the god Jupiter at the time.

Athanasiou points out that “the temple is built with huge stones that were cut from the rocky mountains surrounding the city of Yabroud, and the building at the bottom is more robust and massive than at the top, which indicates that some walls had been demolished, part of them were rebuilt randomly from their ruins and the ruins of some pagan structures that were scattered.” in the city.

Athanasiou points out that the stone of the altar with the canal for collecting the sacrifice blood is still present inside the church next to the wall of the dome of the bell, where the sacrificial blood was flowing into a well that currently receives baptismal water located under the baptismal font. Her return from Jerusalem to Rome, where the temple was converted into a church.

The one entering the church must first pass through a rectangular, glazed wooden entrance, the width of the church, interspersed to the right by a low wooden sub-door leading to the inside and another door from the northwest corner that leads to the outside. In the middle is the entrance door to the church. It is a restored antique wooden decorated with carved art fillings located at the top to the right is a carving of the chalice, surrounded by ears of wheat and bunches of grapes, and to the left is the Holy Cross, the crown of thorns, the ladder, the three nails and the tools used for crucifixion, and under these two fillings is an inscription that includes the date of the renewal of this gate and dates back to 1927 AD.

Athanasiou believes that “some of the restoration and renovation operations carried out for the cathedral since 1840 were not successful, as some of the original stones were not placed in their original place.

Concerning the construction of the cathedral, Athanasiou says that the style of the church is a basilica. Its spacious nave is separated by arches and large arches to form a nave with three markets. Its floor is marble spread over two rows of wooden benches in the middle market, one row on each side. The central market and on its sides are two arcades with high arches bearing the middle ceiling.

In the church, there is a high wooden pulpit resting on a jamb that ascends to it by a spiral staircase surrounded by a wooden balustrade whose semi-circular facade is decorated with eleven old, medium-sized, ancient icons.

The visitor ascends to the Holy of Holies by three marble steps. In the width of the church, there is an iconostasis, a place for placing beautiful, high marble icons with nine openings. It is decorated in its lower layer with nine large icons on the doors, one of which is for Saints Constantine and Helena, while in the upper layer is an arrangement composed of 35 medium-sized icons, with the icon of the Lord in the middle. Christ then spread icons of the feasts of our Lords.

There are also many ancient icons of artistic value in the church dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some of which are scattered throughout the church, and others are about thirty icons hanging on the wall of the sacristy, building inside the temple. Mikhail al-Dimashqi, dated and signed in 1740, the Archangel Michael also dates back to 1725, the Virgin Mary’s mourning dates back to 1842, and the icon of Christ the Almighty, dating back to the eighteenth century, according to Athanasiou.

And Athanasiou points out that there are icons belonging to the first Aleppine School, others to the Jerusalem School, and icons from the Second Aleppine School, in addition to several modern icons belonging to several artists, including Abdo Jabbour in 1953 and Fouad Shatahi in 1983.