Convent of St Saba

Roberts reached the Convent of Saint Saba, which is about eleven miles from Bethlehem, on the 3rd of April 1839 and stayed for two days. He wrote in his journal: 'We arrived in sight of two solitary towers overhanging the Convent of St Saba. It is situated on the brink of a deep ravine at the foot of which flows a brook, so deep that the sun's rays even at noon scarcely penetrate it… The brotherhood is of the Greek persuasion and consists of about 35 monks who dress the same as those on Mount Sinai.’

The convent of Saint Saba (or Mar Saba) was built in 482 around a cave inhabited by St Sabbas (439-532), an early Christian hermit and native of Cappadocia. Like many monasteries in the East, it was built as a stronghold in the rocks and looks down on a succession of precipices. Below runs the river Kidron which flows into the Dead Sea. The convent was visited by many travelers in the nineteenth century when it was described as 'the most extraordinary building in Palestine... picturesque and singularly wild, especially in the pale moonlight, when the projecting cliffs and towers are tinged with the silver light, while the intervening spaces and the deep chasm below are shrouded in gloom.’