{"id":49468,"date":"2022-11-24T23:10:56","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T22:10:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=49468"},"modified":"2024-11-24T02:05:21","modified_gmt":"2024-11-24T01:05:21","slug":"nukas-sakdari-a-christian-monastery-erected-in-a-hidden-and-almost-impossible-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2022\/11\/24\/nukas-sakdari-a-christian-monastery-erected-in-a-hidden-and-almost-impossible-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Nukas Sakdari: a Christian monastery erected in a hidden and almost impossible place"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2017\/08\/21\/the-20-islamic-offensives-that-suffered-the-christian-territories-before-the-crusades\/\">Islamic offensives against Christians<\/a> during the High Middle Ages led them to build monasteries in places that were very difficult to access.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2022\/09\/19\/the-reason-for-the-two-spanish-banners-in-the-chapel-where-elizabeth-ii-was-buried\/\">The reason for the two Spanish banners in the chapel where Elizabeth II was buried<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2022\/06\/19\/highgate-the-exotic-and-gloomy-cemetery-where-170000-residents-of-london-rest\/\">Highgate: the exotic and gloomy cemetery where 170,000 residents of London rest<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p>The ones in Greece are very famous, but there are also ones in Turkey. One of them was Nukas Sakdari, <strong>a monastery of the Georgian Orthodox Church founded in the 9th or 10th century in the ancient kingdom of Tao-Klarjeti<\/strong>, also known as Eastern Iberia (to distinguish it from the Iberian Peninsula). Iberian). That kingdom occupied part of what is <strong>the current Republic of Georgia, one of the oldest Christian countries in the world<\/strong>. It is said that Nukas Sakdari was part of a network of 13 monasteries that were hidden in the mountains of this area, <strong> now located in the province of Artvin, in northeastern Turkey<\/strong>, and that these monasteries were connected through secret tunnels<\/p>\n<p>The most important of these monasteries was that of Nukas Sakdari. <strong>Today, only the church remains standing, which has been abandoned for a long time<\/strong>. Of the rest of the monastery, only a few ruins remain. The most surprising thing about Nukas Sakdari is its location, hidden in a valley and in a place that seems almost impossible: the wall of a cliff. <strong>These monasteries were built like this to protect themselves from Muslim attacks.<\/strong> It is not hard to imagine the reason for their abandonment knowing facts such as the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Turks between 1915 and 1923, in which more than 2 millions of Christians in Asia Minor, in an area close to this monastery. <strong>These ruins are today a memory of a very remote and ancient Christian culture<\/strong>, which is still preserved today in countries like Georgia and Armenia.<\/p>\n<p>Adventurer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@fearlessandfar\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Corey<\/a> <strong>recently posted an interesting report about this monastery<\/strong>, showing its interior, which he was able to access thanks to the help of a Turkish local who used to guide travelers who came to visit that church. <strong>That local, Nizam, died of a heart attack last February.<\/strong> The video is a nice tribute to the work he did showing off this spectacular site to those who came to see it:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Camping ALONE in an ANCIENT CLIFFSIDE Monastery\" width=\"665\" height=\"374\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rVVmT3mxX3U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can see here some captures of the video. <strong>Here we see the spectacular valley in which the monastery stood.<\/strong> The Church of Nukas Sakdari appears in this image (in the center), but it is so camouflaged with its surroundings that it is difficult to distinguish it.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/52521623374_3986cca294_c.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; margin:10px 0 10px 0;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>An aerial image of Nukas Sakdari.<\/strong> It is amazing that they managed to build a monastery in such a place in the 9th century.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/52521346931_c691566413_c.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; margin:10px 0 10px 0;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>An image of the church, seen up close.<\/strong> It is attached to the wall of a cliff and is very difficult to access.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/52520880737_ba7719a3db_c.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; margin:10px 0 10px 0;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>An image of the few remaining remains of the old monastery.<\/strong> In the video they also find what appears to be a vaulted crypt.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/52521823880_4fb6725202_c.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; margin:10px 0 10px 0;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>The interior of the Church of Nukas Sakdari <\/strong>, currently abandoned and in ruins. Mike Corey spent a night there.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/52521346901_5122e091b3_c.jpg\" style=\"width:100%; height:auto; margin:10px 0 10px 0;\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Islamic offensives against Christians during the High Middle Ages led them to build monasteries in places that were very difficult to access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19536,16886],"tags":[17899,10713,2049,17900,17896,16326,17901,17897,10830],"class_list":["post-49468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-sacred-places","tag-artvin","tag-christianism","tag-georgia","tag-kingdom-of-iberia","tag-nukas-sakdari","tag-ortodox-church","tag-ortodox-church-of-georgia","tag-tao-klarjeti","tag-turkey"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-12 02:24:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}