Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi (Syriac: ܕܝܪܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܡܘܫܐ ܟܘܫܝܐ deiro d-mor mūše kūšoyo; Arabic: دير مار موسى الحبشي, ALA-LC: dayr mār Mūsá al-Ḥabashī), literally, the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, is a monastic community of the Syriac Catholic Church located near the town of Nabk, Syria, approximately 80 km (50 mi) north of Damascus, on the eastern slopes of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains.
An ancient building, stone circles, lines, and tombs were recently discovered near the monastery in 2009 by archaeologist Robert Mason of the Royal Ontario Museum.
Its 11th-12th century frescoes, dating from between 1058 and 1208, represent ‘the only full program of mediaeval church decoration to have survived in greater Syria’ and provide important evidence of the growth of the medieval Syrian school of painting.
[4] The larger ‘Roman’ tower seems to have been reconstructed in the 12th century, with well-dressed, well-lain stonework and vaulting on the ground floor, suggesting the involvement of professional engineers and masons, likely in response to a series of earthquakes in 1138 and again in 1157.
[5] The monastery was abandoned some time in the 19th century after intermittent activity from the 15th century onwards,[4] but was refounded in 1992 when Paolo Dall'Oglio, with deacon Jacques Mourad (now Archbishop of Homs), “officially” founded under the authority of the Syriac Catholic Church a double monastic community (men and women, which is normally contrary to the XX canon of the Second Council of Nicaea), named "Al-Khalil Monastic Community of Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi", devoted to four tasks: prayer (in Arabic salat), work (amal), hospitality (dayafa) and dialogue (hiwar).