The monastery of Mor Kiryakus, also written Mor Kuryakos, stands at Ayrancı village in the Beşiri district of Batman, at the far edge of Turabdin, the region the Syriac Christians hold sacred. Monks who came from Aleppo to Turabdin in the fourth century to spread Christianity founded a great many monasteries on the hills and rock outcrops overlooking the northern Mesopotamian plain, and Mor Kiryakus, built on the eastern slope of Kira Dağı facing that plain, is significant as one of the first of them. It has stood here since the fifth century, a date supported by the absence of a bell tower.
Two Syriac stone inscriptions are set above the arched door that separates the main entrance from the inner courtyard; the first mentions a man named Salibo of Aleppo. The complex covers 2,500 square metres — substantial rather than a chapel, and one that matters to more than one community in the region. It is rectangular on the outside, with an underground floor reached through passages; inside, two wide square enclosed courtyards are ringed by arched piers with rooms behind them. The finest work is in the room used as the patriarch's bedchamber, where the ceiling is an eight-lobed stone dome carved with starred crosses.
The monastery was repaired several times in the Ottoman period. Like dozens of other monasteries and churches scattered across the broken country of Turabdin it was eventually abandoned as its congregation dwindled. It is a registered monument, and restoration was carried out in three stages, coordinated by the provincial governor's office with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the provincial special administration, the Dicle Development Agency and the provincial directorate of culture and tourism. The entrance gate, the high stone perimeter walls, the tomb chamber and its eastern face, and all the rooms on the upper floor were restored to their original form; the church and the central courtyard were returned to their earlier state. The monastery reopened to visitors in November 2025.
Getting there
- Access
- At Ayrancı village in Beşiri.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Batman as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2.6 °C in January to 30.3 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in March (76 mm) and lightest in July (2 mm). Long-term means for 1952-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
