2000-year-old monastery found in Iraq’s Najaf

An ancient monastery dating to the 1st century A.D. has been discovered in the religious city of Najaf, an Antiquities Department official says. Nazar al-Nafakh, Najaf’s leading archaeologist, said the monastery was revealed as bulldozers were leveling ground for Najaf’s new airport. “It is about 2000 years old,” he said. So far Nafakh has no clue of the name of the monastery, but Christianity was practiced widely in the area of Najaf south of Baghdad at the time. The province of Najaf, of which the religious city of Najaf is the capital, has several monasteries but most of them are merely heaps of debris.
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