Lalibela is a small town founded in the 12th century AD. in the center of the Lasta mountain range, in Central Ethiopia. At first it was called Roja, and later it was named after the most important emperor of the Zague dynasty, King Lalibela. Legend attributes to this ruler the construction of the famous churches in the 12th and 13th century. According to legend, Emperor Lalibela intended to create a "second Jerusalem" on Ethiopian soil.
Currently, most of the architectural monuments of medieval Ethiopia have been preserved in Lalibela, which is why this city is recognized by the UNESCO Association as the eighth wonder of the world and a symbol of the Christian religion, so widespread in the country. The main attraction of Lalibella is the complex of churches that were built right inside the rocks. According to historians, 11 underground temples were carved into volcanic tuff at the end of the 12th century AD. during the reign of the aforementioned emperor Lalibela.
It took about 23 years to create them! According to local legends, before his accession to the throne, the emperor Lalibela was in Jerusalem, where he was ascended into heaven, saw heavenly temples and was tasked (or wanted to) create copies of them. He had visions, and one of them was about a trip to Jerusalem. According to legend, he decided to create his own sacred city in the secluded mountains.
Ten churches were built on the banks of the river now called the Jordan. Skilled stonemasons were brought from Jerusalem and Alexandria, reinforced with local labor and God-sent angels who worked at night. It is said that after the death of Lalibela in 1212, his widow built an eleventh church in his memory. After coming to power, he taught several craftsmen the knowledge of construction methods received in heaven and instructed them to lead the construction. During the day, people worked on the creation of temples, and at night - angels.
According to Hancock, these "angels" were the Templars with whom Lalibela met in Jerusalem and who arrived in Ethiopia in search of the Ark of the Covenant. All versions are in doubt. The volume of the excavated rock is simply enormous. After all, it was necessary not only to mark the temples around the perimeter, but also to remove the material from the inside.
And to make a lot of ditches and branch channels to protect the temples from the water flowing down from the surrounding hills. This should have taken not 23 years, but at least an order of magnitude more. And the Templars are unlikely to be able to significantly change the situation here. The version of "angels" as representatives of a highly developed civilization is not combined with the complete absence of traces of any high technology. The version that Lalibela was not engaged in the creation of temples, but only in "archaeological excavations" with repair and improvement, looks rather weak for the same reasons.
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At the same time, the much lower quality of the lowest tier is striking in almost all churches, not only outside, but also inside. There is a feeling of some kind of "unfinished" … Presumably, the churches were created as follows: first, large holes were carved around a large stone block, until it completely separated from the mountain. Then the stonemasons began the actual design. According to another theory, the work was carried out from top to bottom, and at each level of the excavation, fine finishing went directly behind the rough cut.
Thus, it was possible to do without complicated frameworks. Domes, windows, verandas and doors were carved from the relatively soft stone mass. The interior space was created in the same way, while leaving the columns and arches connecting the floor and ceiling standing. The eleven churches of Lalibela, carved into the reddish cliffs, from the 16th century, have generated enduring interest. For many centuries, Lalibela was a religious center and a place of pilgrimage, but no traces of military structures or a royal residence resembling a palace were found here.
If you think about the difficult conditions in which the churches were built, you can be surprised at the magnitude of some of them. The largest, Christ the Savior, is 33.7 meters long, 23.7 meters wide and 11.6 meters high, the most revered of them is the Church of the Virgin Mary (Bethe Mariam), where the windows are shaped like Roman and Greek crosses, swastikas and wicker crosses. The central column is wrapped in fabric in the inner part. In one of Lalibela's visions, Christ appeared, touched this column, and letters appeared on it, informing about the past and the future. Then the column was wrapped up from prying eyes: not every mortal is ready to know the truth.
The church stands in a large courtyard, which was carved into the rock with the same incredible effort. Later, the Church of the Cross (Bethe Meskel) was carved into the northern wall of the courtyard. On the opposite side of the courtyard is the Church of the Virgin, dedicated to the torments of the Blessed Virgin. Through the labyrinth tunnel you can go to other rock temples connected to the courtyard. The Church of St. George, the patron saint of the Ethiopians and the British, was carved out in the form of a cruciform tower with equal cross-sections of the cross. It stands in a deep hole and can only be reached through a tunnel.
This city in the north of Ethiopia, located at an altitude of two and a half thousand meters above sea level, is one of the main holy places and, accordingly, places of pilgrimage in the country. Almost the entire population of the city professes the Ethiopian version of Orthodox Christianity, since Lalibela was supposed to become the New Jerusalem after the Muslim seizure of the 'original' in 1187 (this role was assigned to the city by the ruler of Ethiopia in the 12-13 centuries, St. Gebre Meskel Lalibela. The real name of the city, called before since Roha, also received as a gift from this ruler). Therefore, the location and names of many historical monuments of Lalibela repeat the location and names of the corresponding buildings in Jerusalem - and even the local river is called Jordan (by the way, this idea, like the city's layout, also belongs to King Lalibela). And in the 12-13 centuries.the city managed to visit the capital of Ethiopia.
The first European (Portuguese navigator) saw the temples of Lalibela carved into the rocks in the 1520s. and was shocked by them, the second in 1544, and the third only at the end of the 19th century. Of course, the tourists attracted since then by the 13 churches of the city, divided into 4 groups - on the cardinal points, do not count.
And the shock and hardened by sea storms, the Portuguese, and modern tourists experience because 13 churches - all, without exception, are carved into the rocks, and the Church of Bethe Medhane Aleem is considered the largest such church in the world. And almost all of the thirteen were built during the reign of Lalibela, in the 12-13 centuries.
However, the temples are dated with a very wide spread: there is an opinion that during the reign of one king all of them simply would not have been cut down (which means that some of the temples are younger than the 14th century), there is also an opinion that at least three churches were carved into the rocks half a millennium earlier and originally served as fortresses or palaces in the kingdom of the Aksumites. The writer Graham Hancock presented his own view of things - they were built by the crusaders - but not a single scientist supported him.
By the way, the churches are also a monument to the engineering thought of medieval Ethiopia: near many of them there are wells that are filled using a complex system based on the use of local artesian wells (recall that the city is located on a mountain range at 2500 meters above sea level!).
Apart from temples, the city has nothing to boast of: a small airport, a large market, two schools and one hospital.
This is not surprising, since in 2005 only slightly more than 14,600 people lived in Lalibela.
For three hundred years, the capital of the Ethiopian dynasty Zagwe was located here. Lalibela, who ruled in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, gave the order to build churches in the capital to overshadow the glory of Axum. Crowds of pilgrims began to flock to the church, and in the end the city itself was named after Lalibela.
Churches, carved into the rocks below the surface, are made using a wide variety of architectural styles. There are Greek columns, Arab windows, the ancient swastika and the Star of David, arches and houses in the Egyptian style.
In the beginning, the builders made a quadrangular hole in the rock and removed the granite block. This block was covered with paintings and ornaments on the outside, after which it was hollowed out from the inside, supplied with a vaulted ceiling and also painted. Sometimes churches were set up in existing caves, which were simply expanded, punching new corridors. According to archaeologists, the construction of the churches required the labor of at least 40,000 people.
However, the legend connects the construction of rock-cut churches with the intervention of the gods. According to legend, Lalibela was poisoned by his brother Harbai. During the numbness caused by the poison, Lalibela was ascended to heaven and spoke with the Lord there. After awakening, Lalibela had to flee to Jerusalem, and when the time comes, return to the throne in Roch. Also, God gave him detailed instructions on the construction of the eleven churches, their shape, location and decoration. Lalibela obeyed, but he himself could not do such a huge work, and therefore the angels worked with him.
The House of Medhane Alem (Savior of the World) is the largest religious building, 35 meters long, 23 meters wide and 10 meters deep. The House of Calvary is the seat of Lalibela's tomb.
The four churches stand completely apart. Although they vary in size, they all have the shape of large stone hills. Churches are completely isolated within the boundaries of deeply dug courtyards.
Beta Giorgis (St. George's Church) stands at some distance from the rest of the churches. In plan, the temple is a cross of 12x12 meters. The height, more precisely, the depth of the building is also 12 meters. A deep corridor carved into the rock leads to the entrance.
Every morning, going about their business, the residents of Lalibela admire the amazing temple complex that made their hometown famous throughout the world. Once in this provincial city, which was the capital of the Ethiopian kingdom in the Middle Ages and was called Roha, it is difficult to imagine that it was once the political, cultural and religious center of a large and influential power in its region. The idea of building these temples came from the future King of Ethiopia, Lalibela, when he was still in the status of heir.
In the middle of the twelfth century, the heir to the Ethiopian throne, according to the tradition then adopted, went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He stayed in Jerusalem for thirteen years. What he saw there inspired him so much that, returning back, he decided to build a new Ethiopian Jerusalem in these hard-to-reach mountains. Lalibela believed that their Ethiopian Jerusalem would become a new center of pilgrimage for Christians. The fact is that after the troops of Saladin captured the city of Jerusalem in 1187, the trip to the Holy Land for Ethiopian Christians became practically impracticable.
It was decided to change the names of the local streets, temples and even the local river to biblical. This is how Golgotha and the Sorrowful Way appeared here. And this is the local Jordan River. In the dry season, when not a drop of water falls from the sky in the mountains of Ethiopia for several months, it dries up. But at this time you can see a large stone cross at its bottom, usually hidden after rains by streams of water. In the struggle for the king's power, Lalibela was poisoned by his own sister, but the temples built by this creator king have glorified him and his city for centuries. After the death of Lalibela, the city of Roja began to be called after him. The temples, carved out of pink volcanic tuff, are not visible until you get close to them.
The Lalibela temple complex consists of eleven churches skillfully carved into the rock. Decorated with columns, the largest of them is Bethe Medane Alem, or the Temple of the Savior of the World. Beta Medane Alem is the largest temple in the world, carved entirely from a single rock mass. And all of its outer part and all the inner rooms, columns, halls and ceilings are what was left when the master cut off everything unnecessary from the giant block. The exception is several columns, consisting of separate blocks and making it look like a classical Greek temple.
The work of the Ethiopian stonecutters is admirable, especially considering that they had no margin for error, because it would be impossible to reattach an incorrectly cut tuff piece. In addition, they had to take into account the structure of the stone in order to prevent the structure from cracking in the most unexpected places. This required an accurate calculation and a clear vision of each of the many stonecutters of the entire structure as a whole - even before the start of all work.
A mysterious semi-darkness reigns inside the temples-monoliths. Columns, ceiling, altar - everything is unusual here, everything fascinates the eye. Each of the elements of the temple decor has its own symbolic meaning. It is said that it was here, in a cache, that the legendary large golden cross of King Lalibela was kept. In 2009, UNESCO, in order to preserve the unique frescoes of ancient temples, proposed to protect the buildings with special vaults. So the amazing temples-monoliths will be even less noticeable, but they will become much more protected from the harmful effects of natural factors. But you can be sure - the flow of pilgrims and tourists from all over the world to Lalibela will never run out. After all, there is nothing like this in any other corner of our beautiful planet!
The Beta Mariam Temple is one of the most revered in Lalibela. To enter here, as in all Christian churches in Ethiopia, one should barefoot, leaving shoes at the entrance. Artfully decorated arches, many crosses on the walls, bas-reliefs, icons standing right on the floor by tradition, believers in white robes … Its rich interior decoration is amazing. In the local mountainous climate, unique wall paintings have been perfectly preserved without any restoration.
Through narrow tunnels, cut in the rock, you can go from one church to another without rising to the surface. The entire complex of "hidden" monolithic temples is difficult to see even from a short distance. It was enough not to let strangers get too close - and the shrines were not exposed to unnecessary threat. Temples often became a reliable refuge - the system of underground passages was very extensive. The ministers say that now many of them are walled up or covered with boards and carpets, and even the most inquisitive and knowledgeable caretakers do not know about some of them.
Witnessing many events, incidents and mysteries, the temples of Lalibela are attractive and unique. Inside, at the level of human growth, their walls and columns are polished with thousands of hands and lips of believers who constantly come here to worship the revered shrines of Lalibela. In the Church of St. George, standing in a deep stone well, rays of light fall only at noon, when the sun is at its zenith. The rest of the time, the dense shadows of the surrounding walls fall on him, making his shooting a daunting task.
According to legend, when King Lalibela was already finishing the construction of rock temples, an unexpected guest came to him. It was the patron saint of Ethiopia, George the Victorious, fully armed on a white horse. And then the king decided to dedicate the most beautiful temple of his city to him. Beta Giorgis is often rightfully called the Eighth Wonder of the World. To go down to the entrance of the Church of St. George, you need to make your way along a narrow passage made in the rock, in which sometimes it is difficult for two to part ways. The Church of St. George is unique in that it does not have a single column. All other temples of Lalibela have internal or external columns.
World-famous temples of Lalibela are recognized as a miracle of engineering. The challenge for the current generation is to preserve these striking monolithic temples. Indeed, today, like hundreds of years ago, they admire thousands of people who come to Ethiopia in order to worship the shrines and see with their own eyes the inimitable wonder of the world, cut down eight centuries ago in a city with the beautiful name of Lalibela.