The Jewish state’s attacks on the “party of God” damaged a medieval castle and a Shiite archaeological site in Chameh, a village near Tyre. The place is dedicated to Chmoun el-Safa, who is none other than the first pontiff of Christianity, where vestiges of a chapel are preserved. To check if there are relics dating back to the 1st century inside, we will have to wait for the withdrawal of the Israeli army.
Beirut () – All of Lebanon shook when Israeli attacks during the war between Israel and Hezbollah approached some of its most important archaeological sites. Among them is above all the Baalbeck area, the Heliopolis of Roman antiquity, as famous as the Greek Parthenon or the Colosseum in Rome. The country of cedars has urgently requested and obtained double UNESCO protection for 34 of its sites. However, November fighting between the pro-Iran Party of God and the Jewish State army ignored this protection in the case of the medieval castle of Chameh, near Tyre, and the “maqâm” of Chmoun el-Safa located within. The citadel and sanctuary, located about 25 kilometers southeast of Tyre, were hit, but the extent of the damage is unknown because the Star of David soldiers have not yet left the site.
The historical and archaeological area is located on a splendid hill overlooking the sea, as is usual in the maqams, the places of prayer erected by the Shiites who, in the absence of mosques, choose the most beautiful locations and landscapes. The maqam of Chmoun as-Safa, whose stones date back to the 1st century, has a unique historical value, because for Christian Arabs Chmoun as-Safa is none other than Semaan el-Safa or Simon Peter. Indeed, in Arabic, Chmoun becomes Semaan (Simon) and Safa is simply the Arabic contraction of the nickname “Cephas” that Jesus gave to his apostle.
The maqam is so special above all because these shrines are generally dedicated to ulama whose lives were exemplary, or to characters whose names appear in the Quran and the Old Testament, such as Noah, Job or Joshua. The one at Chameh is made up of a crypt, a kind of underground burial chamber, which is accessed through a circular opening covered by a wooden lid. The complex is enclosed in a rich porticoed room crowned by four domes, and below is the floor that is also the most sacred part.
Haïdar Hawila, a resident of Chameh who had the opportunity to visit the site, said that the Israeli army seems to have taken samples from the inside of the crypt, whose door was moved, although in doing so “they were very careful.” The information is all the more credible considering that Hezbollah killed an Israeli archaeologist in Chameh, Zeev Urlich, 71, who entered the area with the Israeli army “without the necessary authorization” and was wearing military clothing.
According to Ali Badaoui, archaeologist in charge of the remains of Tire at the Lebanese Ministry of Culture, if the Israelis had truly examined the floor of the maqam, they would have done a job that the Lebanese themselves have not done. A lack, he adds, related to the typically “eastern” “custom” of “respect for the dead.”
That said, how do you explain that a Shiite funerary monument, a branch of Islam that dates back to the 8th century and in perennial confrontation with the Sunni Muslim majority, is dedicated to the apostle Saint Peter, who died a martyr in Rome in 64 AD ? The answer to this question is found in the Chameh oral tradition, according to which, for the Shia community, Chmoun el-Safa figures in the genealogical list of the ancestors of Imam Al-Mahdi, whose mother was a Christian before embracing Islam. This eschatological figure that remains “hidden” should reappear in the “End of Times.”
But is it possible that the maqam contained relics of the first bishop of Rome? And which ones? Is it a fanciful hypothesis? scholars, historians and analysts ask. Or is the maqam simply an empty tomb? It is not certain, because the archaeologist Ali Badaoui notes that the foundations of a chapel have been identified in the surroundings of the site, which shows that the place was already consecrated before the arrival of Islam in the year 632. “So, if Dating back to Christian antiquity, the Chameh maqâm may hold some surprises for researchers if it is not too late because it has been destroyed or severely damaged by war.
In the meantime, what can be said is that sites like this throughout Lebanon constitute a valuable reliquary. And for that reason they must be better consolidated and preserved, starting with the Maqâm of Semaan el-Safa in Chameh, because they could transmit to the new and emerging generations of Lebanese students an incomparable open-mindedness. A peculiarity that should not necessarily be considered a kind of relativism; On the contrary, it represents a form of lucid vision about the diversity of one’s own roots and their greater or lesser importance in popular culture and mentality.
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