The Holy Lavra of Saint Sabbas, known in Arabic and Syriac as Mar Saba (, ; ; ) and historically as the Great Laura of Saint Sabas, is a Greek Orthodox monastery overlooking the Kidron Valley in the Bethlehem Governorate of Palestine, in the West Bank, at a point halfway between Bethlehem and the Dead Sea. The monks of Mar Saba and those of subsidiary houses are known as Sabaites. Mar Saba is considered to be one of the oldest (almost) continuously inhabited monasteries in the world, and it maintains many of its ancient traditions. One in particular is the restriction on women entering the main compound. The only building that women can enter is the Women's Tower, near the main entrance. History Byzantine period The monastery was founded by Sabbas the Sanctified in 483, on the eastern side of the Kidron Valley, where - according to the monastery's own website - the first seventy hermits gathered around the hermitage of St Sabbas. Later on, the laura relocated to the opposite, western side of the gorge, where the Church of Theoktistos was built in 486 and consecrated in 491 (today rededicated to St Nicholas). The constant growth of the community meant that soon after, in 502, the Church of the God-bearing Virgin Mary, in Greek Theotokos, was built to serve as the main church of the monastery. Saint Sabbas' Typikon, the set of rules applied at the Great Laura and recorded by the saint, eventually became the worldwide model of monastic life and liturgical order known as the Byzantine Rite. St John of Damascus Mar Saba was the home of St John of Damascus (676–749; ), a key religious figure in the Iconoclastic Controversy, who, around 726, wrote letters to the Byzantine emperor Leo III the Isaurian refuting his edicts prohibiting the veneration of icons (images of Christ or other Christian religious figures). Born to a prominent Damascence political family, John worked as a high financial officer to the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik; he eventually felt a higher calling and migrated to the Judaean desert, where he was tonsured and was ordained a hieromonk (monastic priest) at the Monastery of Mar Saba. St. John's tomb lies in a cave under the monastery. Early Muslim period Ancient sources describe an Arab attack on the monastery in 797, leading to the massacre of twenty monks. The community seems to have also suffered