Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

  • The origin of houses discovered in the 1990s on an island near Abu Dhabi remained a mystery, until a recent discovery.
  • Archaeologists uncovered a plaster cross from 1,400 years ago in a courtyard.
  • Experts said the cross’ location prove the cluster of houses were once connected to the local monastery.

The 1992 discovery of nine small houses on an island near Abu Dhabi has finally been complete. Archaeologists recently uncovered a plaster cross dated to 1,400 years ago, and the distinctly Christian symbol links the cluster of houses to a nearby monastery.

Located on Sir Bani Yas (an island of the United Arab Emirates, the houses were originally discovered near a church and monastery, and were dated to the seventh and eighth centuries. Experts believed the houses were somehow tied to the church, but didn’t have concrete evidence—until now.

in goshavank monastery, armenia

“This is a very exciting time for us,” Maria Gaiewska, a Department of Culture and Tourism-Abu Dhabi archaeologist, said in a translated statement and video. “We never had concrete proof [the houses] were inhabited by Christians.”

A team returned to the site for additional excavations and located the roughly one-foot-tall cross on a stucco plaque in the courtyard of one of the houses. This gives more credence to the idea that Sir Bani Yas—considered one of the bastions of Christian worship in the region 1,400 years ago—had a fairly large monastery presence. Gaiewska said the cross is enough that “we have now proved these houses were part of a Christian settlement.”

In the statement, the team said that senior monks were likely afforded the small cottage-like dwellings to seclude themselves from the rest of the monastery for times of praying and fasting. They could then return to the monastery when ready.Christian populations were more common in what is now the United Arab Emirates around the sixth century A.D. Eventually, however, the growth of Islam started to take hold and dominated the religious environment in the seventh century. The research team said that Muslims and Christians co-inhabited on Sir Bani Yas thanks in large part to the presence of the monastery. But by the eighth century, the monastery had been abandoned.

Crews will continue to explore the nine homes—the church and monastery are public sites—looking for a way to “better understand,” said Hager Hasan Almenhali, also an archaeologist at the culture department, “the nature of life and the relationship that connected the inhabitants of the island with the surrounding regions.”