Recently there was a television show about finding Mother Mary's grave. A watchman who had a dream about her, a government officer who once lived in the area and a townsman went to the site of the Church of Nine Priests on the Mount Bulbul. They located the grave and brought light to a matter concerning the entire world.

In fact, when there is difficulty in finding new topics many TV stations resort to mystic areas and make programs on subjects they would never approve of.

I would like to leave these sensations and give you information about the Holy Mother. Here is what the Koran says about her: "O Mary! Without a doubt, Allah has given you an outstanding distinction. He has cleansed you of all badness and exalted you above womankind." (Al Imran/42) "Her Lord graciously accepted her. He mad her grow like a beautiful plant and entrusted her to the care of Zacharias. Whenever Zacharias visited her in her room, he found that she had food with her. 'Mary,' he said, 'where is this food from?' 'It is from Allah,' she answered. 'Allah gives without stint to whom He will.'" (Al Imran/37)

Mother Mary was not an ordinary person, she was a select servant of the Creator and one of the female saints who are few in number. She is considered the symbol of virtue in both Islam and Christianity. Prophet Mohammed (Peace be upon Him) said: "The best woman of her time was Mary, the daughter of Imran." And added: "The believing wife of the Paraoh, Asiye, and the daughter of Imran, Mary, reached the highest rank among women."

One day Gabriel came to Mary in the semblance of a human being. Seeing her shyness he said, "I am a messenger of Allah, I have come to give you a holy son." Mother Mary was surprised at this extraordinary situation, "How shall I bear a child," she answered, "when I have never been touched by any man nor ever been unchaste." In Fusus-ul Hikam Ibn-i Arabi writes that when Mother Mary saw Angel Gabriel she was impressed (Vol. III p.137).

It is reported that Gabriel affected her hormones originating energy in her womb to unite the sperm with the egg and then to grow into a baby. Gabriel said it was easy enough for Allah.

Angel Gabriel is the educator of the person he is together with. There are saints who meet with Gabriel and do not receive the messages prophets do. About this Imam-i Gazali stated: "Some saints have the Holy Spirit of Prophecy. This spirit reveals some of prophets' knowledge of the unperceived world, rules of the afterlife, a part of the heavens' and earth's spirituality, and even some divine knowledge. Other souls are unable to understand these facts." Allah points to this with the following verse: "Thus we have inspired you [Mohammed] with a spirit of Our will when you knew nothing of faith or scripture, and made it a light whereby we guide those of Our servants whom we please. You will surely guide them to a straight path." (Shura/52)

Sainthood is being free from the limitations of humanity by way of strengthening spirituality and controlling bodily desires. The different levels of awareness of Allah mark the ranks of sainthood, these levels are: awareness through acquired knowledge, through seeing and through living.

The Koran gives the following message: "The servants of Allah have nothing to fear or to regret." (Yunis/62) A divine Hadith adds: "They are under my [Allah's] dome; it is never possible for you to recognize them."

As mentioned in the Koran, when Mother Mary was faced with outrages calumnies she was asked to fast and not to speak with anyone (Maryam/26-33). The verses in the surahs of Yunis and Maryam should be considered as related and parallel. In Risale-i Gavsiye His Holiness Abdulkadir Geylani uses the expression deaf, mute and blind ones probably to refer to people in the silence fast, not to the physically handicapped. Is everyone able to practice this quiet fast which refers to the tongue being mute in the mystical term? I do not wish to comment on this topic.

The grandchild of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), Abdulkerim Geyli, said that Mother Mary was a saint who had the knowledge of Oneness. However, as known by some, Mother Mary's sainthood is no comparison to Christ's; his is higher.

The historical data gives us the following information on Mother Mary's life: When Jesus saw his mother, and St. John standing near, he said to his mother, "Mother, behold, your son!" Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And entrusted them to each other. According to the Bible, from that moment St. John took Jesus' mother under his protection.

In the first half of the first century Christians were being tortured increasingly in Jerusalem. This persecution started when a student of the apostles, Stephanos, was stoned to death in 36 B.C. and continued. In 41 B.C. Herod Agrippa 1 proclaimed himself king. To increase his esteem among his followers he had Jacob, St. John's brother, executed and imprisoned St. Petros. These events set off a chaos among Christians and they fled the area, moving to Judea and Samaria.

After Jesus' death Mother Mary and St. John most probably stayed in Jerusalem for a while, but after St. Jacob, St. John's brother, was beheaded realizing they could not stay under this massacre they went to Ephesus via Syria and Anatolia. Going there St. John's aim was to be safe as well as to spread Christianity in the Roman Empire and the West. For these purposes, among populous and popular western Anatolian cities Ephesus was the most appropriate one.

We must remember that in Ephesus Mary was a mother to St. John. According to the council records of the year 431, for a short while after coming to Ephesus, St. John and Mother Mary stayed in the building which is now partly underneath the Council Church.

As we know St. John wrote his Bible for the people in Ephesus. It comprises their problems, questions they asked and St. John's answers to them. In the Bible he does not clearly mention Mother Mary's arrival in Ephesus but implies it.

Despite all the research, it has not been possible to bring light to details of Mother Mary's life. In fact, commenting on her life has been avoided. Leaving the publicizing and spreading of Jesus' teaching to the disciples, Mary gave utmost importance to secrecy of her life. She was very important for the people in Ephesus. The Bible does not directly mention her stay there but St. Epiphanes, a writer of the church from the fourth century B.C., wrote that some people took the example of St. John and St. Mary and, with the purposes of religious ideals and protection, lived with women who secluded themselves.

St. Jerome (347-419), who did research on Jerusalem of the fourth century, never mentioned a monument dedicated to Mother Mary in or around this city. If the grave of the Holy Mother had been there, being a historian, he would have reported that. In the earlier periods of Christianity there were certain rules about establishing churches; new churches could be built dedicated to martyrs, who died for religion, and to saints, only in places where they lived or were known. In St. Jeromes' lifetime the only church dedicated to Mary was in Ephesus.

We briefly presented some apparent and covert information about the Holy Mother. Churches could only be established in places where saints and martyrs lived. The church in Ephesus dedicated tho Mother Mary shows that she lived in Ephesus and there, her soul left her body.

The Holy Mother deceased in Ephesus. It is open to argument whether her grave is in the area of the Church of Nine Priests on the Mount Bulbul. This is the problem. She is the mother of a prophet and a saint whose name is mentioned in the Koran; it should not be that easy to locate her grave through a dream which was obviously not a divine one.

Dreams, accepted to be of two kinds: satanic and divine, take no more than twenty-five to thirty seconds over periods of forty-five minutes sleep.About the horizontal and vertical trips of one's soul in dreams Prophet Mohammed stated that: "When a sound dream emanates from a sound person it is equal to one forty-sixth of prophethood." Every dream Prophet Mohammed had was real and never relied on opinions or guesses.

It is difficult to consider a dream real when it is about a grave's location which is required to be kept secret.

May Allah have us reach divine dreams.

Ahmet F. Yuksel