In August 2016, we travelled to Dronka, in Assiut, Upper Egypt, to document Moulid Al Adra—the Festival of the Virgin Mary.
The journey had a particular meaning for us. Our mother’s family is originally from Assiut, and for generations our family had an apartment inside the monastery. Our parents and grandparents grew up with stories of Moulid Al Adra: during the festival, members of our extended family would stay in Dronka for almost an entire month. From the balcony of the apartment, they could watch the crowds, the processions, and the ceremonies taking place around the monastery.
They often spoke about the significance of Mount Dronka, traditionally believed to be the final destination of the Holy Family’s journey through Egypt. For us, Dronka was therefore not simply a religious site. It was a place that had existed in our family’s memory long before we had ever seen it ourselves. The last time our parents had visited Dronka was in 1988, before we were born.
In 2016, we returned with our cameras.
The Festival of the Virgin Mary
Moulid Al Adra takes place every year in August, traditionally from the 7th to the 21st of August. It coincides with the Fast of St. Mary, one of the important periods of devotion to the Virgin Mary in the Coptic Orthodox tradition.
The fast culminates in the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, celebrated by Coptic Christians on August 22. During the weeks leading up to the feast, churches in Egypt and around the world hold prayers, liturgies, and devotional gatherings.
The largest celebration takes place at the Monastery of the Virgin Mary in Dronka, where thousands of pilgrims gather in Upper Egypt.
For two weeks, the mountain becomes a temporary city of pilgrimage. People arrive from different parts of Egypt, travelling by buses, trains, cars, and whatever means of transportation they can find. Families camp, sleep, eat, pray, and spend days together around the monastery.
The festival is at once deeply religious and profoundly social—a gathering shaped by faith, family, memory, and collective ritual.
During the two-week fasting period, Coptic churches all over Egypt and in other countries have evening prayers and morning masses. The biggest festival in honor of Mary is held in Dronka Monastery in Assiut, in Upper Egypt. People from all over the country come to pray, remember, and celebrate together.
Dronka and the Holy Family
Dronka occupies a particular place in the Christian memory of Egypt.
According to Coptic tradition, the Holy Family travelled through Egypt during their flight from Herod. Dronka is traditionally regarded as one of the final places visited by the Holy Family in Egypt, and the monastery is associated with the cave where they are believed to have stayed.
This connection gives the mountain a significance that extends beyond the annual festival. For pilgrims, Dronka is both a sacred landscape and a place connected to one of the foundational narratives of Egyptian Christianity.
During Moulid Al Adra, this history becomes physically present through the movement of thousands of people across the mountain—climbing, praying, lighting candles, attending services, and gathering around the monastery.
A Shared Devotion
Like many traditional moulids in Egypt, the celebration of the Virgin Mary in Dronka has historically extended beyond a single religious community.
Mary holds an important place in Islam as well as Christianity, where she is known as Maryam and is revered as one of the most significant women in Islamic tradition. For this reason, Muslim Egyptians have historically participated in some celebrations dedicated to Mary and other saints, seeking blessing and intercession in ways that often resemble participation in other popular religious festivals across Egypt.
Dronka therefore became, at different moments in its history, a place where religious boundaries could become less visible. Christians and Muslims could share aspects of popular Egyptian devotional culture, even while belonging to different religious traditions.
In the years following a series of terrorist attacks targeting Coptic Christians and churches in Egypt, access and participation by Muslim pilgrims at the Dronka festival became more restricted.
The atmosphere we encountered in 2016 was therefore part of a particular moment in the history of the festival—one marked simultaneously by ancient traditions, family memory, religious devotion, and the growing security concerns surrounding large Coptic gatherings.
Returning to the monastery meant entering a landscape that we had known indirectly through stories told by our parents and grandparents. The balcony from which our family had once watched the procession had become a point of connection between generations.
We were photographing people we had never met, but also photographing a place that had been present in our family history long before us.
The crowds, pilgrims, ceremonies, temporary shelters, devotional objects, and architecture of the monastery became fragments of a larger story about faith, memory, family, and place.
Dronka exists simultaneously as a sacred site, a destination of pilgrimage, a landscape of Egyptian Christian memory, and a deeply personal place within our own family history.
Dronka, Assiut, Egypt — August 2016
احتفلات المصريين بعيد العذراء بدير درنكة الذى شيد على جبل يعتقد انه كان المحطة الاخيرة لزيارة العائلة المقدسة لمصر بعد هروبهم من اورشليم ..يزور الدير اكثر من مليون شخص سنويا لطلب شفاعة العذراء .
Photos By Georges & Samuel Mohsen – Documentary photographers Based in Egypt © 2016