The Church of Virgin Mary location in the wilderness had a share in attracting some to live and worship next to it because of its simplicity, humility and a unique privilege, as it was a safe and comfortable refuge for the Holy Family in which they lived, in a poor and humble form, and the place became blessed by them.
All who came to worship and live in Solidarity around the church, lived in poverty and humility as the Holy Family lived, and it was said the they will be granted the blessing that the Lord of Glory has blessed this place and receive the crown of eternal life in the kingdom of heaven.
It was said that some of those early hermits had a good relationship with the great Saint Anba Anthony. After the departure of Anba Pachomius, the father of the monastic groups, the Pachomian monasteries were spread by his disciples (such as Tadros and Orsios…) all over Egypt. Many other monastic groups also followed the laws of Anba Pachomius without joining the monasteries of the Pachomian company.
The study indicated that some of the students of Anba Pachomius, or at least a group of monks of the Pachomian communion, came to Qasqam in the latter half of the fourth century and participated with those living around the church in establishing the monastery. The father of the company (346 AD).
[Because the scholars in the life of the Pachomian communion have unanimously agreed that Anba Pachomius, established only nine monasteries for monks and two monasteries for nuns, sandwiched between Akhmim in the north and Esna in the south], and the life of the communion was similar to the group of the early church, where everything was common between them (Acts 2:44). The basis of their physical life was focused on poverty, misery, lack of possessions, and escape from the love of possessions. As for the center of the monk’s spiritual life, it was the Bible, the Eucharist, and the perpetual prayer.
It seems that the applied method of the Pachomian laws in the Qusqam monastery had a special character for what the monastery was famous, for its openness to visitors and asylum seekers, asking for healing from the water of the well that Jesus blessed, and for asking for the supplication and intercession of the Mother of God, the Virgin Saint Mary.
It was reported that King Zenon, at the end of the fifth century, around 481 AD, resided in Qosqam, at the request of his daughter Illaria, who had been a monk in Wadi El-Natrun in the name of the monk Illary. King Zenon ordered the construction of forts in all Egyptian monasteries, including Muharraq Monastery.
