Youhanna Tannous el-Khazin Kassab and his wife Mounna Kahla Kassab donated to the Antonine Order two pieces of land in Ajaltoun, in the locality called Ras el-Sheikh and Rmeileh; and the Superior of the Order Father Semaan Kassab accepted the donation with the approval of the Maronite Patriarchate. The donors wished to build a convent dedicated to Saint-John the Baptist, in perpetuation of their memory and out of their attachment to devotion, love and faith.

             The construction of the convent as in its present form was achieved in 1897, and the church was completed in 1898. Father Semaan Kassab celebrated the first Mass on Saint John the Baptist’s day.

 Friars lived in this nice convent a life of prayer, meditation, solitude and labor, rehabilitating and planting its land, earning their living and offering their assistance to many families. From there, they started their action in the service of parishioners, schools and christian education in the heart of the Kesrouan Mountains. The convent had strong ties with the convent of Saint George – Aoukar, with whom it shared its administration and its community of life. Friars used to spend winter months in the convent of Saint George – Aoukar, and go up to the convent of Saint John – Ajaltoun for summer. In 1999, the two convents were formally separated. 

            The Antonine Order, who had a pedagogical and spiritual concern and who had transformed its establishments in the beginning of the twentieth century into schools, so each convent had its school, had a plan as early as the fifties for a new spiritual, parochial and cultural project in this new convent. As soon as the construction of the convent was finished, the Order inaugurated a school in 1898. But the horrors and violence of the First World War ruined the Order and urged it to close the school.

             In 1923, the convent became the “Antonine Clerical School” for Philosophy and Theology students, which was later on transferred to the convent of Mar Roukoz – Dekwaneh.