Sinai Peninsula

“ Under any circumstances, one would have to take care, if, after the founding of Pharan, the mountain Sinai is often mentioned, to understand by it the Gebel Mûsa. As a rule, the whole range of mountains in the peninsula is intended by it. ”

“ THE DOOM OF AL ZAMERI.
NOTHING is known in nature which, in awful impressiveness, compares with the overpowering scenery forever associated with God’s revelation to man. That arm of the Indian Ocean called the Red Sea bifurcates into the westerly gulf of Suez and the easterly one of Akabah, and the triangular peninsula thus formed embraces the region that bears the name of the sky-consecrated Mount Sinai. ”

“ It is this mingling of the moral sublime with the sublime in nature which makes the great interest of the Peninsula of Sinai. Beyond all the stupendous altitudes of the mountains, beyond the Alpine heights and fathomless abysses, in power to stir the soul with awe, is the human history that has been enacted amid these great forms of nature. Serbal is clothed with such associations as with a garment. ”

“ Sinai is for the peninsula what Jerusalem is to Palestine, and it is ascertained that the building of the church at Gebel Mûsa, in the sixth century, brought about by the belief that it was founded at the place where the Law was given, caused the historical centre of the peninsula,—which formerly was undoubtedly identical with the city of Pharan and its palm-forest, as the natural geographical centre,—to be parted from it, and removed several days’ journey further south ”

“ The ships bearing Eastern goods for Egypt for a time landed at Roman Clysma, near Suez, which secured a new lease of life as Arabic Kolzoum. But Kolzoum like Arsinoë, silted up, while Suez as a port was not yet in being. On the west coast of the peninsula of Sinai lay Raithou, near which a landing stage offered the advantages of a natural harbour. Ships therefore landed near Raithou, called Raya by the Arabs, where the goods were transferred to camel-back for conveyance to Cairo and Alexandria. ”

“ A history of Sinai deals with the people who visited the peninsula at different times, rather than with its permanent inhabitants, who, in the course of centuries, seem to have undergone little change. They still live the life of the huntsman and the herdsman as in the days of Ishmael, sleeping in the open, and adding to their meagre resources by carrying dates and charcoal to the nearest centres of intercourse, in return for which they receive corn. ”

“ There are some horsemen and some nondescript animals. Among the signs that are used are the Egyptian ankh, the Greek alpha and omega, and the Christian cross, showing that a great variety of persons passed there. The words are written without regularity, the animals and men are drawn with poor skill. They are, for the most part, unattractive scrawls, the interest of which lies in the information which they indirectly convey.
The inscriptions in the wadis of southern Sinai were first noted by the lady Etheria who visited the peninsula about the year 450. ”

“ Behold that desert of Horeb, and that Mount Sinai; where, by means beyond vulgar reach, a genius, profound and bold, established institutions which have weighed on the whole human race. On that dry shore which borders it, you perceive no longer any trace of splendor; yet there was an emporium of riches. There were those famous Ports of Idumea, whence the fleets of Phoenicia and Judea, coasting the Arabian peninsula, went into the Persian gulf, to seek there the pearls of Hevila, the gold of Saba and of Ophir. ”

“ Although Sinai was politically an Egyptian dependency, with the frontier line between Rafa and Akaba, the Suez Canal was chosen as the means of defending Egypt, and bridgeheads were constructed along it, chief of which was the one at Kantara. The peninsula was therefore open to the Turks, who advanced across it along three routes, i.e. along the coast, along the pilgrim road from Akaba by way of Nakhl, and by a route half-way between the pilgrim route and the Mediterranean. Nakhl became a Turkish military centre. ”

“ The Arabs dwelling near the Kushites may be those who encamped on the Egyptian border in the western part of the Sinai peninsula; but according to the Biblical view they were also those who encamped with the tribes of southern Arabia near the transport route which runs from southwestern Arabia northward, with one branch leading to Syria and another to Egypt. This road was guarded by South Arabian garrisons. The Arabs are to be sought at the southeastern frontier of the Sinai peninsula in the vicinity of Elath. ”

“ Anthony between the Red Sea and Egypt, where he was visited by a monk of Pharan who told him that it was ten months since he had seen a human being. To which Sisoeis replied that it was eleven months since he had seen one himself.
The hermit life in Sinai was at its height when the lady Etheria visited the peninsula, intent on identifying the sites of which she had read in the Bible. Her eagerness seems to have stirred the imagination of the monks, and led to decisions as to localities which were accepted as authentic for centuries to come. ”

“ Few of those who have not personally traversed this region have formed any other idea of a valley in the Sinaitic peninsula except as a sandy or stony waste with a few plants and palm trees here and there where moisture is present. This, however, is far from being the proper view. The valleys are generally covered by dwarf plants throughout, ever varying by the disappearance of one kind and the appearance of another. Some are very persistent, others only local ”

“ They are divided from the Gulf of Suez on the west by the desert of El Kaa, which drains a large amphitheatre of hills, and becomes a coastal plain that extends as far as Ras Mohammad, the southernmost point of the peninsula. The desert of El Kaa has a harder subsoil which is so tilled that the accumulated moisture is thrown up at the coast near Tur, the chief harbour of the peninsula, and possibly an ancient Phœnician colony. Near it lay Raithou, a place of many oases and large date-palm plantations which were carefully tended by the monks during the Middle Ages. ”

“ The harbour, with its small commodious plain, between Nochol-rock and Gebel Hammâm Faraûn, [120] forms with these two prominent mountains really the most important geographical portion of the whole coast. The northern high plain, regularly sloping towards the sea, was called the desert of Sûr; the southern, rising higher, and soon losing itself in the mountain lands of the primitive rocks, is called the desert of Sin. The remark, that the latter lay between Elim and Sinai, would have no sense, if it were not also said that the desert of Sin extends itself to Sinai, or further. ”

“ Those, however, who press closely the literal sense of one or two passages, should bear in mind all the difficulties previously cited, and the absolute destitution of verdure, cultivation, running streams, and even of abundant springs, which characterise the fearfully barren vicinity of the monkish Sinai, where there is indeed room and verge enough for encampment, but no resources whatever. If we take up the ground of a continual and miraculous provision for all the wants of two millions of people, doubtless they may have been subsisted there as well as in any other place ”

“ The Gebel Musa from early Christian times was generally looked upon as the Mountain of the Law. At its foot lies the great convent of Sinai, at one time known as the Bush, which has carried on to the present day the traditions of the early Christian hermits, who settled in the peninsula. The Gebel Katrîn lying further south, was looked upon during the later Middle Ages, as the height on which the angels deposited the body of St. Katherine. Another imposing height of the group is the Ras Safsaf, 6540 ft. high, which has been put forward in recent times as a possible Mountain of the Law. ”

“ The Peninsula: Recent Research.—The peninsula of Sinai is about 230 m. in extreme length and 150 m. wide, or nearly the size of Ireland. It is practically waterless and barren, the population being not a thousandth of that on an equal area in England. The S. part is a high mass of schists and granite, deeply cut into valleys; it is overlaid by carboniferous sandstone, and limestone, capped with tertiary basalt, flows in the mining region. The N. part is an expanse of cretaceous limestone and nummulitic tertiary limestone, sloping down to the Mediterranean. ”

“ The Sinai group as a whole is called by the Arabs Jebel al-Ṭūr; the name Sīnā in Arabic comes only from books. The area of the peninsula is about 11,200 sq. m.; the population is four to five thousand souls, chiefly Bedouins of various tribes, whose common name, derived from Ṭūr, is Ṭowāra. They have sheep and goats, with which they retire in summer to the higher lands, where there is good pasture ground, and where springs are comparatively common. On the chalk and sandstone water is scarcer than among the primitive rocks, and often brackish. ”

“ The Bedouins who occupy the peninsula of Mount Sinai are:
I. The Szowaleha [Arabic] . They are the principal tribe, and they boast of having been the first Bedouins who settled in these mountains, under their founder Ayd, two of whose sons, they say, emigrated with their families to the Hedjaz. ”

“ These are now of great value as a contribution to the knowledge of Grecian-Egyptian antiquity, which has been industriously cultivated on several sides. We have also made another collection of the numerous so-called “Inscriptions of Sinai” which were cut into the rocks by a Christian population who lived on the Peninsula of Sinai in the first centuries of our era. These have not yet been entirely deciphered.
We have only been able to give occasional attention to subjects pertaining to natural science. ”

“ South of Siwa the frontier, according to the Turkish firman of 1841, bends eastward, approaching the cultivated Nile-land near Wadi Halfa, i.e. the southern frontier. This southern frontier is fixed by agreement between Great Britain and Egypt at the 22° N. The N.E. frontier is an almost direct line drawn from Taba, near the head of the Gulf of Akaba, the eastern of the two gulfs into which the Red Sea divides, to the Mediterranean at Rafa in 34° 15′ E. The peninsula of Sinai, geographically part of Asia, is thus included in the Egyptian dominions. ”

“ Diodorus Siculus (c. b.c. 50) mentioned Thamudeans living in Arabia. [86] As late as about a.d. 452-3 a Notitia Dignitatum mentioned equites Thamudeni, who were in the service of Rome, of whom one division, the equites Saraceni Thamudeni camped on the frontier of Egypt, another, the equites Thamudeni Illyriciani, were stationed in Judæa. [87] The present Bir Themed, in Sinai, situated half-way between Akaba and Kala’at en Nakhl, recalls the connection of the Thamudites with the peninsula. ”

“ The mining district of the peninsula of Sinai became subject to Egyptian rule at a very early time—probably some 3200 years before the Christian era—and the sculptured records of their occupation spread over a period of some 2000 years. On tablets at the mouth of one of the caves at Maghárah, King Senefru and his successor Cheops (who built the Great Pyramid) are represented, the one conquering a shepherd of the East, the other striking to the earth an Asiatic foe. ”

“ The total absence of ponds and lakes is a marked feature in the physical geography of the peninsula of Sinai. Rain does at times fall in abundance, but it rushes precipitately down the wadis into the seas which bound it on two sides. ”

“ This took place in pre-dynastic times. [18] The figure of the baboon who stood for the lunar divinity in Egypt, was doubtless deemed a suitable offering [13] to the sacred shrine at Serabit in Sinai, because of the nearness of this shrine to the centre of moon-worship of the country. If the figure was carried to Sinai at the time when similar figures were offered in Egypt, the establishment of the moon-cult in the peninsula dates back to the pre-dynastic days of Egypt. [19]
Fig. ”

“ Thus the oft-quoted legends of the Sinaitic Arabs are mere monkish traditions, adopted by Ishmaelitic ignorance. The great Lawgiver probably led his horde of fugitive slaves over the plains of El–Negeb and El–Tih, north of the so-called Sinaitic mountain-blocks, marching in small divisions like those of a modern Bedawi tribe; and we know from the latest surveys that the land, now alternately a fiery or frozen wilderness, was once well supplied with wood and water. The “true Mount Sinai” is probably some unimportant elevation in the Desert named by moderns after the Wanderings. ”

“ This plain is drained in the direction of the Mediterranean by the great Wadi el Arish and its numerous feeders, which, like most rivers of Sinai, are mountain torrents, dry during the greater part of the year, and on occasion like the fiumare of Italy, flowing in a spate. The Wadi el Arish is the River of Egypt of the Bible (Gen. xv. 18; Num. xxxiv. 5) , the Nahal Muzur of the annals of King Esarhaddon.
The Badiet Tîh is crossed from east to west by the road from Akaba to Suez, along which the Holy Carpet, which is made at Cairo, was annually conveyed to Mecca. ”

“ VARIOUS circumstances combined to raise the convent of Sinai to great prosperity during the early Middle Ages. On the one side it received regular contributions in money from Europe; on the other it attracted the attention of the pilgrims owing to the increasing fame of St. Katherine. Further it secured the direct protection of the Moslim rulers of Egypt owing to a development in trade.
When the Arabs conquered Egypt, the desire arose for a direct communication by water to Arabia, and the fresh-water canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea was cleared. ”

“ CHAPTER X THE HERMITS IN SINAI
A NEW era in the history of Sinai began with the advent of the Christian hermit. The desert has ever been the home of liberty. The desire to follow the New Way, coupled with the need of escaping the Roman governor, drove many Christians into the wilderness, where, remote from the claims and the unrest of citizen life, they embraced life in a form which meant reducing physical needs to a minimum. ”