Travels in Syria and the Holy Land

by John Lewis Burckhardt

JOURNAL OF A TOUR

IN THE

PENINSULA OF MOUNT SINAI,

IN THE SPRING OF 1816.

ABOUT the beginning of April 1816 Cairo was again visited by the plague. The Franks and most of the Christians shut themselves up; but as I neither wished to follow their example nor to expose myself unnecessarily in the town, I determined to pass my time, during the prevalence of the disease, among the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, to visit the gulf of Akaba, and, if possible, the castle of Akaba, to which, as far as I know, no traveller has ever penetrated. Intending to pass some days at the convent of Mount Sinai, I procured a letter of introduction to the monks from their brethren at Cairo; for without this passport no stranger is ever permitted to enter the convent; I was also desirous of having a letter from the Pasha of Egypt to the principal Sheikh of the tribes of Tor, over whom, as I knew by former experience, he exercises more than a nominal authority. With the assistance of this paper, I hoped to be able to see a good deal of the Bedouins of the peninsula in safety, and to travel in their company to Akaba. Such letters of recommendation are in general easily procured in Syria and Egypt, though they are often useless, as I found on several occasions during my first journey into Nubia, as well as in my

KAYT BEG

[p.458] travels in Syria, where the orders of the Pasha of Damascus were much slighted in several of the districts under his dominion.

A fortnight before I set out for Mount Sinai I had applied to the Pasha through his Dragoman, for a letter to the Bedouin Sheikh; but I was kept waiting for it day after day, and after thus delaying my departure a whole week, I was at last obliged to set off without it. The want of it was the cause of some embarrassment to me, and prevented me from reaching Akaba. It is not improbable that on being applied to for the letter, the Pasha gave the same answer as he gave at Tayf, when I asked him for a Firmahn, namely, that as I was sufficiently acquainted with the language and manners of the Arabs, I needed no further recommendation.

The Arabs of Mount Sinai usually alight at Cairo in the quarter called El Djemelye, where some of them are almost constantly to be found. Having gone thither, I met with the same Bedouin with whom I had come last year from Tor to Cairo; I hired two camels from him for myself and servant, and laid in provisions for about six weeks consumption. We left Cairo on the evening of the 20th of April, and slept that night among the ruined tombs of the village called Kayt Beg, a mile from the city. From this village, at which the Bedouins usually alight, the caravans for Suez often depart; it is also the resort of smugglers from Suez and Syria.

April 21st.We set out from Kayt Beg in the course of the morning, in the company of a caravan bound for Suez, comprising about twenty camels, some of which belonged to Moggrebyn pilgrims, who had come by sea from Tunis to Alexandria; the others to a Hedjaz merchant, and to the Bedouins of Mount Sinai, who had brought passengers from Suez to Cairo, and were now returning with corn to their mountains. As I knew the character of these Bedouins by former experience, and that the road was perfectly