Travels in Syria and the Holy Land

by John Lewis Burckhardt

WADY SEBAYE

[p.539] lie so close as to impart to him a share of the vermin with which they are sure to be infested. To sleep in the open air before the tent is difficult, on account of the fierce dogs of the encampment, who have as great an aversion for townsmen as their masters have; the Bedouins too dislike this practice, because a sight of the female apartment may thus be obtained. I found the women here much more reserved than among other Bedouins; I could not induce any of them to converse with me, and soon perceived that both themselves and their husbands disliked their being noticed; a fastidiousness of manners for which they are no doubt indebted to the frequent visits of their husbands to the capital of Egypt.

We had another shower in the night; flying showers are frequent during the summer, but they are never sufficiently copious in that season to produce torrents.

May 18th left the tent before dawn, and proceeded along a Wady and then N.W. up an ascent, whose summit we reached in two hours. From thence a fine view opened upon a broad Wady called Sebaye [Arabic], and towards the mountain of Tyh. We crossed Wady Sebaye, and then ascended the mountain which commands the convent on the south side, and descending again, reached the convent at the end of three hours and a half. Our march during the whole of this journey had been slow, except on the day of our flight from the robbers; for our camels were weak and tired, and one of us usually walked. There is a more northern road from Sherm to the convent, which branches off from that by which we came, at Wady Orta; it passes by the two watering places of Naszeb [Arabic], and Ara- yne [Arabic]; the former, which is in a fruitful valley, where date- trees grow, must not be confounded with the western Naszeb, already mentioned.

Hamd, afraid of being liable to pay the fine of blood, if it should become known that the robber had fallen by his hand, had

CONVENT OF MOUNT SINAI

[p.540] made us all give him our solemn promise not to mention any thing of the affair. When I discharged him and Ayd at the convent, I made them both some presents, which they had well deserved, particularly Hamd; this he was so imprudent as to mention to his uncle Szaleh, who was so vexed at not receiving a present, that he immediately divulged all the circumstances of our rencounter. Hamd in consequence was under the greatest apprehensions from the relations of the robber, and having accompanied me on my return to Cairo, he remained with me some time there, in anxious expectation of hearing whether the robbers blood was likely to be revenged. Not hearing any thing, he then returned to his mountain, four months after which a party of Omran, to whose tribe the men had belonged, came to the tent of the Sheikh of the Towara to demand the fine of blood. The man had died a few days after receiving the wound, and although he was a robber and the first aggressor, the Bedouin laws entitled his relations to the fine, if they waved the right of retaliation; Hamd was therefore glad to come to a compromise, and paid them two camels, (which the two principal Sheikhs of the Towara gave him for the purpose), and twenty dollars, which I thought myself bound to reimburse to him, when he afterwards called on me at Cairo. This was the third man Hamd had killed in skirmish; but he had paid no fine for the others, as it was never known who they were, nor to what tribe they belonged.

Had Hamd, whom every one knew to be the person who had stabbed the robber, refused to pay the fine, the Omran would sooner or later have retaliated upon himself or his relations, or perhaps upon some other individual of his tribe, according to the custom of these Bedouins, who have established among themselves the law of striking sideways.[See my remarks on the customs of blood-revenge, in the description of Bedouin manners.]

[p.541] The convent of Mount Sinai is situated in a valley so narrow, that one part of the building stands on the side of the western mountain, while a space of twenty paces only is left between its walls and the eastern mountain. The valley is open to the north, from whence approaches the road from Cairo; to the south, close behind the convent, it is shut up by a third mountain, less steep than the others, over which passes the road to Sherm. The convent is an irregular quadrangle of about one hundred and thirty paces, enclosed by high and solid walls built with blocks of granite, and fortified by several small towers. While the French were in Egypt, a part of the east wall which had fallen down was completely rebuilt by order of General Kleber, who sent workmen here for that purpose. The upper part of the walls in the interior is built of a mixture of granite-sand and gravel, cemented together by mud, which has acquired great hardness.

The convent contains eight or ten small court-yards, some of which are neatly laid out in beds of flowers and vegetables; a few date-trees and cypresses also grow there, and great numbers of vines. The distribution of the interior is very irregular, and could not be otherwise, considering the slope upon which the building stands; but the whole is very clean and neat. There are a great number of small rooms, in the lower and upper stories, most of which are at present unoccupied. The principal building in the interior is the great church, which, as well as the convent, was built by the Emperor Justinian, but it has subsequently undergone frequent repairs. The form of the church is an oblong square, the roof is supported by a double row of fine granite pillars, which have been covered with a coat of white plaster, perhaps because the natural colour of the stone was not agreeeble to the monks, who saw granite on every side of them. The capitals of the columns are of different designs; several of them bear a resemblance to palm branches, while others