A History of Sinai

by Lina Eckenstein

Early references and the nature of the festival leave no doubt as to its antiquity.

Thus, the writer Antoninus Martyr, who, about the year 530, entered Sinai from Gaza, journeyed by way of Elath (Elusa), “at the beginning of the desert that goes to Sinai,” and mentioned a festival that was about to take place. The people who entered the greater desert were in number twelve thousand (c. 36). On the eighth day after leaving Gaza, he reached the place where Moses brought forth water from the rock, and came to Horeb, which, in his estimation, was distinct from Sinai.

“Mount Syna,” he wrote, “is stony, and there is little earth, and in its neighbourhood are many cells of men who serve God, the same in Horeb. And in this part of the mountain the Saracens have an idol of marble white as snow. A priest (sacerdos) of theirs dwells there, who wears a dalmatica and a linen cloak (pallium). And when the time of their festival comes previous to the appearance of the moon (præcurrente lunæ), before it appears on the festive day, the marble begins to change its colour, and when they begin to adore it, the marble is black as pitch. The time of the festival being over, it returns to its former colour. At this I wondered greatly.”[193]

The rites that are accounted holy in this neighbourhood are associated with different prophets. Prof. E. H. Palmer († 1882) remarked that the Bedawyn “often fail to discriminate between Nebi Saleh, Moses and Mohammad. Thus, the footprint of the camel which was venerated at the conclusion of the festival of Nebi Saleh, has been incorporated in a tradition regarding Mohammad, who after death was carried aloft by a camel of so prodigious a size that it stood with one foot in Damascus, one in Cairo, one in Mecca, and one in Sinai.”[194]

The monk Antoninus Martyr made a short stay at the convent, and wrote that “the days of the festival of the Ishmaelites were drawing to a close, and the order went forth that no one should remain in the desert through which we had come, so some returned to the Holy City (i.e. Jerusalem) through Egypt, others through Arabia” (c. 39).

The work of feeding the Arabs who came to the convent was no mean undertaking. Anastasius, the monk, wrote that the Armenians more especially came there,—“it was their custom as it was the custom of every one.” There were six hundred of them on one occasion, and a man among them who waited on them and then disappeared. In the estimation of Anastasius this was “Moses himself, who came to receive his visitors” (no. 7). The number of pilgrims at this time (c. 600) was less, he remarked, than thirty years before, when as many as eight hundred came and ascended the holy mountain, where they saw a vision of God and a miracle, the summit of the mountain appearing enveloped in fire (no. 38). The appearance of fire on the mountain had previously been mentioned by Ammonius about the year 372. It may have formed part of a system of signalling adopted by the Bedawyn.

This confusion between the different prophets is reflected in a statement in the Perigraphe in the Arabic translation of 1710, which described Saleh as a Christian who had his tomb not far from the monastery.[195] This tradition should be compared with one current in the Middle Ages that Mohammad the Prophet was the disciple of a Christian monk.

The tomb of Saleh in the Wadi Sheykh was noticed by Bishop Pococke in 1726 (i. 141), and Burckhardt, in 1816, mentioned the celebration held here which took place in the last week in May (p. 489). This festival was described in detail by Tischendorf who saw it in 1846,[196] and by Prof. E. H. Palmer, who witnessed it in June of 1870.[197]