The convent reached the high-water mark of its prosperity during the fourteenth century. It drew a large income from its outlying possessions, it received gifts from the Sultan and from the pilgrims, it levied tribute on the goods that were unshipped at Tur. The basis of this arrangement is not directly stated, but the writer Piloti, about the year 1440, declared that the tax levied on the goods at Tur was 10 per cent. of their value,[269] and the Ritter von Harff, about the year 1497, held that the monks went shares with the Sultan in the profit made on the goods.[270]
The Italians who visited the convent in 1384 found two hundred monks in residence, of whom one hundred and fifty served the convent chapels, and fifty the chapels on the Mount of the Law. There were besides a very large number of Moslim, who dwelt inside the convent precincts (Frescobaldo, p. 121).
Food was cooked in the convent kitchen every day for four hundred persons, in huge cauldrons that came from Venice, and were conveyed across the desert on camel-back (Frescobaldo, p. 167). Largess was distributed daily to a thousand Arabs of the desert (Ibid., p. 121). In the year 1393 the monks and their dependents were two hundred and eighty in number, and two loaves were given daily to each pilgrim and to every Arab and mariner, of whom large crowds applied for food at the convent (Martone, p. 608).
Some of the pilgrims supply information on the Saracens or Bedawyn, who all through showed an independent spirit. During the whole of the Mameluk dynasty (1250-1517), they were complete masters of Suez. Wilhelm de Baldensel, calling them Ridelbim, stated that they lived on their camels and goats, neither sowing nor reaping, and eating such bread as they procured in Syria and Egypt. They were brown, fleet-footed, and carried a shield and a spear, rode on camels, wrapped themselves in linen, and acknowledged the authority of the Sultan, who, however, gave them presents since they could easily expel him and occupy Syria and Egypt (p. 345). Antoninus in 1331 also remarked that the Arabs had no fear of the Sultan (p. 165), and Ludolf held that the Sultan lavished on them gifts and flattery, since they could easily subjugate his territory (p. 89).
The attitude of these Bedawyn in matters of religion was perplexing to the Europeans, who began with looking upon Mohammad the Prophet as the incarnation of all wickedness, and then realised that his followers had a standard of dignity and hospitality which were by no means despicable. Ludolf, in 1341, noted that the Saracens did homage to St. Katherine (p. 66), and Frescobaldo remarked that the Saracens held the mountains of Sinai in veneration. “And be it known,” he continued, “that the Saracens reverence the Virgin Mary, St. John the Baptist, St. Katherine, and all the patriarchs of the Old Testament and hold that Christ was the great prophet previous to Mohammad; also that Christ was not born of the flesh, but that the Divine Father, through the lips of an angel, sent the Divine Word, and that in many ways they approximate our faith” (pp. 91, 101).
An English poem of about the year 1425 is extant, which describes the chief sites of pilgrimage at the time. They included the shrine of St. James of Compostella in Spain, the city of Rome, Jerusalem, and Mount Sinai. The poem is about 1500 lines long, of which about thirty deal with Mount Sinai, and are as follows (the spelling is modernised):
In that mount up high
Is a minster of our Lady:
The minster of the Bush, men call it,
Wherein the body of St. Katherine was put.
Also behind the high altar
Is where Jesus did appear
In that church to Moses,
When he kept Jethro of Midian’s sheep truly.
In the midst of that hill is a place
Where did penance the prophet Elijah;
On the height of that hill, by Clerk’s saws,
God gave to Moses both the Laws
Written in tables, without miss.
Plenary remission then it is.
A garden there is at no distance
Where Onorius (i.e. Onophrius) did his penance.
Another hill also is there,
To which angels did bear
The blessed body of St. Katherine,
She was a holy virgin.
Under that hill trust thou me,
There runneth the Red Sea.
At each of these places, that I told,
Is VII years, and VII “lentonez,”[271] be thou bold.
Thus from Sinai would I skip
And tell of the pilgrimage of Egypt; etc.[272]