A History of Sinai

by Lina Eckenstein

CHAPTER XVII

THE LATER HISTORY OF THE CONVENT

THE size of the caravans that plied between Sinai and Egypt were a source of wonder to the mediæval pilgrim. This development of trade received a check in the sixteenth century, through the discovery of the sea-route to India by the Portuguese. Prince Henry of Portugal († 1460) brought the west coast of Africa within reach of his country. In the year 1487 Bartholomew Diaz sailed from Portugal to the Cape of Good Hope, which Vasco da Gama doubled ten years later, sailing on to Calicut. Every year a fleet now left Lisbon for India, where spicery was shipped direct for Portugal.

This trade detracted from the resources of the Sultan, and spelt ruin to the seaports of Italy. In 1503 the Sultan addressed a letter to the Pope in which he threatened destruction to the Holy Places, including the Holy Sepulchre and the convent of Sinai, if the Portuguese were not interfered with. But King Manuel of Portugal induced the Pope to ignore the letter, and, on his side, offered spicery free of duty to the Venetians, if they fetched it at Lisbon, instead of Alexandria. But the Venetians, averse to the change, persuaded the Sultan to set up a direct communication by boat between Suez and India, and a tower was accordingly built to fortify Suez. Tur was passed over; its days as a port on the way to India were drawing to a close, for the Portuguese were determined to monopolise the trade with India. They seized a boat coming from Egypt with the 24,000 ducats it contained. They fitted out a war fleet (1504) which enforced their superior claims in India, and attacked all other shipping. In 1509 they entered the Red Sea with their war fleet, and interfered with the pilgrims to Mecca. It was in vain that the Venetians, whose annual turn-over at Alexandria fell from 600,000 to 100,000 ducats in 1511, pleaded with the Sultan to diminish the tax on Eastern goods, so as to enable them to compete with the Portuguese. The Sultanate was at the mercy of short-sighted and intriguing emirs, and was weakening. The conquering Ottoman Turk was steadily gaining ground. There had been rejoicing at Cairo when Constantinople, in 1453, fell to the power of Islam, but the struggle for supremacy soon afterwards began between the Egyptian and the Ottoman Sultanate. In 1516 the Ottoman Sultan Selim († 1520) occupied Damascus, and in the following year he advanced along the road of El Arish with wheeled transport. After defeating the Mameluks at Radunieh in 1517, he led his disciplined janissaries into Cairo, where he appropriated the sacred banner of Islam and the relics, which he removed to Constantinople.

In the meantime the shipping languished even at Suez. Odoardo Barbosa, who was sent to Egypt to report on matters of navigation to the merchants of Italy in 1516, mentioned Suez as the station for spicery, but added that the traffic had almost ceased.[283] Certainly the Ottoman Sultan, roused to the needs of the hour, made the attempt to facilitate the transit of Eastern goods by cutting through the isthmus of Suez. He also built a castle at Suez in order to defend himself against the Portuguese. But the centre of the Ottoman rule was no longer Cairo, but Constantinople, to which the wealthy more and more migrated. Egypt was placed under a pasha, who was appointed at Constantinople, and who was frequently changed so as to anticipate any scheme on his part of making himself into an independent ruler. Cairo retained its university and remained a centre of learning; its halcyon days as a centre of art and luxury were at an end.

The Suez canal was still in course of construction in 1529, but was never finished,[284] and no term was set on the advance of the Portuguese. In 1541 Dom John (João) de Castro, who bore the proud title of viceroy of India, sailed up the Red Sea with a fleet, intending to attack Suez, but when he espied the fort and the ships at anchor there, he turned back. In sailing up the Gulf of Suez, and again in sailing down, Dom John stopped at Tur, where he communed with a monk of Sinai, who told him that the convent was occupied by monks of the order of Montserrat (sic), and that the body of St. Katherine had been removed to Cairo. Another informant denied all knowledge of this fact. Dom John was a man of some pretensions, who identified Suez as Heroöpolis, and Tur as Aelana of classic times. His observations were laid down in a Description of the Lands bordering on the Red Sea, which Sir Walter Raleigh considered of such importance, that he had it translated into English.[285]

Throughout this period we hear little of pilgrims and of the convent. The spirit of the Reformation was abroad, and the thought of St. Katherine was losing its hold on the imagination of Europe. Gregor, prior of the Carthusian house at Gaming, who came to the convent in 1507 together with Martin Baumgarten, stated that the monks were miserable owing to the clamorous Arabs, who occupied the mosque and kept their festival on the Mount of the Law as already related. In the estimation of Gregor, the monks of Sinai professed the order of St. Basil, but, he declared, they would be glad to be taken under the protection of Rome (p. 498). About the year 1546 the learned Belon of Mans, who travelled in the interest of science and archæology, visited Sinai, which he mentioned in his Observations de certaines singularités, etc., a work that reflects the spirit of the new age. Belon remarked on the Franciscan settlement at Gaza, the arsenal at Suez, and the canal of thirty miles’ length. In the convent he found about sixty monks.[286]

Of the bishops at this period we know very little. There was an interregnum of about thirty years before 1540, which may be connected with the rule of Sultan Selim. According to information preserved at the convent, he abstracted the original firmân which was supposed to have been given to the convent by Mohammad. Sultan Selim was responsible for the fortified stations along the route for pilgrims from Egypt to Mecca, of which one was built at Ajrud near Suez, the second at Nakhl, on the high desert, and the third at Akaba, which was situated east of the ancient Aila. These stations were reckoned about three days’ journey from one another, and the road continued in use till recent times. But whatever the reason, the bishop of Sinai at this time incurred the displeasure of the surrounding prelates. Marcus, the Cyprian, who was appointed in 1540, perhaps owing to some fault of his own (Nectarius called him κάκος),[287] was deposed by a synod held in Egypt under the auspices of the patriarchs of Alexandria, of Cairo, and of Jerusalem, and the bishopric of Sinai was declared abrogated.[288]

But a new protector to the monks now arose in the Tsar of Muscovy, who, when Constantinople fell to the Turks, took it upon himself to protect the orthodox. In the year 1547 Gregorius, a monk of Sinai, visited Moscow, where he complained of the tax which the Turk levied on the convent. The Tsar at the time was Ivan the Terrible (1533-84), who forthwith arranged that Gennadius, archdeacon of St. Sophia, at Novgorod, together with the merchant Posniakow and another should visit the patriarch of Alexandria and the archbishop (sic) of Sinai, and present them with 1000 ducats each. At the convent, after praying at the shrine of St. Katherine, they spread over it a covering of gold brocade, a gift of the Tsar. Posniakow, to whom we owe an account of the embassy, looked upon the monks as connected with St. Basil, and described the mosque inside the convent as originally a church of St. Basil.[289]

The Muscovite further arranged that a caravan bearing food should be annually despatched from Cairo to the convent, at his expense, as we learn from the account of the German pilgrim Wormbser, who went from Egypt to the convent in the year 1561 (Reissbuch, 1609, p. 396 ff.). His companion, Count Loewenstein, on his return to Alexandria, there asked for an official attestation of having been the Long Pilgrimage, which he included in the account of his journey (Ibid., p. 393). These travellers in 1561 found between thirty and forty monks at the convent, but were told that these sometimes left the place altogether because of the clamorous Arabs (Loewenstein, p. 369). It had recently stood empty four or five years (Ibid., p. 369). Another party of Germans, who reached the convent in 1565, actually found it empty and its gates walled up. They were met outside by a monk who, apprized of their coming, hurried over from Tur to act as their guide. From the height of the Mount of the Law they looked down on the empty convent with its deserted garden (Ibid., Helfferich, p. 726).