CHAPTER XVIII
SINAI IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
THE close of the eighteenth century witnessed events in Egypt which directly affected the conditions of life in Sinai; they further reduced the man of the desert in his resources.
Since the conquest of Egypt by the Turks in 1517 the country was administered by a pasha who was appointed by the Sultan at Constantinople. But the order of the Sultan to Ali Bey to join in a war against Russia in 1769 met with a direct refusal; the Egyptian saw his chance of proclaiming his independence. The revolt of the pasha of Egypt gave Bonaparte an ostensible reason for occupying Alexandria in 1796. Bonaparte’s imagination was fired by the thought of incorporating Egypt, the land of antiquity, in his world dominion. As part of this wider scheme he addressed a letter as général en chef to the monks of Sinai in 1798, in which he took them under his protection, “to the end,” as he said, “that they should hand on to future races the tradition of his conquest, as he was filled with respect for Moses and the Jews, and because the monks were learned men living in the barbarity of the desert.” He further decreed that henceforth the Arab Bedawyn had no claim whatever on the monks, that they should be left to devote themselves unmolested to the claims of their religion, that they should be exempt from paying tribute or tax on imports or exports on the produce of their property in Schio (i.e. Chios) and Cyprus, that they should freely enjoy their rights in Syria and in Cairo, and that their ruler should be independent of the patriarch.[303]
At the order of Bonaparte the gentlemen Coutelle and Rosières were sent on a tour of inspection to collect material for the work which he planned. On this tour they came to the convent of Sinai in 1800, where they found six monks and twenty-two lay brothers in residence. The east wall of the convent, built by Justinian, had collapsed. By order of General Kléber at Cairo, the monk Hallil, with forty-two masons and a hundred and fifty camels, were dispatched from Cairo to do the necessary repair. The camels were furnished by the Towarah.[304]
In the meantime Nelson, scouring the seas in search of the French fleet, came upon it near the coast of Egypt, and attacked and scattered it at the Battle of the Nile (Oct., 1798). The Turks, aware that Bonaparte’s descent on Egypt was prompted by his desire for self-aggrandisement, felt called upon to declare war on the French in Egypt (1799). Hereupon Bonaparte, with nearly the whole of his army, marched along the desert road to Gaza and took Jaffa by assault, but a few months later he was in full retreat. A Turkish army soon afterwards reached Aboukir and joined forces with the British fleet, but Bonaparte inflicted a crushing defeat on them. He then left Egypt leaving his army in charge of General Kléber. But a further expedition was launched by the Turk, one detachment of troops was landed at Damietta, another under Yussuf Pasha approached by the El Arish road. They were defeated by the French, but General Kléber soon afterwards was assassinated (June, 1808). The English now effected a landing at Aboukir (March, 1801), and the French, after some struggles, evacuated the country.
In Egypt itself confusion reigned. The Mameluks were regaining their influence, when Mehemed Ali († 1849), the leader of an Albanian corps, secured the adherence of the sheykhs and claimed the Pashalik with the support of the French. An expedition made by the British to oppose him in 1807 miscarried. In 1811 he caused a massacre of the Mameluks and extended his influence by carrying war into Arabia and invading Syria. The interference of the English reduced, but did not break, his power. In 1841 he secured the hereditary sovereignty of Egypt.
The period of upheaval naturally reacted on the desert and rendered travelling unsafe. Seetzen visited the convent under Russian orders and found the road dangerous. There were twenty-five monks in the convent, who longed for the end of the Turkish government and the establishment of European influence in Cairo.[305] Seetzen was murdered in Syria on a later journey. Again the traveller Boutin was in Serabit in 1811, where he scrawled his name on a stone in the temple where Rüppell found it. Boutin also was murdered in Syria. Burckhardt travelled in the disguise of a Bedawyn and repeatedly visited Sinai, and the convent (1816, 1822). Both Rüppell and Burckhardt travelled in the interest of geography.
With the return of more settled conditions travellers became more numerous. Lord Prudhoe and Major Felix (1827) were among those who visited the ruins of Serabit. The account of their journey was lost, but Lord Prudhoe, after inspecting the temple ruins, was the first and, as far as I am aware, the only traveller to whom it occurred that this might be the sanctuary that was visited by the Israelites. The fact was recorded by Edward Robinson who came into Sinai in the interest of Biblical research in 1838 and 1852 (i. 79) and who was himself immensely impressed by the ruins at Serabit. Other travellers who made a prolonged stay were Laborde and Linant (1828), to whom we owe the first detailed and illustrated account of the convent church, its architecture, its great mosaics and its numerous side chapels; Tischendorf, who secured the famous MS. for Petrograd, as mentioned above; Bartlett, whose rapid visit in 1839 established interesting geological facts, more especially with regard to the lie of the land between Sinai and Syria; and Lepsius, who came into Sinai in 1845 for the express purpose of copying the hieroglyph inscriptions at Maghara and Serabit, which he incorporated in his Denkmäler (1860).
Under the rule of Mehemed Ali safety was restored to the hadj route across Sinai by the rebuilding of the forts at Adjrud (near Suez), Nakhl and Akaba. The settlement of a garrison brought regularity of transport which reacted favourably on the Bedawyn who undertook it. Mehemed Ali, also, was favourably disposed towards the convent. His nephew, Abbas Pasha, who succeeded him in 1849, visited Sinai in 1853, and formed the plan of building himself a summer residence on Mount Horeb. A road was therefore planned leading up from Tur on the coast, which crossed the desert and then led through the relatively luxurious valley of Hebron, with its many streams and the tamarisk grove of Solaf. It was partly completed in 1854, when the Pasha was assassinated. His successor Said Pasha (1854-63), was in friendly relations with Ferdinand Lesseps, whom he zealously supported in the scheme for constructing a canal through the Isthmus of Suez. The enterprise was financed by French and Turkish subscriptions, and was at the outset worked by means of forced labour, later with the help of modern engineering appliances. The canal was completed under Ishmael Pasha (1863-79) in 1869, and the British Government became a large shareholder. Ishmael Pasha was an Oriental despot who depleted the treasury and robbed the people, but who modernised Egypt by building schools, laying down railways, and setting up telegraph communications. In return for a large annual tribute he was raised to the rank of Khedive, or viceroy, of Egypt by the Sultan in 1867. But the financial difficulties, in which he became involved, were such that France and England brought pressure to bear on him and finally deposed him. He was succeeded by his son Tewfik Pasha (1879-92).