The Land of Sinai

Abstract

Before describing the land, I want first to say a word or two about the people of Sinai. Not all are Bedouins. Here and there, in the palm groves of Qatia and Feiran, are the descendants of earlier invaders who have lost face by taking to cultivation. In the region round the turquoise mines are miners who are descended, perhaps, from those who worked at Sarabit and Maghara in ancient Egyptian days. At Nakhl, there used to be a colony of Moors, left as garrison by the old-time Turkish Government. Another garrison, of Bosnians, was left at El-'Arish and the present townsfolk are largely their offspring. The Gebeliya, or gardeners of the Greek Monastery of St. Catharine, are also Bosnian in origin, presented as slaves to the monks by the Emperor Justinian. have still an European east of countenance but, in dress and habits, ape the Arabs around them. So far I have only mentioned the working classes, despised as such by the true Bedouins who never work. leave that to their wives. Of them, I wrote once: They are all conservative to a degree, incurably greedy, incurably generous, incurably romantic and incurably lazy. Their contempt for the accumulation of worldly possessions and their chivalry are the best points, their love of litigation the most tiresome. l Of these, the Arabs of northern Sinai are mostly offshoots from the Beni 'Atiya of Arabia. More recent immigrants are the Haweitat from Trans-Jordan. These are still coming in. In southern Sinai, the original inhabitants are said to have been the Beni Suleiman, the Hamada and the Beni Wasil. Not long after the Arab conquest of Egypt, the Sawalha and the 'Aleiqat were living in Sharqiya, the eastern province of Egypt, the Goshen of the Bible, from which they regularly raided south Sinai to carry off the dates of Feiran or to graze their camels wherever there had been rain. One year, these two tribes migrated en masse into the Peninsula where they succeeded in conquering the Beni Suleiman and the rest, some of whom fled while others were absorbed into the conquerors. The parallel with the children of Israel and the way they dealt with the Amalekites is striking. But, instead of waiting forty years and gathering strength to become a nation, the two tribes quarrelled and victory was inclining towards the Sawalha when there arrived from Arabia seven tents of the Muzeina, the remnant of a noble tribe, flying from the results of a blood feud. These asked permission of the Sawalha to share their grazing. But this the Sawalha refused, unless the Muzeina paid them tribute?a submission which is held degrading among the Bedouin. So the proud Muzeina went off to join the 'Aleiqat and both tribes together overcame the Sawalha in a battle fought in the Watia Pass on the main road to the Monastery. A sensible compromise then took place by which the three tribes divided the peninsula among them. To the map reader and the air passenger Sinai seems no more than a bridge