When Selim, The Othman Emperor, Conquered
Egypt, He Took A Great Fancy To A Young Greek Priest, Who Falling Ill,
At the time that Selim was returning to Constantinople, was sent by him
to this convent to recover his health;
The young man died, upon which
the Emperor, enraged at what he considered to be the work of the
priests, gave orders to the governor of Egypt to destroy all the
Christian establishments in the peninsula; of which there were several
at that period. The priests of the great convent of Mount Sinai being
informed of the preparations making in Egypt to carry these orders into
execution, began immediately to build a mosque within their walls,
hoping that for its sake their house would be spared; it is said that
their project was successful and that ever since the mosque has been
kept in repair.
This tradition, however, is contradicted by some old Arabic records kept
by the prior, in which I read a circumstantial account how, in the year
of the Hedjra 783, some straggling Turkish Hadjis, who had been cut off
from the caravan, were brought by the Bedouins to the convent; and being
found to be well educated, and originally from upper Egypt, were
retained here, and a salary settled on them and their descendants, on
condition of their becoming the servants of the mosque. The conquest of
Egypt by Selim did not take place till A.H. 895. The mosque in the
convent of Sinai appears therefore to have existed long before the time
[p.544] of Selim. The descendants of these Hadjis, now poor Bedouins,
are called Retheny [Arabic], they still continue to be the servants of
the mosque, which they clean on Thursday evenings, and light the lamps;
one of them is called the Imam. The mosque is sometimes visited by
Moslim pilgrims, but it is only upon the occasion of the presence of
some Mussulman of consequence that the call to prayers is made from the
Minaret.
In the convent are two deep and copious wells of spring water; one of
them is called the well of Moses, because it is said that he first drank
of its water. Another was the work, as the monks say, of an English
Lord, it bears the date 1760. There is also a reservoir for the
reception of rain water.
None of the churches or chapels have steeples. There is a bell, which, I
believe, is rung only on Sundays. The usual mode of calling the monks to
morning prayers is by striking with a stick upon a long piece of
granite, suspended from ropes, which produces a sound heard all over the
convent; close by it hangs a piece of dry wood, which emits a different
sound, and summons to vespers. A small tower is shewn which was built
forty or fifty years ago for the residence of a Greek patriarch of
Constantinople, who was exiled to this place by the orders of the
Sultan, and who remained here till he died.
According to the credited tradition, the origin of the convent of Mount
Sinai dates from the fourth century. Helena, the mother of Constantine,
is said to have erected here a small church, in commemoration of the
place where the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and in the
garden of the convent a small tower is still shewn, the foundations of
which are said to have been laid by her. The church of Helena drawing
many visitors and monks to these mountains, several small convents were
erected in different
[p.545] parts of the peninsula, in the course of the next century, but
the ill treatment which the monks and hermits suffered from the Bedouins
induced them at last to present a petition to the Emperor Justinian,
entreating him to build a fortified convent capable of affording them
protection against their oppressors. He granted the request, and sent
workmen from Constantinople and Egypt, with orders to erect a large
convent upon the top of the mountain of Moses; those however to whom the
work was entrusted, observing the entire want of water in that spot,
built it on the present site. They attempted in vain to cut away the
mountain on each side of the building, with a view to prevent the Arabs
from taking post there and throwing stones at the monks within. The
building being completed, Justinian sent from Constantinople some
slaves, natives of the shores of the Black sea, to officiate as servants
in the convent, who established themselves with their families in the
neighbouring valleys. The first prior was Doulas, whose name is still
recorded upon a stone built into the wall of one of the buildings in the
interior of the convent. The above history is taken from a document in
Arabic, preserved by the monks. An Arabic inscription over the gate, in
modern characters, says that Justinian built the convent in the
thirtieth year of his reign, as a memorial of himself and his wife
Theodora. It is curious to find a passage of the Koran introduced into
this inscription; it was probably done by a Moslem sculptor, without the
knowledge of the monks. A few years after the completion of the convent,
one of the monks is said to have been informed in his sleep, that the
corpse of St. Catherine, who suffered martyrdom at Alexandria, had been
transported by angels to the summit of the highest peak of the
surrounding mountains. The monks ascended the mountain in
[p.546] procession, found the bones, and deposited them in their church,
which thus acquired an additional claim to the veneration of the Greeks.
Monastic establishments seem soon after to have considerably increased
throughout the peninsula. Small convents, chapels, and hermitages, the
remains of many of which are still visible, were built in various parts
of it. The prior told me that Justinian gave the whole peninsula in
property to the convent, and that at the time of the Mohammedan
conquest, six or seven thousand monks and hermits were dispersed over
the mountains, the establishments of the peninsula of Sinai thus
resembling those which still exist on the peninsula of Mount Athos.
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