AprèS Un SéJour De Dix Jours, Il
Continuait Son Voyage Pour La Ville De Suez.”
M. Seetzen has fallen into a mistake in calling the convent by the name
of saint Catherine.
It is dedicated to the transfiguration, or as the
Greeks call it, the metamorphosis, and not to saint Catherine, whose
relics only are preserved here. M. Seetzen visited the convent a second
time, previous to his going to Arabia. He came then from Tor, and
stopped only one day.
The visit of two English travellers, Messrs. Galley Knight and
Fazakerly, is also recorded in a few lines dated February 13, 1811. The
same room contained likewise several modern Arabic inscriptions, one of
which says: “To this holy place came one who does not deserve that his
name should be mentioned, so
[p.554] manifold are his sins. He came here with his family. May whoever
reads this, beseech the Almighty to forgive him. June 28, 1796.”
The only habitual visitors of the convent are the Bedouins. They have
established the custom that whoever amongst them, whether man, woman, or
child, comes here, is to receive bread for breakfast and supper, which
is lowered down to them from the window, as no Bedouins, except the
servants of the house, are ever admitted within the walls. Fortunately
for the monks, there are no good pasturing places in their immediate
neighbourhood; the Arab encampments are therefore always at some
distance, and visitors are thus not so frequent as might be supposed;
yet scarcely a day passes without their having to furnish bread to
thirty or forty persons. In the last century the Bedouins enjoyed still
greater privileges, and had a right to call for a dish of cooked meat at
breakfast, and for another at supper; the monks could not have given a
stronger proof of their address than by obtaining the abandonment of
this right from men, in whose power they are so completely placed. The
convent of Sinai at Cairo is subject to similar claims; all the Bedouins
of the peninsula who repair to that city on their private business
receive their daily meal, from the monks, who, not having the same
excuses as their brethren of Mount Sinai, are obliged to supply a dish
of cooked meat. The convent has its Ghafeirs, or protectors, twenty-four
in number, among the tribes inhabiting the desert between Syria and the
Red sea; but the more remote of them are entitled only to some annual
presents in clothes and money, while the Towara Ghafeirs are continually
hovering round the walls, to extort as much as they can. Of the Towara
Arabs the tribes of Szowaleha and Aleygat only are considered as
protectors; the Mezeine, who came in later times to the peninsula, have
no claims; and of the Szowaleha tribe, the
[p.555] branches Oulad Said and Owareme are exclusively the protectors,
while the Koreysh and Rahamy are not only excluded from the right of
protection but also from the transport of passengers and loads.
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