If A Sheikh Or Head Man Calls At The Convent, He
Receives, In Addition To His Bread, Some Coffee Beans, Sugar, Soap,
Sometimes A Handkerchief, A Little Medicine, &C. &C.
Under such circumstances it may easily be conceived that disputes
continually happen.
If a Sheikh from the protecting tribes comes to the
convent to demand coffee, sugar, or clothing, and is not well satisfied
with what he receives, he immediately becomes the enemy of the monks,
lays waste some of their gardens, and must at last be gained over by a
present. The independent state of the Bedouins of Sinai had long
prevented the monks from endeavouring to obtain protection from the
government of Egypt, whose power in the peninsula being trifling, they
would only by complaining have exasperated the Bedouins against them;
their differences therefore had hitherto been accommodated by the
mediation of other Sheikhs. It was not till 1816 that they solicited the
protection of Mohammed Ali; this will secure them for the present
against their neighbours; but it will, probably, as I told the monks, be
detrimental to them in the end. Ten or twenty dollars were sufficient to
pacify the fiercest Bedouin, but a Turkish governor will demand a
thousand for any effectual protection.
The Arabs, when discontented, have sometimes seized a monk in the
mountains and given him a severe beating, or have thrown stones or fired
their musquets into the convent from the neighbouring heights; about
twenty years ago a monk was killed by
[p.556] them.
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