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figure 1
figure 2
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Though the monastery’s fame was not affected,
its relationship with the larger Christian community was forever
altered by the political events of the seventh century. In 614 A.D.,
Persian armies besieged Jerusalem; Egypt followed in 618–19 A.D.. After
a brief respite, Jerusalem surrendered to Muslim Arabs armies in
638 A.D.; the conquest of Egypt happened piecemeal between 640 and
642 A.D. The shrinking of the Byzantine Empire meant that many Christian
communities, including Sinai, were geographically isolated from the
Byzantine church and its patriarch in Constantinople. While other
Christian communities, such as those in Egypt, Ethiopia, Armenia,
and Syria, formed local churches, Sinai remained loyal to the Byzantine
church, with particularly close ties to the church in Jerusalem.
As important, it also received recognition in the Muslim world as
a holy site associated with Moses, who was revealed as a prophet
to Mohammed by the Archangel Michael (Hobbs, 33). Local tradition
states that the Prophet Mohammed issued a deed of protection exempting
the monks from military service and taxation while advising Muslims
to assist the monks, threatening those who interfered with the monastery.
These privileges were recorded by Mohammed’s
cousin and son-in-law ‘Ali.
A Fatimid document, dated to the twelfth century, records the monastery’s
privileges (Hobbs, 158–61; Drandaki, 26). According to Felix Fabri,
a fifteenth-century pilgrim to Sinai, Muslim pilgrims visited Sinai
on the way back from Mecca (Fabri, 10:559). There has, in fact,
been a mosque inside the monastery since at least the eleventh century
(Drandaki, 28).
Despite the increased difficulty of traveling
to Sinai, which now lay outside the borders of the Christian world,
pilgrims continued to make their way there. For example, in the
mid-seventh century, Anastasius of Sinai reported that a group
of eight hundred Armenian pilgrims climbed Mount Sinai to pray
in the church on its summit (Stone, 35). Or take the late seventh-century
papyri discovered in Nessana, a frequent stopping point for pilgrims to
Sinai. These documents record the efforts made by pilgrims to secure guides
to the region (Dahari, 164; Kraemer, papyrus 72: 205–06; papyrus 73:
207–08). The
monastery continued to attract pilgrims through the Middle Ages
and still receives pilgrims today. Sinai’s
monastic community never lost its renown, as evidenced by a twelfth-century
guide to the Latin crusader kingdom. The author writes that the
monks and hermits from Mount Sinai “are so famous that from the borders
of Ethiopia up to the furthest bounds of Persia they are spoken
of with respect in every oriental tongue which they have among
themselves” (Wilkinson, Jerusalem,
186). The wonder of Sinai is that throughout its history it has
always retained its importance in spite of, or perhaps due to,
its location so far outside of the center.
In fact,
there is a whole other chapter (or two or three) to be recounted. As
I am sure you have noticed, I have said nothing today about the monastery’s
dedication to Saint Catherine. The tradition linking Saint Catherine of Alexandria,
an early Christian martyr, to the monastery did not develop until the eleventh
century. Saint Catherine’s tomb and her relics forged strong ties
between the monks at Sinai and the Western Christians during the crusades.
After the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the fifteenth century, the legend
of Saint Catherine and Mount Sinai drew Orthodox pilgrims scattered across
Europe, who looked to the monastery as a living link to the Byzantine Empire.
But, that is a story for another day. |
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