Traveling Through Sinai From the Fourth to the Twenty-first Century

Sinai has long attracted travelers to its ancient caravan routes and haunting landscapes. From early Christian pilgrims to medieval merchants and nineteenth-century Europeans on the Grand Tour, visitors to Sinai have frequently left written accounts of their experiences in this historic peninsula. In this wide-ranging anthology, Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel-Hakim have collected dozens of accounts and observations from travelers who have written about Sinai, its people, its sights, and its historical and biblical landmarks. Starting with Egeria, a fourth-century Christian who relates her visit to Mt. Sinai and the Burning Bush, Traveling Through Sinai offers a diverse collection of voices over the centuries. Among them are the German friar Felix Fabri, who visited in 1492, and nineteenth-century antiquarian William Flinders Petrie, giving his impressions of the Bedouins of the peninsula. French novelist Alexandre Dumas writes of meeting two monks in the desert carrying a letter signed by Napoleon, while others describe crossing the canal at Suez, the ancient inscriptions of Wadi Mukattab, and the harrowing experiences of desert travel.