Saint Catherine (, ; also spelled Saint Katrine) is a town located in the South Sinai Governorate of Egypt, situated at the foot of Mount Sinai. The city is the site of Saint Catherine's Monastery.
The city is above sea level and is from Nuweiba. In 1994, its population was 4,603 people. In 2002, the Saint Catherine area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
History During Egypt’s Pharaonic Era (3200-323 BCE), although Saint Catherine was not yet established as a city, the area was part of the Egyptian Empire in the province of "Deshret Reithu."
In the 16th century BCE, the Egyptian pharaohs built the way of Shur across Sinai to Beersheba and on to Jerusalem. The region provided the Egyptian Empire with turquoise, gold, and copper. Well-preserved ruins of mines and temples are found not far from Saint Catherine at Serabit el-Khadim and Wadi Mukattab, the Valley of Inscription. They include temples from the 12th Dynasty, dedicated to Hathor, goddess of love, music, and beauty, and from the New Kingdom dedicated to Sopdu, the god of the Eastern Desert. Saint Catherine’s City was established between 527 and 565 CE, when Saint Catherine's Monastery was constructed at the foot of Mount Sinai by the order of Emperor Justinian.
Modern township and tourist attractions Today, Saint Catherine City is organized as a township. It has a high school, a hospital, a police and fire brigade, hotels, a post office, a telephone center, and a bank.
The township's oldest settlement was in Wadi El Sybaiya, east of the city's monastery, where descendants of Roman soldiers, the Jebeliya, were accommodated. It started growing into a town after the tarmac road was completed in the 1980s and the tourist trade began. Many of the nomadic Bedouins moved to small settlements around the city's monastery, which collectively make up Saint Catherine Town. The districts of El Milga, Shamiya, Raha, and Nabi Harun form the core of the town, at the end of the tarmac road where the valleys of Wadi El Arbain (Wadi El Lega), Wadi Quez, Wadi Raha, Wadi Shrayj and Wadi El Dier connect to the main valley, Wadi Sheikh. There are settlements in Wadi Sheikh that date before the town and other smaller settlements in the valleys. Saint Catherine is the capital of the Municipality of Saint Katherine, which includes these outlying areas.
Geography
Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies the climate as desert (BWh). Saint Catherine has the coldest nights of any city in Egypt, and its humidity is very low. The highest mountain ranges in Egypt surround the town, with many smaller valleys leading from the basin to the mountains in all directions. The township is at an elevation of . The high altitude of the town and the high mountain ranges which surround it provide a pleasant climate with mild summer nights and relatively cool winter days. The nights can get very cold on rare occasions, making it sometimes necessary to heat buildings and public places. Saint Catherine is considered to be one of the coldest towns in Egypt along with Nekhel and other locales in mountainous Sinai. Saint Catherine receives infrequent snowfalls during December, January, and February, however, snow has also occurred in late autumn and early spring.
Saint Catherine Town lies at the foot of the Sinai high mountain region, the "Roof of Egypt", where Egypt's highest mountains are found.
The town also puts pressure on the water resources, as groundwater in the valley is from the mountains. As of September 28, 2011, water from the Nile is being transported to Saint Catherine via a pipeline, built with the help of the European Union.
Nature The city of Saint Catherine and other close towns fall within the region of Saint Katherine Protectorate, which was established in 1988.
Its unique high-altitude ecosystem with many endemic and rare species, include the world's smallest butterfly (the Sinai baton blue butterfly), flocks of Nubian ibex, and hundreds of different plants of medicinal value. The region has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Area. Some of the species are endangered.
Sinai agamas, rock hyraxes, and foxes can be seen. Harmless to people, foxes regularly visit the town at night to steal and scavenge. Rock hyraxes are often seen frequenting gardens including a wide range having migrated from Europe. Feral donkeys in the mountains have migrated to the region and lower-lying areas (reportedly as far as El Tur) in the winter and return to graze during the summer. Many of them belong to families and are branded. There is a move to reduce their numbers by the Saint Katherine City Council.
One of the principal goals of the Protectorate is to preserve the biodiversity of the fragile ecosystem, with an emphasis on the Nubian ibex and the wild medicinal and aromatic plants. The St. Katherine Protectorate is a major job provider in the area, although the number of local Bedouins employed has fallen sharply since the initial European Union support ended.
Snow is the best source of water as it melts slowly, thus releasing water at a steady pace, replenishing the underwater catchment areas. Water from rain flows quickly in the barren mountains, which may cause flash floods.
The highest mountain in Egypt is Mount Catherine, with many other peaks in the area over .
Religion Saint Catherine is in a region holy to the world's three major Abrahamic religions (monotheistic religions), Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. It is the place where Moses is believed to have received the Ten Commandments, and a number of events recorded in the Bible took place in the area. Christian monks settled here in the 3rd century, and the Orthodox monastic tradition continues to the present day. The Prophet Muhammad took the monastery under his protection in his Letter to the Monks. There are two ancient churches, and the Monastery of Saint Catherine and the Rock of Moses.
Culture and population
The traditional people of the area, the Jebeliya Bedouin, were brought in the 6th century CE. Originally Christians, they converted to Islam and intermarried with other nomadic tribes. Some segments of the tribe arrived relatively recently from the Arabian Peninsula. Their culture is similar to other Bedouin groups, but they have preserved some unique features. Contrary to other Bedouin tribes, the Jebeliya have always practiced agriculture and are expert gardeners, which is evident in the wadis around Saint Catherine. They continue to live in a symbiotic relationship with the monastery and its monks, and today many Bedouins work with the monastery on its compound or in its gardens.
The city also hosts a number of Greeks and Russians, who come to work at the monastery.
The Jebeliya are skilled gardeners and craftsmen who have been building gardens, houses, storerooms, water dams and other structures in the mountains for centuries.
The techniques used are similar to Byzantine methods, partly because of the natural environment, and partly because of the interaction between the Bedouin and the monastery. They received seeds from the monks to start crops. They grow vegetables and fruit in stone-walled gardens called Bustan or karm and mastered grafting, where a branch of a higher-yielding lowland variety is planted (grafted) on a more resistant but low-yielding mountain variety.
Many species of plants and crops grow here because of the moderate climate. Some fruits include the apple, pear, apricot, peach, fig, pistachio, date and grape. Walnut is rare but grown at a few locations. Mulberry grows wild in some of the wadis, and they belong to the whole tribe. Wild figs grow in many places. Olives are essential to the natives and are found in many locations. Vegetables are not grown as much as in the past because of the lack of water. Flowers and medicinal herbs are common.
Water is often found at higher elevations, either in natural springs or in wells made at dykes called Jidda. The Bedouins built small dams and closed off canyons to make reservoirs. In either case, water is channeled to small rock pools called birka, from where it was available for irrigation. Water runs, sometimes for miles, in narrow conduits made of flat rocks which are still visible, but today gardens rely on plastic pipes (Khartoum). These gardens are a unique feature of the high mountain area, along with other stone and rock structures.
Bedouin houses are small, simple stone structures with cane roofing, either incorporated into the garden wall or standing alone a bit further up from the wadi floor, away from the devastating flash floods that sweep through after occasional heavy rains. Houses are often built next to huge boulders where the boulder serves as an exterior wall. Natural cracks and holes are used as shelves and candle holders inside the house.
Smaller rock shelters and store rooms are constructed under boulders and in walled-up caves and are found throughout the mountainous area. Some of them are easily visible landmarks, such as in Abu Seila or Farsh Rummana, but most are hard to distinguish from the landscape.
Ancient leopard traps can be seen in many places, either under boulders such as in Wadi Talaa, or standing alone as on the top of Abu Geefa. A goat was placed inside as bait, and when the trap was tripped by a leopard, a large rock fell to block the entrance. Leopards are now extinct in Sinai; the last was spotted in the 1980s.
In many places, big boulders can be seen with oval-shaped marks engraved on the surface. They are marriage proposal rocks, where a lover drew a line around his foot on the rock face next to his lover's footprint. If the two marks are encircled, their wish was granted and they married.
Wishing rocks are boulders, usually a short distance from the main paths, with a flat top. According to local legend, if one throws a pebble and it stays on the top, one's wish will come true.
Planned growth
According to the governmental plans, the population of the city is expected to increase from 4,603 to 17,378 in 2017. 3,031 (75.1%) of Saint Catherine's population is formed of Jebeliya Bedouins, while the rest are Egyptians, Greeks, Russians and western Europeans. Assuming a natural growth rate of 3% by 2017, the Bedouin population would become a minority in Saint Catherine, dropping to 36% of the total population if the Egyptian Ministry of Planning targets are achieved.
Demographic breakdown The population of Saint Catherine by settlement, according to a survey carried out by St Katherine Protectorate in 1998:
Abo Seilah: 247 Lower Esbaeia: 165 Esbaeia Safha: 22 Upper Esbaeia: 71 Arbeien: 47 El Oskof El Hamami: 93 Mekhlafa: 59 El Kharrazin: 43 Er Raha: 166 Rahba: 52 Er Ramthi: 25 Ez Zaytonah: 34 Es Sedoud: 12 Sheikh Awwad & Gharba: 159 Sebaia Safha: 78 Sebaia Soweria: 17 Sebaia Elbasra: 61 Noumana: 49 Solaf: 157 Sahab: 83 Sheikh Mohsen: 22 Beiar Et Tor: 178 Lower Nasab: 30 Upper Nasab: 84
Places of interest In addition to Saint Catherine's Monastery and Mount Sinai, of prime historical interest is the palace of Abbas I, the Wali and self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan between 1849 and 1854. The palace was built on a mountain at the time called Jebel Tinya, but later named after him and today called Jebel Abbas Basha. The palace was never finished, as he died before it was completed, but the massive walls made of granite blocks and granite-sand bricks stand firmly. The open quarry on the top of Jebel Somra, just opposite Jebel Abbas Basha, is still visible with many huge blocks. Other blocks were cut from Wadi Zawatin, at the beginning of the ascent to the palace. The bricks were made on site while the mortar, made of lime and water, was burnt in kilns in the surrounding valleys. To be able to carry out the work, first, a road accessible to camels and donkeys was built in order to transport the supplies. The road, starting at Abu Jeefa and going through Wadi Tubuq and Wadi Zawatin, is still used today.