Bedouins of Sinai in Egypt

With the COP27 in Egypt, plenty of the world’s political leaders gather in Sharm El-Sheik to discuss the faith of the world. Due to increasing heat and climate change, especially African countries and those already deserted will suffer the most. However, only a stone’s throw the tribes of the Bedouins managed to adapt impressively to the deserted land and even adopted a tribe from Romania. 

Pictures: Mohamed El-Desouki (if not mentioned otherwise). Text: Thorsten Veblen

A camel on Abbas Palace Mountain

The barren environment of the Sinai Peninsula requires all the survival skills of the people who have to make a living in this world. At the same time, the 80 to 300,000 Bedouins remained largely faithful to their nomadic traditions until today, when people migrated from the Arabian Peninsula between the 14th and 18th centuries. 

St. Catherine‘s Monastery

But there they encountered the Byzantine Monastery of St. Catherine, founded around 330 AD and still one of the oldest continuously operating Christian monasteries in the world. Besides a library, it also houses a bush that many pilgrims identify as the burning bush that supposedly called Moses to liberate the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. (FC: dibrova, 2022)

A blossoming almond tree in March, at a camp near St. Catherine's Monastery.

Health appears to have been one of the first points of contact between the two religions. The hospice in St. Catherine's can be traced back to the year 600 AD. From the 1970s onward, this mission of providing healthcare to the monks, pilgrims, and Bedouin in the region intensified, and it was the only such facility in the entire southern Sinai.

The Lands of the Bedouin

The Jabeliya tribe, whose origins can be traced back to Eastern Europe, likely Romania, was particularly influential when the Roman Emperor Justinian recruited stonemasons from there to expand the monastery into a fortress and a basilica. Over the centuries, they adopted Islam and semi-nomadic traditions – their wage labor for the monastery did not allow for a fully nomadic lifestyle, which ultimately distinguished them from the other fully nomadic Bedouin tribes in the region. The Jabeliya developed two types of dwellings: mud huts and the beyt al-shaar, woven from goat hair, renowned for its water-repellent properties and strength. While the Egyptian state left the Bedouin to their own devices, tourism boomed during the Israeli occupation of the Sinai, massively expanding job opportunities for the Jabeliya. (Source: strifeblog.org, 2019)

Bedouins show the way

Tourism remains an important source of income for the Bedouin. They guide Egyptian and international tourists through the rugged mountains of the Sinai Peninsula with their camels. However, this type of work makes Bedouin communities extremely dependent on irregular jobs. This was especially true after the Israeli occupation, when the Egyptian government accused them of collaboration for developing new income opportunities under Israeli rule. Even today, tourism is a tough business. Hiking off the beaten track involves numerous bureaucratic hurdles. Even Egyptians must obtain permission from the police, as the terrain is rugged and sparsely populated, and no one will come in an emergency. The trails are not clearly marked and change depending on the weather. But the Bedouin know the way thanks to their centuries-old knowledge of the environment.

Baking bread in the desert

Due to the arid environment, only the Bedouin living in coastal areas like Sharm El-Sheikh are accustomed to eating fish. Most others eat goats, chickens, and eggs, but one of their most traditional staple foods is flatbread with olive oil and cheese, often seasoned with za'atar, a herb related to thyme. On long expeditions in the mountains, however, they bake their bread in the desert. They take flour, salt, or sugar, if available, with them and mix it with water to make dough. This mixture is then baked in an open fire of charcoal directly over the desert sand.

Hussien Garden, Wadi Boleaa

Fruits and dried fruits provide the sugar. Here in Wadi Bolee, about a two-day walk from St. Catherine, a Bedouin presents his harvest of winter apples.

Wadi Gibal 

The wadis are mountain valleys that fill with water very quickly during rain. The water is compressed between the mountain slopes and can form raging rivers. Once the storm has passed, however, the desert begins to bloom with grasses and shrubs. Here, evolution has created species that are found only in St. Catherine.

Saharan Wheatear

From large mammals such as the Arabian leopard (last seen in 1996), the Nubian ibex (400 counted in South Sinai) and striped hyenas to small mammals and birds, such as the white-crowned wheatear pictured above, and butterflies, the wildlife of Sinai has much to offer.

Here the desert fox

Or Abu al Husain, as the Bedouin call the fox in their native language.

Winter on Mount Sinai

While summers in the desert are harsh, winters in the Sinai Mountains demand no less adaptability from both humans and animals. Here, hikers explore the mountains with beds transported on camels.

A Bedouin gazes into Wadi Gharba.

Despite the authority of the Egyptian government, the Bedouin tribes still live according to their own legal system, El'Orfi. Among some tribes, it is also called Besha, a system of jurisprudence quite unlike anything found in the Quran. Decisions on important issues are made by consensus at tribal meetings. Only respected men, whose authority stems from wealth and personal talent, called sheikhs, speak on behalf of their respective groups, for example, regarding the allocation of resources or land.

Read more: discoversinai.net