Bedouin of Sinai

Who holds it

Name

Not pinned. The Banu Bayadh, a branch of Judham, are recorded in northern Sinai in the tenth century and at Qatya in the thirteenth (Wikipedia); the mountain Bedouin of the south serve and supply St Catherine's

Title

Tribal amirs and shaykhs

Since

Not pinned

Confidence

low

Overlord

Nominally the sultan of Egypt; in the south the monks of St Catherine's deal with them directly

How things stand that morning

Quiet that morning; the northern road will carry al-Afdal's and al-Adil's armies in January 1200.

Customs

Tribal law; protection (khafara) of travellers and pilgrims for a fee; the monastery's gifts and bread to the mountain clans.

Assemblies

Clan shaykhs; no paramount amir attested for 1200.

Overlord claims

The state wants the road from al-Arish to Gaza kept open and the pilgrims and the monastery left in peace.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Very thin for 1200: tribal names come from earlier and later writers.

On the map: Pastures and mountains drawn as a dashed outline; al-Arish, al-Tur and St Catherine's are Egyptian points inside it.

Primary sources for The Bedouin

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• History of the Observant Traveller (A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia), Ibn al-Mujawir (Jamal al-Din Yusuf ibn Ya'qub) (about 1226 to 1232). A merchant-traveller's description of western and southern Arabia a generation after 1200: Mecca and the Hijaz ports, the Red Sea crossing, Zabid and the Tihama, Aden with its customs and tariffs, the Hadramawt coast, Dhofar and Oman, Socotra, and the opposite African shore at Zeila and the Dahlak islands. Read online