St Catherine's Monastery Deir Sant Katerin

The fortress-like exterior of the monastery still preserves, in spite of later alterations, essentially the same appearance as when it was originally constructed.HistoryThe present monastery occupies the site of an earlier fortified monastery founded by Justinian about A.D. 530 as a place of safety for the hermits and anchorites of southern Sinai. Justinian granted the monks 100 Roman and 100 Egyptian slaves, with their wives and children, whose work contributed to the prosperity of the monastery and whose descendants, the Muslim Gebeliye or Tuarah, still live in the neighboring mountains. The monastery was able to maintain itself in spite of the advance of Islam thanks to its great hospitality to Muslim as well as Christian travelers and to its care for Muslim shrines. Most of the monks came, and still come, from Crete and Cyprus. Their numbers, which about the year 1000 were between 300 and 400, have now shrunk to about 50, of whom only 20 live in the monastery itself, the remainder in dependent houses. The rules of the Order are extremely strict. The monks are forbidden to eat meat. The order is headed by an Archbishop, who is normally resident in Cairo and is, therefore, usually represented by a Prior, the Dikaios. The monastery's affairs are managed by an administrator, the Oikonomos.The MonasteryRoughly square in plan, the monastery measures 93yd/85m by 83yd/76m and is surrounded by walls north 5.5ft/1.65m thick and 39-49ft/12-15m high. The walls on the south and west sides date from the original foundation; those on the east and north sides were destroyed by an earthquake in 1312 and later rebuilt.