Mount SinaiAmid the high mountains of Egypt's southern Sinai Peninsula stands Jebel Musa, "Mount Moses," revered by most Christians and Muslims as Mount Sinai. (Jewish tradition holds that Mount Sinai should remain terra incognita, unlocated, and does not associate it with this mountain.) In this fascinating study, Joseph Hobbs draws on geography and archaeology, Biblical and Quranic accounts, and the experiences of people ranging from Christian monks to Bedouin shepherds to casual tourists to explore why this mountain came to be revered as a sacred place and how that very perception now threatens its fragile ecology and its sense of holy solitude. After discussing the physical characteristics of Jebel Musa and the debate that selected it as the most probable Mount Sinai, Hobbs fully describes all Christian and Muslim sacred sites around the mountain. He views Mount Sinai from the perspectives of the centuries-long inhabitants of the region--the monks of the Monastery of St. Katherine and the Jabaliya Bedouins--and of tourists and pilgrims, from medieval Europeans to modern travelers dispirited by Western industrialization. Hobbs concludes his account with the recent international debate over whether to build a cable car on Mount Sinai and with an unflinching description of the negative impact of tourism on the delicate desert environment. His book raises important, troubling questions for everyone concerned about the fate of the earth's wild and sacred places. |
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... leopard he raised from infancy.54 This is a local counterpart of the many monk - leopard / lion interaction themes in the traditions of the Monasteries of St. Anthony and St. Paul in Egypt's Eastern Desert.55 There is abundant evidence ...
... leopards near Jebel Musa . Ja- baliya elders recall that in 1925 tribesmen killed one of a pair in Wadi Baghaabigh , just west of the circular dike . Saalih ' Awaad remembers hav- ing seen the skin of a freshly killed leopard in 1943 ...
... Leopard Rock ( Hajarit an - Nimr ) because , tradition says , it was long a resting place for leopards . " It is better that there are no leopards left , " ' Awaad Ibrahim told me , " they eat children . " The Bedouins still tell this ...
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
Five | 14 |
YOU WILL WORSHIP GOD ON THIS MOUNTAIN | 32 |
Copyright | |
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Managing Sacred Sites: Service Provision and Visitor Experience Myra Shackley,Myra L. Shackley No preview available - 2001 |