by Giles Milton
He was equally popular with his own people. To pay for the luxury of his court, he encouraged trade with the west. To reduce people's hardship, he repealed taxes on slaves. He even repealed laws against Christians and Jews, so that by the time he died, Egypt was in the midst of a renaissance. The last crusader states had been driven out of the Holy Land. The last Mongol invasion had been crushed in Syria, and al-Nasir himself had watched the defeated Mongols march through Cairo, every prisoner in chains, and each one bearing a fellow Mongol's head dangling from his neck.
But he made one fatal mistake that was to plunge the country into disarray. He failed to nominate a successor, so that the next forty-one years saw no less than eight sons, two grandsons, and two great-grandsons seize the throne.
It was just at this time that Sir John set foot in Egypt.
When he learned of all the terrible upheavals at the imperial court, Sir John must have been terrified, especially since he found himself summoned to an audience with the newly enthroned Sultan—the son of al-Nasir—who was far from secure in his position.
First Sir John got himself acquainted with the intricate etiquette that surrounded the Mameluke court:
No stranger must come before the Sultan unless he be clad in cloth of gold or of Tartary or camlet—a fashion of clothing the Saracens follow. And whenever he sees the Sultan, at a window or elsewhere, he must kneel down and kiss the earth . . . and when any foreigners come to him, his men stand round with drawn swords in their hands, and their hands raised on high to strike him down if he say anything to displease the Sultan. No stranger shall come before him to ask anything without having
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his request granted, if it be reasonable and not contrary to their law ... for they say that no man should have audience without leaving happier than he came thither.
As Sir John stood in silence, trembling at the knees and surrounded by soldiers waiting to stab him to death, he bowed deeply to the Sultan. He had heard that the Sultan never refused a request. Well, he himself had a small favour to ask. Could he possibly, er, would it be agreeable to His All-Highness if he could have a permit to travel wherever he wanted? The Sultan agreed, the soldiers sheathed their daggers, and Sir John must have let out a long sigh of relief. But there was one caveat: the Sultan wanted a quiet word in Sir John's ear, in private, before he handed over the permit.
"He made everyone else leave his chamber, lords as well as others who were there, for he wanted to have a private talk between ourselves alone. And when they had all gone out, he asked me how Christians governed themselves in our countries. And I said, 'Lord, well enough —thanks be to God.' And he answered and said: 'Truly, no. It is not so . . .' "
What follows is the blistering and highly informed attack on the west, detailing everything that was wrong with the church, the state, and people's greed. It is a fascinating speech—erudite, accurate, and all the more remarkable considering that the Sultan at the time was just seven years old ...
This young Sultan had found himself thrust onto the throne as a result of political intrigue inside the imperial palace. His father's corpse had not even been cold when the struggle for succession began. At the forefront of the commotion were the imperial eunuchs, who at last saw their chance of power after decades of holding positions without real authority. In the troubled years that followed al-Nasir's death, they, in league with slave girls from the palace, assumed positions of unprecedented influence.
The seven-year-old Sultan al-Ashraf didn't last long. He was overthrown, his successors were murdered, and a whole new battle for succession began. Yet despite the political turmoil, court life was as luxurious as ever. Though the empire teetered on the brink of financial ruin and even the annual pilgrimage to Mecca had to be abandoned due
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to a lack of funds, there was an endless procession of singers and dancing girls streaming into the palace.
Such excess couldn't last forever, and life soon turned sour. Within a few years of Mandeville's visit, the Black Death hit Egypt, killing almost one million people. Cattle diseases accompanied the plague. The fish in the Nile were poisoned. The harvests failed, and whole cities were abandoned by a terrified populace.
Though few western knights travelled to Cairo during these troubled years, a steady stream did reach St. Catherine's, and Father Nicholas confirmed that many carved their names into the walls of the refectory and the doors of the church. "Some of the walls are completely covered in the names and coats of arms of medieval knights," he said. "If you're really lucky, your Sir John might have done the same."
First we went to examine the church doors, armed with a torch and magnifying glass. The sturdy outer doors dated from the eleventh century and were indeed covered from top to bottom with hundreds of scratches and carvings. But it was difficult to decipher these marks, for the wood was often splintered where a name had been carved, and centuries of desert sand blasting the doors had erased all but the deepest incisions. Easier to trace were the numerous crosses carved in different shapes and sizes:
A
+
-f
+
+
Many appeared to be Templar crosses and were carved, said Father Nicholas, by the Templar knights who came to St. Catherine's while searching for the Holy Grail.
When we had finished examining the doors, we wandered over to the refectory, where the western knights had slept. Although Father Nicholas had told me there were many coats of arms here, it was not until he switched on the light that I realized just how many knights
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must have stayed. The walls and barrel-vaulted ceiling v^ere decorated with hundreds of coats of arms, along with scores of names scrawled in English, French, German, and Dutch.
By the time of the Crusades, there were so many western pilgrims visiting St. Catherine's that there was even a community of Latin monks permanently established within the monastery precincts. They built a Catholic chapel inside the monastery walls, which was known as "St. Catherine of the Franks/' and painted their own icons, which are still housed here. And before they left on the long journey home, many carved their names and shields into the walls—medieval graffiti on a grand scale.
My biggest problem was that I didn't know exactly what Sir John's coat of arms looked hke. English travellers who had visited Sir John's supposed tomb in Liege were shown a coat of arms displaying a silver lion with a crescent on its breast. This, I knew, could not have belonged to Sir John, for no Mandeville ever had such a shield.
A second Mandeville shield was recorded in a fifteenth-century treatise on heraldry which had been compiled by a certain Sir Richard Strangways. This was very different—it was decorated with three vertical stripes of blue interlaced with three horizontal stripes of red, and underneath Strangw^ays had written: "Shield of Sir John Mandeville, Peregrinator." Unfortunately, he fails to say where he came by this coat of arms. Was it genuine? As yet, I didn't know.
To confuse matters further, I had with me a third coat of arms— that of Geoffrey de Mandeville—from whom all Mandevilles were ultimately descended. This was important evidence, for heraldry works according to specific rules and can, in theory, be traced backwards in time. If I found a coat of arms similar to Geoffrey's, there was a chance that I'd be able to link it to the Mandeville line and perhaps even prove that it belonged to Sir John.
But there was another problem: although I knew that Geoffrey's shield was coloured in gold and red, it was almost completely unadorned, save for two lines which met in the middle. In heraldic terms, it is known as a "simple quarterly shield; or and gules."
Father Nicholas and I left the shields till last
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and began with the names. Some were easy to read, while others had faded or been half-obscured with plaster. There was a "Compeys," a "Yawbhrey," and a "Sallmy," while one on the end wall looked like "Lebierorhimis/' although
its elaborate Gothic script was difficult to decipher. Many had only a few letters surviving—an "S" here, a "W" there—with the rest of the name obliterated by the passing of the centuries.
By the door we found dozens of inscriptions, and some had dates to go with them. There was a Jaubert, an Amoirillon (he must have been French), and a Borthen, whose name was dated 1458, more than a century after Sir John, while Jaubert had carved his in 1065, the year before the Battle of Hastings. If he hadn't come to St. Catherine's, he might have fought in the battle alongside William the Conqueror.
"What's this?" called Father Nicholas from the other end of the room. I rushed over with the torch and examined the inscription more closely. It certainly began with a "Man," but on closer inspection, tailed off into a completely different name.
When we had exhausted the names, we began on the shields. But this proved equally fruitless. There were scores of them, and many were beautifully preserved. Some were decorated with stars and some with lines, but all were far more decorative than Geoffrey's quarterly shield.
"Have you seen that one there?" said Father Nicholas, pointing towards the ceiling. "That looks a little like the one you described." I looked up. It was difficult to see clearly as it was so high up, and I asked if we could move the table nearer.
"Of course," he said, and we both clambered onto the table for a closer look. And as I examined it, I felt a thrill of excitement. The coat of arms was indeed a simple quarterly shield in gold and red, and it contained just one small addition: there was a diagonal stripe on the shield which curved from one corner to the other.
"Well?" asked Father Nicholas.
"Well . . .," I said. "I don't know. It certainly looks a little like the Mandeville crest, but then
agam
It was a curious carving. It was carefully
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made, and someone—at a much later date—had painted two elaborately carved helmets above it. I drew the shield and took a photograph of it. I wouldn't know the full story until I returned to London where, I hoped, the College of Arms would be able to give me an official identification.
One day, as I was busy transcribing crosses from the church door, the silence of the afternoon was rudely shattered by a shout from the courtyard.
"Coucou ... is there anyone at home?"
I went to see who it was and found a ginger-haired American soldier dressed in army fatigues and a blue UN beret. Beside him stood another man, clearly not American, dressed in similar gear.
"Ron," said the American, thrusting his hand into mine. "Am I pleased to meet you." His voice was overpowering in the absolute stillness of the monastery, and everything he said bounced off the walls that surrounded the courtyard.
"Do you live here?" he asked, and the echo repeated his words. I explained that I was staying for a while.
"It looks kinda old," he bawled. "When was it put up?"
At that moment Father Nicholas appeared. He welcomed the American and asked, very apologetically, if he could possibly keep his voice down. "Everyone sleeps at midday," he explained.
"Understood . . . ," said Ron. "Now, who are you? Some kinda monk?"
"Yes, I live here."
"Well, that's just great," said Ron as he turned to his colleague. "Say, Scotch, this is a real monk. Bet you've never met one of these before."
Scotch, who was Russian, began to speak in broken English. "Er, yes I have. You see, my country is Orthodox too. We have monks in Russia."
"Is that so?" said an increasingly amazed Ron. "You know something? I never knew that until this very moment. Now, Nick, tell me, how old is this building."
"Well, it dates from the fourth century . . .," said Father Nicholas.
"The fourth century A.D.?" exclaimed Ron. "No kidding? That's too bad."
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"But . . . /' continued Father Nicholas, "the present church is more recent."
Ron looked upset. "How old is this, then?" he asked, kicking the wall.
"This dates from about 542 A.D."
Ron smiled again. "You were trying to kid me, Nick, weren't you? Well, I still call five-forty-something kinda old."
"Now, let's get straight to the point," blared Ron. "The thing is, we've taken some of your water for our jeep. We took it from the well."
"That's Moses's well," said Father Nicholas.
"Moses . . . right, Moses . . . the guy who spoke to God. Well, do you want some money?"
"No," said Father Nicholas, "no. I hope your jeep enjoys the water. It's the sweetest in the whole of Sinai."
"She's a thirsty doll," said Ron. "By the way . . . ," he added, "tell your boss you've got one hell of a place here. One hell of a place. This is what I call real history." And with that he turned, and with a wave, he and his colleague left the monastery.
Mohammed, the monastery's cook, refused to speak to me at first. He was too busy, he said. He couldn't talk while he was working. Perhaps if I came to the kitchens later he would speak. But perhaps he would be too tired.
I returned at one o'clock, just as he had finished serving the meal. Big helpings of fish were being slopped into dishes, salad w^as being placed on the tables, and a few monks w^re hanging around in the doorway, hungry for their lunch.
"I'm sorry about Mohammed," said Father George. "He doesn't like to mix work with talk."
Father George was a Greek monk who spoke fluent Arabic, and he had agreed to translate some questions I wanted to ask Mohammed. In England, 1 had read a curious story about the Bedouin who worked for the monastery: a story that claimed they were the descendants of a Christian tribe from Europe. Although the hotel owner in Darhab had ridiculed such a suggestion, I wanted to hear if the Bedouin themselves knew anything about their ancient ancestors.
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While we waited for Mohammed to finish the salads, I chatted with Father George. He spoke excellent English, and I asked him where he learned it.
"Oh, I used to live in London," he said.
"Where?"
"West London, near Queensway."
I explained that 1 lived near Queensway and he laughed. "Do you know the pastry shop on Moscow Road?" he asked.
I nodded, and he told me he used to go there every morning for his breakfast. "Best pastries in London," he added. We were interrupted by a sudden rap on the kitchen hatch. "Quick," said Father George. "Mohammed is ready. Maybe you'll get to know more about the Bedouin."
According to local legends, the Bedouin of Sinai are among the wildest people on earth. Even at the height of Sultan al-Nasir's power, they had proved troublesome, frequently ravaging the countryside, slaughtering farmers, and massacring the Sultan's troops. Sir John wrote of them:
They are people of evil condition, full of all kinds of wickedness and malice. Houses have they none, only tents, which they make of skins of camels and other wild beasts that they eat, and they drink water when they can get it . . . nevertheless they are strong men, good fighters; and there is a great multitude of them. They do nothing else but hunt wild beasts ... and they do not care for their lives, and therefore they do not fear the Sultan nor any other prince of the world.
In order to reach St. Catherine's, medieval pilgrims had to travel for fourteen days through land controlled by these tribes—the same tribes who had tried to stop the building of the monastery some eight centuries previously. And this is where the peculiar story of the Christian Bedouin originates.
According to Byzantine chroniclers, the Emperor Justinian ordered one hundred soldiers and their families to be sent to Sinai from Walachia m Romania in order to protect the monastery from the constant harassment. These soldiers were Christian, and when they arrived, they settled close to the monastery walls.
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So far, so good. But once they were established in Sinai, the records grow hazy. Their descendants were definitely still serving the monastery when Islam spread through North Africa, but by the ninth centur
y, they had begun to resemble the lawless desert Bedouin, as a historian of the time recalls: "After a long time they had many children and multiplied, [but when] Mohammedanism spread, which happened under Caliph Malek, they fell upon one another . . . some were killed and some fled and others embraced Mohammedanism, whose descendants at the monastery to this day profess."
But not all the members of the tribe converted to Islam, for travellers still record meeting Christian Bedouin hundreds of years after this, and one writer claims that the last Christian didn't die until the eighteenth century. And then there is silence. There are no more records of Justinian's soldiers.
The cook Mohammed was dark-skinned and of indeterminate age. He could have been as young as forty or as old as sixty. His skin was wrinkled, but it was aged by the sun and not by his years. He reluctantly shook my hand, adjusted his headscarf, and asked why I wanted to speak to him. I told him—with Father George interpreting—the story of the Byzantine emperor, and asked if any of the Bedouin were Christian.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "Not at all."
"Had they ever been Christian?" He threw up his hands. Not to his knowledge. His father and grandfather were Bedouin. They were Bedouin of the desert, and they were all Mushms. But here Mohammed inadvertently let slip a very interesting fact. I was asking about St. Catherine, and whether he believed in the legends, when he suddenly interrupted me. "Of course we believe in them," he said. "We venerate St. Catherine. We celebrate her feast day. And we venerate Elias and Moses too."
This was fascinating. Two months earlier the Mufti of Cyprus had told me that there were no saints in Islam, yet here was a Bedouin, a member of a Mushm tribe, venerating a Christian saint. Could it be possible that Mohammed and his tribe were indeed the descendants of that small band of soldiers sent to guard the monastery in the sixth century on the orders of the Emperor Justinian? If so, Mohammed was
