Sinai, the sacred mountain on which Moses received from Jehovah the tables of the Ten Commandments, is an individual peak in a vast rocky mass that almost fills the peninsula of Sinai. This peninsula is situated on the north-west of Arabia, and is embraced between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Akaba, northern arms of the Red Sea, and is shut in on the north by the desert. In this mountain-mass there are three separate mountains clearly distinguishable—Mount Serbal (6750 feet); Mount Catherine (8540 feet), lying south-east of Serbal; and Umm Shomier (some 8000 feet). Authorities, ancient theologians and historians and modern travellers and commentators, are greatly divided on the identification of the Sinai of Moses, some (Eusebius, Jerome, Lepsius, Ebers, &c.) upholding the claims of Serbal, others (Farrar, Tischendorf, Strauss, Stanley, Palmer, Sir Charles Warren, Hull, &c.) contending for Mount Catherine. Tradition has pointed to the latter ever since the time of Justinian, but the vexed question is yet far from being settled. The mountain known as Jebel Katherin has two well-marked peaks, a northern one called Horeb and a southern called Jebel Mnsa (Mountain of Moses). It is this last summit which tradition has selected as the sacred mountain of the Hebrew law-giving. At its foot, in a ravine, stands the fortress-like monastery of St Catherine (founded probably about 527 by the Emperor Justinian), and a short distance above it the chapel of St Elias (Elijah); whilst on its summit is the little pilgrim church. The entire peninsula, especially the bold jagged mountains, has a stern, treeless appearance, though trees (the manna-tamarisk, acacias, date-palms, gum-shrubs, &c.) grow in the ravines, beside the watercourses. Four or five thousand Bedouins range over the peninsula, and feed their sheep and goats in the pasturages of the higher valleys. There are several caves amongst the mountains; these, in the early days of Christianity, were the favourite abodes of numbers of hermits or anchorites. And there are a great many Nabataean (q.v.) inscriptions engraved on the rocks of Sinai, which date from the early centuries of the Christian era.
See amongst other books, Hull, Mount Seir, Sinai, and West Palestine (Lond. 1885); Palmer, Desert of the Exodus (Camb. 1871); Stanley, Sinai and Palestine (1856); Ordinance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai (3 vols. Southampton, 1869); and J. Euting, Sinaitische Inschriften (1892); also CODEX, TISCHENDORF.