18 Facts About Sinai Peninsula

Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai, is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia.

Administratively, the vast majority of the area of the Sinai Peninsula is divided into two governorates: the South Sinai Governorate and the North Sinai Governorate.

Mount Sinai Peninsula is one of the most religiously significant places in the Abrahamic faiths.

In periods of foreign occupation, the Sinai Peninsula was, like the rest of Egypt, occupied and controlled by foreign empires, in more recent history the Ottoman Empire and the United Kingdom .

Today, Sinai Peninsula has become a tourist destination due to its natural setting, rich coral reefs, and biblical history.

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The modern Arabic is an adoption of the Biblical name; the 19th-century Arabic designation of Sinai Peninsula was Jebel el-Tur, and the name of the mountain is derived from the town of El Tor, whose name comes from the Arabic term for the mountain where the prophet Moses received the Tablets of the Law from God, thus this mountain is designated as "Jabal At-Tur ", and the town is the capital of the South Sinai Peninsula Governorate of Egypt.

Sinai Peninsula is triangular in shape, with its northern shore lying on the southern Mediterranean Sea, and its southwest and southeast shores on the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba of the Red Sea.

Inland Sinai Peninsula is arid, mountainous and sparsely populated, the largest settlements being Saint Catherine and Nekhel.

Sinai Peninsula is one of the coldest provinces in Egypt because of its high altitudes and mountainous topographies.

Fortress Tjaru in western Sinai Peninsula was a place of banishment for Egyptian criminals.

The Sinai Peninsula became part of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea.

Saint Catherine's Monastery on the foot of Mount Sinai Peninsula was constructed by order of the Emperor Justinian between 527 and 565.

Sinai Peninsula was governed as part of Egypt under the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt from 1260 until 1517, when the Ottoman Sultan, Selim the Grim, defeated the Egyptians at the Battles of Marj Dabiq and al-Raydaniyya, and incorporated Egypt into the Ottoman Empire.

In October 1956, in what is known in Egypt as the Tripartite Aggression, Israel Defense Forces troops, aided by the United Kingdom and France, invaded Sinai and occupied much of the peninsula within a few days.

In March 1957, Israel withdrew its forces from Sinai Peninsula, following strong pressure from the United States and the Soviet Union.

Since the early 2000s, Sinai Peninsula has been the site of several terror attacks against tourists, the majority of whom are Egyptian.

Population of Sinai Peninsula has largely consisted of desert-dwelling Bedouins with their colourful traditional costumes and significant culture.

The most popular tourist destination in Sinai Peninsula are Mount Sinai Peninsula and St Catherine's Monastery, which is considered to be the oldest working Christian monastery in the world, and the beach resorts of Sharm el-Sheikh, Dahab, Nuweiba and Taba.