The convent reached the high-water mark of its prosperity during the fourteenth century. It drew a large income from its outlying possessions, it received gifts from the Sultan and from the pilgrims, it levied tribute on the goods that were unshipped at Tur. The basis of this arrangement is not directly stated, but the writer Piloti, about the year 1440, declared that the tax levied on the goods at Tur was 10 per cent. of their value,[269] and the Ritter von Harff, about the year 1497, held that the monks went shares with the Sultan in the profit made on the goods.[270] The Italians who visited the convent in 1384 found two hundred monks in residence, of whom one hundred and fifty served the convent chapels, and fifty the chapels on the Mount of the Law. There were besides a very large number of Moslim, who dwelt inside the convent precincts (Frescobaldo, p. 121). Food was cooked in the convent kitchen every day for four hundred persons, in huge cauldrons that came from Venice, and were conveyed across the desert on camel-back (Frescobaldo, p. 167). Largess was distributed daily to a thousand Arabs of the desert (_Ibid._, p. 121). In the year 1393 the monks and their dependents were two hundred and eighty in number, and two loaves were given daily to each pilgrim and to every Arab and mariner, of whom large crowds applied for food at the convent (Martone, p. 608). Some of the pilgrims supply information on the Saracens or Bedawyn, who all through showed an independent spirit. During the whole of the Mameluk dynasty (1250-1517), they were complete masters of Suez. Wilhelm de Baldensel, calling them Ridelbim, stated that they lived on their camels and goats, neither sowing nor reaping, and eating such bread as they procured in Syria and Egypt. They were brown, fleet-footed, and carried a shield and a spear, rode on camels, wrapped themselves in linen, and acknowledged the authority of the Sultan, who, however, gave them presents since they could easily expel him and occupy Syria and Egypt (p. 345). Antoninus in 1331 also remarked that the Arabs had no fear of the Sultan (p. 165), and Ludolf held that the Sultan lavished on them gifts and flattery, since they could easily subjugate his territory (p. 89).