Since the conquest of Egypt by the Turks in 1517 the country was administered by a pasha who was appointed by the Sultan at Constantinople. But the order of the Sultan to Ali Bey to join in a war against Russia in 1769 met with a direct refusal; the Egyptian saw his chance of proclaiming his independence. The revolt of the pasha of Egypt gave Bonaparte an ostensible reason for occupying Alexandria in 1796. Bonaparte’s imagination was fired by the thought of incorporating Egypt, the land of antiquity, in his world dominion. As part of this wider scheme he addressed a letter as _général en chef_ to the monks of Sinai in 1798, in which he took them under his protection, “to the end,” as he said, “that they should hand on to future races the tradition of his conquest, as he was filled with respect for Moses and the Jews, and because the monks were learned men living in the barbarity of the desert.” He further decreed that henceforth the Arab Bedawyn had no claim whatever on the monks, that they should be left to devote themselves unmolested to the claims of their religion, that they should be exempt from paying tribute or tax on imports or exports on the produce of their property in Schio (_i.e._ Chios) and Cyprus, that they should freely enjoy their rights in Syria and in Cairo, and that their ruler should be independent of the patriarch.[303] At the order of Bonaparte the gentlemen Coutelle and Rosières were sent on a tour of inspection to collect material for the work which he planned. On this tour they came to the convent of Sinai in 1800, where they found six monks and twenty-two lay brothers in residence. The east wall of the convent, built by Justinian, had collapsed. By order of General Kléber at Cairo, the monk Hallil, with forty-two masons and a hundred and fifty camels, were dispatched from Cairo to do the necessary repair. The camels were furnished by the Towarah.[304]