(1.) “The Infidels call the mountain Muntagi.”—Hushan dagh, the correct name given by the Arabs, is here handed down to us as “Muntagi”, which differs so widely from the native appellation of Sinaï, that it may have been derived from the word Montagna, possibly the generic name by which the mount was known to pilgrims. In such a case, Schiltberger’s companions would have been Italians, who, on the supposition that they were mariners, supplied him with the details he gives on the Red Sea—its breadth, which is represented at double its actual extent—and the information that it had to be crossed to attain Sinai; although we know from De Lannoy that the journey from Egypt was performed “en costiant la mer”. The knight makes no mention of the wonderful supply of oil at the monastery of St. Catherine, nor of the other miracles performed by the saint; but he explains why the Infidels went to Sinai. At the foot of the mount was a church of St. Catherine, “à manière d’un chastel, forte et quarrée, où les trois lois de Jhésu-Crist, de Moyse et de Mahommet sont en trois églises représentées”.—BRUUN. (1A.) This somewhat confused description of St. Catherine’s mount and of Mount Sinaï, is to be accounted for by Schiltberger’s statement that he had not ascended the latter, and that he described the sites from hearsay only. He distinguishes, however, St. Catherine from what he calls “Muntagi, the mountain of the apparition”, upon which, as he was informed, God appeared to Moses in a burning bush; where flows the spring from the rock that Moses struck with his staff; the site where our Lord delivered to him the tables with the ten Commandments, etc., etc. “Muntagi” may therefore have been intended for Musa dagh, the Turkish, as Jabal Musa is the Arabic for Mountain of Moses, about which, in the words of Dean Stanley (_Sinai and Palestine_, 39) the traditions of Israel have lingered, certainly since the 6th century, and perhaps from a still earlier date. Mount Sinaï is called Tur Sina by Ibn Haukal, and Jabal Tur and Et Tur by Edrisi and Aboulfeda.—ED. CHAPTER XXXIX.