CAIRO DEPENDENCY

Besides the Dependencies that operate in the South Sinai region there is also another one that functions in Cairo. The presence of the said dependency may be considered as being sufficiently old. During the Ottoman Sovereignty, this was considered by the holy monastery as indispensable for serving the lodging needs either of the fathers or of His Eminence the Archbishop whenever they were obliged to go there in order to settle the monastery’s matters with the local authorities.

With the passage of time, this need came to be so prevalent that the Archbishop of Sinai would pass more of his time in these quarters than at the holy monastery. Until 1653, the position of the dependency was in the Juvania area of Old Cairo, while now it is situated in Midan el-Daher. At the centre of the dependency’s area there rises a neo-classical complex with an internal atrium in which there is incorporated, among others, Saint Catherine’s chapel and a noteworthy library. During the Second World War, the dependency in question was used for the meetings of the then exiled Greek government. In the unit of the Sinaitic Texts and Catalogues there is included a complete list with the names and the addresses of the responsible parties of all the Sinai dependencies.