Egypt's only territory in Asia, the Sinai Peninsula is a triangle of about 60,000 km² (23,000 sq mi), roughly 6% of the country, wedged between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea's two northern arms, the Gulf of Suez to the west and the Gulf of Aqaba to the east. It is joined to Africa by the 125 km Isthmus of Suez, cut by the Suez Canal, and to Asia by an eastern isthmus about 200 km wide, where it borders Israel and the Gaza Strip. About 600,000 people live there; the North and South Sinai governorates, which cover most of it, counted 597,000 in January 2013. The land changes in three bands: sand dunes and salt lagoons along the Mediterranean, the limestone Tih plateau in the centre, and a core of ancient granite mountains in the south that rises to Mount Catherine, 2,629 m (8,625 ft), the highest point in Egypt. The clearest way to see those bands is to travel them, entering from the canal, following the coasts round, and finishing in the mountains at the centre of the south.
Crossing the Suez Canal at El-Qantara and Shallufa
Every road into Sinai from mainland Egypt has to cross the canal, and with it the boundary between Africa and Asia. In the north, the Suez Canal Bridge at El-Qantara, whose name means "the bridge" in Egyptian Arabic, has carried traffic since October 2001. It is 3.9 km long, with a 400 m cable-stayed main span hung from two 154 m pylons shaped like Pharaonic obelisks, and it leaves 70 m of clearance for ships. Japan paid 60% of the cost.
Further south, the Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel runs beneath the canal at Shallufa, linking the town of Suez with the peninsula. Completed in 1981 and repaired with Japanese aid from 1992 after it developed leaks, it is 1.63 km long and reaches 51 m below ground. It is named after an Egyptian engineer and general killed in the October War of 1973, a reminder that this edge of Sinai was a front line: Israel occupied the peninsula in 1967, Egypt crossed the canal on 6 October 1973, and after the 1979 peace treaty Israel withdrew in 1982.
The Sabkhas and Sandbar of Lake Bardawil
Heading east from the canal, the Mediterranean coast is a low strip of sand, dunes and salt flats. Between Port Said and Rafah lie three main sabkhas, or salt flats, in a row: Sabkhat El Malaha, Sabkhat Bardawil and Sabkhat El Sheikh Zawayed. The main open water on this coast is Lake Bardawil, a lagoon about 30 km long and up to 14 km wide but only about 3 m deep. A narrow sandbar separates it from the sea, which spills in through gaps and keeps the water very salty, and shifting sand is slowly turning parts of it into a playa.
The lagoon is a protected Ramsar wetland with a large population of little terns, and roughly 30% of the species recorded on Sinai's Mediterranean coast occur there. It holds six habitat types, from open water and wet salt marsh to stabilised and mobile dunes, and six threatened plant species, among them Iris mariae. Birds are hunted here as well as protected, as the decoys below show.
Arish and the Mouth of Wadi el-Arish
The coast road reaches Arish, the capital of North Sinai and the largest city on the peninsula, with an estimated 204,391 people in 2023. It lies 344 km north-east of Cairo and 45 km west of the border with Gaza, with the Azzaraniq Protectorate on its eastern edge. In antiquity it was Rhinocorura, a Greek name meaning roughly "cut-off nose", which ancient writers tied to a legend of mutilated, exiled criminals; in Ptolemaic times it counted as the last city of Egypt. The ancient Via Maris trade route ran along this coast from al-Qantara through Pelusium, Arish and Rafah into Canaan.
Arish owes its site to the peninsula's longest valley. Wadi el-Arish is an ephemeral watercourse about 250 km long that flows only after rain and reaches the Mediterranean here, so the city sits at its mouth.
Up Onto the Tih Plateau at Nekhel
Following the wadi inland leads onto the broad limestone plateau that fills the middle of Sinai. Its southern rim stands about 1,000 m high, and the surface slopes gently down towards the northern coastal plain. It is arid, open country with few people. Its main town, Nekhel, stands near the geographic centre of the peninsula at 420.6 m, on the skirts of the Tih hills, and administers a district of ten smaller settlements stretching to the Israeli border. Its central position made it a historic administrative seat, and it also served as a station on the Hajj route that carried pilgrims from Egypt across Sinai towards Mecca.
Height also makes Sinai one of the coldest parts of Egypt, and winter temperatures in some of its towns can fall as low as −16 °C. Beyond the plateau's southern escarpment, the limestone gives way to the far older granite and volcanic rocks of the south.
The Gulf of Suez Shore: Turquoise Mines and El Tor
The western coast of southern Sinai runs along the Gulf of Suez, a rift basin that opened about 26 million years ago and is now inactive. The gulf stretches 314 km from the Strait of Gubal to the city of Suez, is 19 to 32 km wide and is less than 100 m deep, and the mid-line of the water marks the boundary between Africa and Asia. The Gemsa oil and gas field lies near its entrance.
Inland from the town of Abu Zenima, the hills hold some of the earliest mines in recorded history. From the First Dynasty, around 3100 BC, Egyptians quarried turquoise at Wadi Maghareh and Serabit el-Khadim, which led them to call Sinai the "Ladders of Turquoise". At Serabit el-Khadim, about 43 km east of Abu Zenima, Flinders Petrie excavated mining camps and a Temple of Hathor, the "mistress of turquoise", founded under Senusret I, who reigned from 1971 to 1926 BC.
Further south on the same coast is El Tor, the capital of South Sinai. Founded in the 13th century near the site of ancient Raithu, it served as a quarantine camp for pilgrims returning from the Hajj, and the El Tor strain of cholera was identified there in 1905. The town takes its name from the Arabic for the mountain on which Moses is believed to have received the Law.
Ras Muhammad, Where the Two Gulfs Meet
At the southern tip of the triangle, 12 km from Sharm El Sheikh, Ras Muhammad looks west over the Gulf of Suez and east over the Gulf of Aqaba. The Greeks knew it as Poseidion, after a shrine to Poseidon. Egypt made it a marine reserve in 1983, soon after the peninsula was returned, to stop dynamite fishing and keep resort sprawl at bay, and the national park now covers 480 km², of which 345 km² is sea. The headland sits at the junction of the African and Arabian plates and the Sinai subplate, and recent earthquakes have opened cracks in the ground, some 40 m long and holding pools more than 14 m deep. About 0.9 hectares of mangrove grow in a shallow channel at the very tip. The islands of Tiran and Sanafir were part of the park until Egypt ceded their sovereignty to Saudi Arabia.
Sharm El Sheikh, home to about 77,000 people in 2017, grew from a fishing town and military base into the main resort city and administrative hub of South Sinai, with an economy built largely on tourism.
North Along the Gulf of Aqaba to Taba
The eastern coast follows a very different sea. The Gulf of Aqaba is only 24 km across at its widest, but it is a deep rift trench reaching 1,850 m, and it runs about 160 km north from the Straits of Tiran to the point where Egypt, Israel and Jordan meet. Towns occupy the few flat strips between the mountains and the water.
Dahab, about 80 km north-east of Sharm El Sheikh, is one of them. Its name means "gold" in Arabic, and it is known for diving and windsurfing. Nuweiba, around 150 km north of Sharm, sits on a 40 km² flood plain between the mountains and the gulf; the Tarabin Bedouin traditionally lived to its north and the Muzeina to its south, and its port runs daily car ferries to Aqaba in Jordan. At the head of the gulf, Taba is one of Egypt's busiest border crossings. It was disputed twice: in the 1906 Taba Crisis between Britain and the Ottoman Empire, and again after 1982, when Israel kept the enclave until an international arbitration commission returned it to Egypt in 1989.
Wadi Feiran to Saint Catherine and Egypt's Highest Peak
The journey ends by climbing into the granite heart of the south. The usual approach from the west is Wadi Feiran, the largest and widest wadi in southern Sinai, which runs about 130 km from the mountains near Saint Catherine, around 2,500 m above sea level, down to the Gulf of Suez 29 km south-east of Abu Zenima. About 45 km above its mouth, the Feiran Oasis stretches for nearly 5 km along the valley floor. Above it rises Mount Serbal, 2,070 m, the fifth-highest mountain in Egypt, which some scholars have proposed as the true biblical Mount Sinai.
At the head of the valley, the town of Saint Catherine stands at 1,586 m. Beside it is Saint Catherine's Monastery, built by order of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I between 548 and 565 and the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery in the world. Its library holds the Codex Sinaiticus, and its walls also enclose a Fatimid mosque of 1106. The Saint Catherine area became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002.
Immediately south of the monastery is Mount Sinai, or Jabal Musa, 2,285 m, the traditional site where Moses received the Ten Commandments; its alkaline granites formed late in the evolution of the Arabian-Nubian Shield. It is surrounded by higher peaks, and the highest of all is neighbouring Mount Catherine, a block of Precambrian volcanic rock pushed up along the Wadi Sabia fault in the Neogene. A chapel built in 1905 and a weather station stand on its 2,629 m summit, the highest ground in Egypt.
Looking north from the high peaks, the route runs back across the plateau and the coastal plain to the canal, whose story is told in our history of the Suez Canal. The coral seas that ring the south are covered in our guide to the Red Sea, and the rest of the country is mapped in our guide to Egypt's geography.