El Tor

El Tor, also romanized Al-Tur and At-Tur and known as Tur Sinai and formerly Raithu, is a city and the capital of the South Sinai Governorate of Egypt. Its name comes from the Arabic term for the mountain where the prophet Moses is believed to have received the Tablets of the Law, Jabal Al Tor. The city appears to have been founded in the 13th century near the site of the ancient Raythou; the El Tor strain of cholera was discovered there in 1905, when it was a quarantine camp for Muslim pilgrims returning from the Hajj. Known for its springs, it is an important tourist destination in South Sinai along with Sharm El Sheikh and Saint Catherine. The Raithu monastery was commissioned by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the sixth century, a Portuguese armada attacked the city in 1541, and Israel captured it in the Six-Day War of 1967 and returned it to Egypt after the 1979 peace treaty. The official estimate for July 2023 is 40,532 residents.