George Manginis, Pillar of Fire or Dust? Jabal Mūsā in the Nineteenth Century', Proceedings of the Multidisciplinary Conference on the Sinai Desert; "The years between the 1830s and the 1870s, which mark the highpoint of the Sinai controversy, witnessed the rise of European countries into worldwide economic and political prominence... The 1856 Treaty of Paris ensured better access for Europeans into Ottoman territory and casual visitors collected intelligence alongside antiquities... The peninsula was strategically situated on the sea route from the Mediterranean to India through the Suez Canal which opened to traffic in 1869, a few months after the conclusion of the Ordnance Survey"
