On Jabal Musa is the famed Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Catherine, founded c.A.D. 250; in 1844 the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament, was found there. (The manuscripts were purchased from the USSR by the British Museum in 1933, and by 1950 the 3,000 volumes were microfilmed.) In ancient times Sinai was ruled by the Arabs of Petra; however, for most of its history it was under the Egyptian kings, who worked its copper mines. Sinai was the scene of fighting during the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973. Israel occupied, then withdrew from, the peninsula in 1956. In 1967, Israel again drove the Egyptians from Sinai, establishing a defense line along the Suez Canal and capturing strategic outposts overlooking the Gulf of Aqaba. In the 1973 war, the Egyptian army crossed the Suez Canal and recaptured territory in the Sinai; still, Israel retained control over a large part of it.

Under the Camp David Accords (1978) and Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty (1979), Israel returned virtually the whole of Sinai back to Egypt; the process was completed in 1982. The remaining border area of Taba, at the tip of the peninsula, was negotiated and relinquished by Israel in the early 1990s. Overall, the Sinai is sparsely populated, although some Bedouins and tourists dwell in the seaboard towns on the Gulf of Aqaba and along the Red Sea.