Thousands of pilgrims converge on the site of the Tree of the Holy Virgin each Christmas. Jill Kamil looks into its history and its ever-evolving folklore There are many trees in Egypt that are regarded as sacred because they offered shelter to the Holy Family during their sojourn here, but none is so highly regarded as the "Virgin's Tree" at Mataria. Some people believe that fruit from the tree is a blessing and should be kept in the house. Pilgrims frequently ask for miracles -- especially women hoping to conceive, who encircle the tree seven times. There are many poignant legends associated with it. "Someone once cut a branch from the tree and sap came out; it was red but not blood," Ashraf Ibrahim, a guard at the site, said. Storytelling lies at the very heart of the Christian movement, and is perhaps one of the most historically significant parts of the development of Christianity. "The function of storytelling, or oral tradition if you will, is the effort of a collective mind to keep a memory alive. It is a way to articulate an understanding of a happening, and recognise it as a living part of a tradition," says Ahmed Morsi, chairman of the Egyptian Society for Folk Traditions. That it is alive and thriving today there is no doubt. All the same, legend is tinged with pragmatism. "My generation knows that this is not the original tree beneath which the Holy Virgin rested during their stay in Egypt, but it is miraculous nevertheless," said 23-year-old Yessina Safwat, who said that after her grandmother, who was suffering from cancer, had gone to Mataria to pray the Holy Virgin had appeared to her in a vision and told her she would be cured because of her faith. "Her cancer disappeared," she added. News of such miracles spreads, gaining momentum with the telling, and re-telling, time and again. Muslims recommended the use of a brew made by boiling the leaves of the tree for nasal trouble, lumbago or pain in the knee. Christians prescribe it for snakebites, toothache and as an antidote for poison. Little wonder that the tree is devoid of foliage today. Mataria is a rambling, heavily populated suburb of Cairo approached by a modern fly-over. Two thousand years ago the area was fertile, a simple village situated not far the from the ancient city of On (Biblical Bethshemesh in Jer 43:13), where balsam trees grew abundantly. According to a mediaeval Arab writer, when Mary, Joseph and Jesus tried to escape from two brigands who were in pursuit the gnarled trunk of one aged tree miraculously opened its bark, and there within its dark interior the Holy Family escaped detection. In fact, the visit of the Holy Family to Mataria is attested much earlier. The Ethiopic Synaxarium, a fourth-century compilation of the lives of saints, martyrs and religious heroes, states that as the Holy Family drew near to Mataria Joseph handed the staff he usually carried in his hand to Jesus, who broke it into small pieces and planted them in the place where they stopped. Jesus then dug with his own hands a well from which sweet water flowed, and he watered the pieces of the staff, which took root and put out leaves "from which an exceedingly sweet perfume exuded". The trees grew and expanded and were called balsam, and Jesus said to His mother, "These balsam which I have planted shall abide here for ever, and from them shall be taken the oil for Christian baptism in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost." The Apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew substitutes the balsam with a date palm, a tradition that is also preserved in the Muslim holy book, the Qur'an. According to this version, the Blessed Virgin saw a date palm and wished to rest in its shade. When she was seated there, she observed fruit growing on it and told Joseph that she would like to have some. Then Jesus, seated on the lap of the Virgin, bade the palm to give his mother its fruit, and the palm bent as low as her feet so she could gather as much as she wanted. Jesus then bade the tree to rise again, and let them quench their thirst from the water concealed underneath its roots. And a spring burst forth so they all drank, and then the Holy Virgin washed the swaddling clothes of Jesus. The village of Mataria enjoyed great popularity among pilgrims from the Holy Land. It was regarded as a blessed place, like paradise, and leaves of the balsam were believed to have medicinal properties. Inevitably pilgrims began to deplete the foliage, even stripping the bark of the trees, which, it was rumoured, provided healing balm when boiled. Visitors were unanimous in their observation that the "garden of the balsam" was tilled only by Christians, even though wealthy Mamelukes enjoyed relaxing there -- the Emir Tashbak built a domed rest house nearby in which he sometimes entertained his master and friend Qait Bey. It is said that the 13th-century Sultan Al-Malik Al-Kamil once asked his father Al-Adil to transplant some of the trees in a neighbouring plot of land, but they did not flourish. Thereupon he received permission to irrigate the trees with the water of the well and they thrived and brought forth an abundant crop. A 13th-century pilgrim from Mount Zion records that he carried off "much wood" and "bathed in the well which waters the garden in which the Blessed Virgin bathed her son". Not surprisingly, the trees suffered and in the 15th century a charge -- six ducats for Muslim and Christian alike -- was placed on entry to the garden to restrict the numbers coming to relax and bathe in the pool. A Dominican monk, Felix Fabri, wrote that a fence was erected around the tree (which he referred to as a fig tree with a hollow trunk, in which there was a small chapel and two lamps) to restrict pilgrims to the sacred enclosure to four at any one time. And so the legend grew. Fabri, who himself believed that the balsam came to have healing qualities only after the visit of the Holy Family, nevertheless quoted Flavius Josephus, according to whom the Queen of Sheba presented a cutting from the "bushes of the balsam" to King Solomon, and that they blossomed in the Holy Land. According to another mediaeval tradition, some heathens cut the tree down but it joined itself together again the following night; a 15th- century visitor claimed that the marks of the cutting could be seen when he came on pilgrimage. The balsam shrubs have long since disappeared. A sycamore tree was planted in 1672, but, having reached an honourable old age, fell on 14 June 1906. The gnarled tree that grows in Mataria today is a shoot from this tree, around which a tradition continues to evolve. The studies being carried out by the Egyptian Society for Folk Traditions are not concerned with what is false or true so much as with what people believe. Imaginative adornment, belief in miracles, varied or contradictory versions of a legend -- all this matters little so long as it is based conviction. Nadi Sami, who has been working in the Holy Family's Coptic Catholic Church near the Virgin's Tree, says a statue once stood there that shed tears of blood whenever there was a gathering between different Christian sects, but that it was taken to Jerusalem. Among Egyptians a sense of the supernatural remains strong. Today's Copts who make pilgrimage to the Virgin's Tree at Mataria point to a new miracle -- a faint image of the Virgin and Child has appeared on the bark of the venerable tree.
