Customer Reviews

From the Holy Mountain

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4 star:		(3)
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A very well written book, with beautifully weaved historical, geographical and politicals elements related to a long list of monasteries from Athos, Greece to Southestearn Turkey/Syria all the way to Egypt. Highly readable! The relatively obscure history of Byzantium is unfolded in a very interested viewpoint.
I was mostly impressed by the sharp analysis of the influences of neighboring religions/civilization on the evolution of christianity in the geographic area of Turkey/Syria/Iraq/Persia.

This book is depressing, consicence-alerting, yet great fun at the same time. Travelling from Mount Athos, via Istanbul to Turkish Kurdistan, then to Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and finally Egypt, Dalrymple surveys the condition of Near Eastern Christianity on the verge of the third Christian millennium. For the most part, this is a depressing story of a community in terminal decline, facing pressure from extremists and economic chaos. While there is no doubt that his sympathies lie with the Christians, he can be deeply critical of them where he feels it is deserved - for example there is no doubt that the holds the Maronites of Lebanon almost entirely responsible for the Lebanese Civil War.

As a travelogue, it generally makes good reading, with an excellent balance between keeping the pace moving and covering people and places in enough depth. His ability to conjure images of places is remarkable - really feel like I'm on the plains of the Tür Abdin, or winding down the mountain road from Damascus to Beirut with him. Sometimes, it has to be said, he lays on the 'gee-whiz I'm an Englishman abroad in scary countries with bombs and tanks and things' attitude a bit too much. While he occasionally has a factual lapse or three, he more than makes up for it in atmosphere.

Perhaps the most interesting and amusing sections deal with the various wacky heretical Christian sects which inhabited the shatterzone between the Greek and Persian worlds before the arrival of Islam.

This book annoyed a lot of extreme American fundamentalists (of both the Christian and the Jewish varieties) for being rather critical of Israel's decades-long campaign of cultural and economic pressure on the Palestinian Christians. What better recommendation to buy the book to you need!

One minor gripe, I never do trust fellow Celts who think of themselves as merely North- or West-Britons. Dalrymple regards English football hooligans rampaging through Istanbul as his 'fellow countrymen' stuck me as bizarre. Are you really a Scot, William?

And I have one big question if Dalrymple ever reads this... he seems not to speak a word of Turkish or Kurdish yet he seems to have these interesting conversations with Kurdish builders about the Armenians... Are all these guys fluent in English or something? 'Coz that's a part of the world I know very well, and in my experience, they don't English any more than your average Dunfermline brickie speaks Kurdish. If you can really do that without the lingo, William, could you give me a masterclass in sign language?

It also seems to fair to point out that the situation for Christians in some parts of the Middle East, notably Turkey and Egypt, has improved considerably in the 10 years since this book was researched.

Did you know that the Middle East is home to Christians---a lot of them? Before reading this book, it never clicked for me that the ancient traditions of Christianity are alive in communities throughout the land where they began. Author William Dalrymple recreates the journey of John Moschos, a saint from the 500's, beginning in Greece and traveling through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt. He discovers how much the Middle East has changed since the days of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and how much it has stayed the same. He discusses art, politics, history, and theology, discovering connections between eastern and western Christian traditions and the continuity of the Christian faith no matter what the culture. This is an eye-opening look at not only the politics of the Middle East but also the existence of Middle Eastern, ancient Christian churches.

I could not put this book down once i had started it. I was absolutely fascinated by Dalrymple's descriptions of modern day early Christian sites. The alternative veiwpoint he offers about the archeological situation of these sites in the Middle East and the way of living of the local Christian population absorbed me from the very beginning. I found the story so interesting that I visited Lebanon early this year. It was exactly as I expected and I look forward to returning. Hopefully I shall return to the region soon. I have been interested in early Christian sites in Egypt and the Coptic Church there but this book has opened up a whole new vista for me. I would encourage those who can, to visit the area and support tourism. I was the only foreign visitor to Baalbek (Lebanon)on the day I visitedand it was the same at other world famous sites in Lebanon, and that is a very sad situation. The people are friendly, courteous and open-hearted,the food delicious, the tourist sites awe-inspiring, and the driving?well, best you take a taxi and close your eyes! William Dalrymple's book sparked a love-affair in me with these places and those who live there.

For those of us who grow up as Christians in the west, we often manage to gloss over some very fundamental questions about the origins of our faith. Why? Well, for me, it's because my knowledge on the middle east has essentially been limited to 30 second cable news clips. The journey Dalrymple takes us on in this book has completely changed the way I look at my faith. In this book, I was given, for the first time, the opportunity to see real people and real places that trace their roots to the origins of my faith. And how different it is than the church I have been brought up in! This book is a must read for any Christian who seriously wants to explore and challenge what it is they believe.

I found this to be one of William Dalrymple's most philosophical works. As always, Dalrymple's work is peppered with vignettes of lovable characters. The interplay between the past and the present impels one to ask a lot of questions. I must admit some sections of the book did make me a little depressed , especially reading about the pogroms in Turkey, bitterness in Lebanon and hatred in Jerusalem. Perhaps the desert fathers were all, in some way,looking for a way to find a solution to such madness. Any reader who seeks to understand roots of conflicts should undertake this pilgrimage.

When you start reading "From the Holy Mountain", you tend to be enthralled by the author's style, and by the detailed description of the places he visited, following in the foot-steps of John Moschos...And this is what happened to me, until I reached the Chapter describing his trip to Lebanon : there, I had to change my mind, as it occurred to me that the author was a phony!
Let me explain myself : the road that Dalrymple claims to have taken to reach Bsharre is an old road, which has nothing to do with the modern road, and he must have read about it in an old book! The modern road does not turn towards the mountains immediately after Jebeil(Byblos), but goes past Jebeil, along the coast through Batroun , Chekka, Enfe and then towards Amioun...Now, Amioun happens to be the "capital" of Greek Orthodox Christianity in Lebanon, where there are many interesting places to visit, some of them going back to the Byzantine era. But he ignores Amioun completely, as if he did not hear about it...
On the other hand, he claims to have reached the "line of snow" a little before reaching Bsharre : but, according to him, this journey took place on the 4th of October!! However, it never snows in Lebanon before mid-November, and even then, it is not at so low an altitude(1300 meters), but only on the high mountains, above 2500 meters. This is another proof that he never made this trip, except in his imagination. And if this is not proof enough that he his making the whole thing up, he claims to have continued his trip , over the mountains, to Baalbek in the Beqaa valley. Well, the road that leads to the Bekaa valley from Bsharre is usually closed all winter, and definitely whenever there is any snow at the altitude of Bsharre. There is no question about it: his trip never took place as stated.
I will spare the reader all the other details that add up to prove that this author is not trustworthy, at least as far as his trip to Lebanon is concerned.And don't believe anything he says about the Lebanese civil war : he is repeating, like a parrot, what Robert Fisk told him ( and R.Fisk is known for his anti-Maronite bias).

This is an account of William Dalrymple's tour in 1994 of the Middle East, from Mount Athos, through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, Israel and Egypt. His object was to follow in the footsteps of John Moschos, a 7th century monk who had recorded such a journey, and Dalrymple's quest was to search out what is left of Christianity today in a region that had for many centuries been the centre and heartland of Eastern Christendom.

It is a beautifully written mixture of vivid touristic descriptions and encounters on the one hand and, on the other, a historical account of Christianity under the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and under modern Turkish, Syrian, Israeli and Egyptian rule. He visits places that were once great centres of civilization - Antioch (now Antakya), Edessa (now Urfa) - but are now at best provincial centres and at worst crumbling ruins. They were once rich in ethnic and religious diversity; and Dalrymple gives a sympathetic account, often laced with gentle humour, of even the weirdest of the beliefs, superstitions and practices of early Christianity and indeed of some contemporary monks.

The 20th century in particular has seen a huge cultural impoverishment under the fanaticism of modern nationalism. As recently as 1955 there was a pogrom against Greek Christians in Istanbul which Dalrymple describes as `the worst race riot in Europe since the Kristallnacht' with seventy three orthodox churches gutted. How widely is that known or remembered today? At the end of the Graeco-Turkish war in the early 1920s there were still 400,000 Greeks in the city; by the time of the 1955 riot they had been reduced to 75,000 and today there are perhaps 5,000 left, and even they are imperilled by the rise of Islamic fundamentalism since the 1990s. The fate of the Armenian Christians is better known, as is the touchiness on this subject of the Turks, who are even now obliterating churches and monuments which bear witness to the fact that once there was a flourishing Armenian civilization in Eastern Turkey. At the end of the 19th century there were 200,000 members of the Syriac Orthodox Church - in the 1990s only about 900 were left. Christian villages were then being burnt to the ground on the pretext that their inhabitants collaborated with the Kurdish PKK (who in turn accuse the Christians of collaborating with the Turks).

In Eastern Turkey Dalrymple was always shadowed by the police, and his visits to the remaining monasteries greatly disturbed the monks there. The atmosphere was completely different when he crossed into Syria. Although that country was also crawling with secret police, there was no discrimination there against Christians, and thousands of them had fled there: Armenians from Turkey, Nestorians from Iraq, Christian refugees from Palestine. Hafiz Asad, the then dictator of Syria, came from a minority Muslim sect, the Alawites, and his power base was made up of a coalition of minority creeds in a largely Sunni population. The Christians felt secure for the moment, but dreaded what might happen on Asad's death. (He would of course be succeeded in 2000 by his son Bashar.) And meanwhile Dalrymple can witness Muslims worshipping together with Christians at the shrine of the Virgin of Saidnaya.

On to the Lebanon - just four years after the end of the 16 year-long civil war whose ruins were still all around. The Maronite Christians, whose French-created dominance was one of the causes of the war, had lost out, and some 300,000, over a quarter of the Christian community, had fled. But Maronite clans had been as likely to murder each other as they were to murder Druzes or Muslims. And when they turned on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Christian Palestinians suffered along with the rest.

Next Dalrymple stays at Mar Saba, an austere monastery in the Judaean Hills, whose orthodox monks believe in demons and are convinced that the Pope is a Freemason and that on the Day of Judgment all non-Orthodox, Roman Catholics included, will suffer the torments of Hellfire in the valley below the monastery.

Crossing into Israel proper, Dalrymple records another shrinking Christian population, though the figures he gives on page 317 don't remotely add up. Moreover, he says elsewhere (p.363) that the number of Christian Palestinians in Israel proper has actually quadrupled since 1949. But in the Old City of Jerusalem the Christian population has shrunk from 52% in 1922 to 2.5%. The Israelis make life as difficult for the Christian Arabs as they do for the Muslims; and many Muslims are also hostile to them (though Dalrymple does not mention that), so the Christian emigration rate is double that of the Muslims. This chapter is full of the iniquities of the Occupation.

Then finally to Egypt, beginning with a wonderful evocation of Alexandria past and present - the past vibrant with many cultures; the present, since Nasser expropriated or drove out the Greeks, the Jews, the French and the English, a largely monocultural shell. From there Dalrymple went south, via the fount of the monastic movement at St Antony, to Asyut province, the main centre of the Coptic Christians, and an area where Islamicist fanatics carry out murderous attacks on Copts, tourists and the State. The State fights the Islamicists, but thinks that the best way of combatting fanaticism is to allow the country to be Islamicized. Dalrymple needs a massive escort of troops and police to visit the monasteries there. It makes for a graphic end to an account of how everywhere in the Middle East - Syria excepted - the ever-diminishing number of Christians are under enormous pressure.

The one fault of this very readable book is the frequent absence of dates: ranging, as he does, over many centuries, Dalrymple simply assumes that his readers know (or are prepared to look up) in which of them the Emperor Justinian ruled, when the two Simon Stylites sat on their pillars, when the Lebanese Civil War began and ended etc. The book badly needs a chronological appendix.

This is the perfect book to take along on a trip to the Middle East. Saves hours of research on the history of western religions.Dalrymple's stuborness in getting places even when it puts others at risk can sometimes be exasperating and he has fairly firm opinions on muslims, christians and jews but his writing is witty and fluid and it is a pleasure to share in the excitement of his travels and benefit from his extensive knowledge of religions,art and history.

From the Holy Mountain deserves to be put along side such other classics of the genre as the Road to Oxiana and a Time of Gifts. It is erudite, witty, scholarly & compassionate in its treatment of the subject of Christian Minorities in the Middle East. This book means so much to me as I travelled in the very same areas covered at approximately the same time the research for the book was undertaken. I can confirm the total accuracy of the authors assessments. The book both confirmed and provided illumination as to what I had seen with my own eyes and heard from the communities depicted. This remarkably accomplished work deserves to be read by everyone with an interest in the Middle East. As far as I am concerned, my only quibble is I wish it was twice as long, so as to prolong the enjoyment of what is still the most authoritative and important book about the subject. Do yourself a huge favour and buy this book.