Book Review: From The Holy Mountain

The peaks of Mount Athos

Photo by Horia Varlan.

In the Summer of 1994, British transport bard William Dalrymple set off upon the six month tour by what he calls the shadow of Byzantium.

He was following in the footsteps of the Sixth Century Byzantine monk, John Moschos, who had embarked upon the pilgrimage around the Levant in 578 AD, during the time when the Byzantine Empire was really most in decline.

Dalrymples tour begins during Mount Athos in Greece, as well as takes him by Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, Israel as well as finally to Egypt. Visiting some of the same monasteries, churches as well as shrines as Moschos, he uses this tour to give the vibrant, learned account of the different sects of Eastern Orthodox Christianity that flourished during Byzantine times, as well as observations upon the stream state of Christianity in the Near East.

Along the approach he is harassed by the Turkish army, witnesses presumably the oldest religious music in the world, as well as meets the total host of colorful characters. These include fight reporter Robert Fisk, the family of Christian Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the Maronite hermit who spends all day praying as well as fighting off temptation, as well as the priest who cant stop vehemence about Masonic conspiracies as well as claims the Pope is the demon ceremony per.



From the Holy Mountain is an incredibly ambitious book: the reduction of travelogue, history, theology, as well as contemporary socio-political commentary. The book is packaged full of information, as well as Dalrymple sweeps effortlessly back as well as onward by the ages.

He covers such topics as the Armenian genocide (and the Turkish governments counsel policy of erasing the Armenian archaeological record), the Stylites (Byzantine hermits who outlayed their lives upon tip of the high pillar, as well as were believed! to acti on as intermediaries with heaven), as well as the often surprising links as well as overlap between very old Orthodox Christianity as well as Islam.

Yet despite the earnest of the subject matter, as well as the infrequently erudite tone, the book is not heavy going in the slightest.

Dalrymple has the apt approach with words, the keen ear for dialogue, as well as the knack for regulating really appropriate imagery.

Honest, engaging as well as inquisitive, most of his essay is additionally colored with the sly, self-deprecating humor.

From the Holy Mountain is both entertaining as well as informative, though some-more than anything else it is the moving, often intolerable imagining upon the decrease of Christianity in what was once the heartland.

Thoroughly recommended!

Community Connection

Looking for some-more recommended transport books? Check out Matadors Focus upon Travel Reading archive.


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