The Book Depository From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple
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Description: From the Holy Mountain : Paperback : Harper Collins Publishers : 9780006547747 : 0006547745 : 17 Oct 2011 : A rich blend of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, laced with the thread of black comedy familiar to readers of William Dalrymple's previous work. The Book Depository From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9780006547747
MPN: 0006547745
GTIN: 9780006547747
Author: Ralph Blumenau
Rating: 5
Review: 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.
Author: kingdoone
Rating: 3
Review: It was read for the book club but needed a lot of research and references to glossary . It proved that nothing has changed since 500bc Man cannot get along with man over centuries the same conflicts reoccur . I thought he was thoroughly selfish putting others in danger . I hate the ‘woman as temptress ‘ negating men’s responsibility entirely . A hard read .
