From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East | 
 enlarge | Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Category: Book
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Rating:  66 reviews
Sales Rank: 58596
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 496
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 0805061770
Dewey Decimal Number: 915
EAN: 9780805061772
ASIN: 0805061770
Publication Date: March 15, 1999
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Product Description
In 587 a.d., two monks set off on an extraordinary journey that would take them in an arc across the entire Byzantine world, from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. On the way John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist stayed in caves, monasteries, and remote hermitages, collecting the wisdom of the stylites and the desert fathers before their fragile world finally shattered under the great eruption of Islam. More than a thousand years later, using Moschos's writings as his guide, William Dalrymple sets off to retrace their footsteps and composes "an evensong for a dying civilization" --Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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| Customer Reviews: Read 61 more reviews...
 Inspirational October 26, 2006
7 out of 15 found this review helpful
As a seminary student, I had been exposed to many of the groups Dalrymple visited during his journey. Though we treated them largely as doctrinal heretics and schismatics, they were lifeless groups and sects in the pages of our medieval church history text books. "From the Holy Mountain" brought those people to life in ways that I had not experienced before.
In addition to the narratives that draw you in, the author's keen eye for details and his ability to weave multiple threads together make you *feel* this book rather than read it. I came away feeling almost as if I had made the journey myself, and what more can we ask for from a book like this?
 Follows Sophronios' footsteps--but not his accounts October 7, 2006
23 out of 35 found this review helpful
This fascinating book recounts Dalrymple's 1994 reenactment of the 6th century Christian spiritual journey of John Moschos and Sophronios and is compellingly written. There, however, the value of this book ends.
The author's six months of travel through Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt did not provide an accurate portrayal of the plight of Middle Eastern Christians, who everywhere in the Muslim world are attacked without reason, maimed, and massacred, a situation that unfortunately also reflects Islamic early history.
Dalrymple retraced the steps of Sophronios, yet neglected anywhere in his homage to that self same monk to recount the learned man's graphic descriptions of the murderous initial Muslim conquest of Israel.
For the record, Sophronios had reported the massacres of 4,000 Jewish, Christian and Samaritan peasants in the 634 sack and devastation of the Gaza region--up to Cesarea. But the Jerusalem patriarch noted that Jerusalem, Gaza, Jaffa, Cesarea, Nablus and Beth Shean were isolated and forced to close their gates, according to the Islamic scholar Bat Ye'or. Indeed, the traditional Christmas pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Bethlehem was impossible in 634, Sophronios wrote, as the Muslim conquerors effectively imprisoned Christians in Jerusalem.
Surprisingly, Dalrymple also omitted Sophronios' description of the Christians' bondage---not "by tangible bonds, but chained and nailed by fear of the Saracens," whose "savage, barbarous and bloody sword" kept them locked in, Sophronios writes. He further described the Muslims as "beastly and barbarous...filled with every diabolical savagery," and likened the state of the Christians to that of Adam expelled from Paradise, and their sorrows paralleled his sorrows, according to Dr. Andrew Bostom.
Sophronios depicts the conquests from 632 to 637 as "very violent as well as decisive." In a synodal encyclical addressed to Patriarch Sergios of Constantinople, Bostom reports, Sophronios lamented the Arab conquest as "furious and brutal," "godless and impious" and its perpetrators as "villainous and God-hating Saracens," who in 637 left a train of destruction behind them, along with the abandoned human bodies devoured by the wild birds of region's deserts.
Dalrymple ignores all this history---despite his supposed reverence for Sophronios. And he also inexplicably sympathizes with current-day Muslim warlords who drove Lebanon's Christian majority from their homes. Indeed, he blames the Christians as the cause of their own suffering. Dalrymple wrongly calls Christians, particularly Lebanese Maronites, to account for "intransigence, their unapologetic Christian supremacism, their contempt for their Muslim neighbors, and their point-blank refusal to share Lebanon...."
Wherever possible, Dalrymple also blames the current plight of Middle Eastern Christians on the Israel. He expresses outright hatred for Israelis who helped those victims--and continue to offer safe haven to other oppressed Middle Eastern religious minorities and homosexuals. One gets more honest perspectives from Middle Eastern Christians like journalist Brigitte Gabriel, Prof. Habib C. Malik, Prof. Walid Phares, Walid Shoebat, Anis Shorresh and Pakistani Christian Patrick Sookhdeo.
The largest error of this book is the author's failure to recognize a key problem of Middle East Christians---one that the late, martyred Lebanese president Bashir Gemayel identified as their dhimmitude--their undue submission to Muslims, according to Islamic scholar Bat Ye'or.
Distressingly, Dalrymple also finds endless fault with the residence--however rightful under international law--of Israelis and Jewish people in areas on the West Bank of the Jordan River. He wants them removed, period. That's Unchristian--especially given the peaceful and legal presence of more than 1 million Arab citizens in Israel.
Dalrymple unquestioningly accepts Muslim Arab determination to evict all Jews and Christians from a Palestinian state, if ever one is created.
I don't understand how a Christian writer, ostensibly sympathetic with Christians, could be so hostile to Christian, Jewish and other victims of Muslim radicalism, and so unaccountably empathetic with their oppressors.
This book is a real disappointment.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
A book transcending itself September 5, 2006
4 out of 18 found this review helpful
A trip through the Middle-East is most of all getting to know the Muslim world. The part of its' history from Byzantine times, meaning the presence and history of Christian settlements, is easily forgotten or at least figures in the background only. After having read this book the Middle-East will never be the same to me again. With the exception of the Armenian genocide, I was hardly aware of all tragedies which happened but most of all: which are today still happening to the very old Christian communities of these countries. Not only are they in permanent danger of being killed, often with no punishment of the perpetrators from the authorities, and have they already been driven out of places where they lived since a 1500 years, also their ancient buildings, art, manuscripts, possessions of huge historic meaning, are being destroyed. As these communities and their material heritage represent much of the roots of Western civilization, this loss is a huge loss for the history of mankind. What's going on is a complete annihilation of the wonderful mosaic of different civilizations this world once produced. As since many years but now more than ever the Middle-East is the focus of world politics, "From the Holy Mountain" should be read by a much wider group of people than lovers of good travelogues or lovers of these countries only. A most important and readable study, implicating a plea for tolerance and respect, it should be a must-read for all politicians in the world.
 Zeal For Ecclesiastical Arcana August 22, 2006
6 out of 19 found this review helpful
Yes! My title nabbed from the Amazon reviewer. Dalrymple's journey through the middle east, retraces the Byzantine traveller-monlk, John Moschos, author of, The Spiritual Meadow'. In the late C6th, accompanied by his pupil, he set to gather the wisdom of the desert fathers from Mt Athos, to Kurdisatan, then south through Syria, the Lebanon, Palestine, and on up the Nile. Dalrymple's trip in the early 90s was frought with tensions which today would cause an angel trepidation. The book was a revelation to me, filling in considerable gaps about the foundation and correlations of so many parties in the fermenting region. Muslim fundamentlists provide stiff opposition to Dalrymple's historical and current enquiries. But they are not unique in this. His evocation of place is crisply poetic and touched with memorable detail. His feel for people is very sympathetic. A work justly applauded.
A lamentation to the extiction of a colour August 20, 2006
7 out of 21 found this review helpful
A journey of six months starting from Holy Mountain Athos in Greece, ending at Kharga in the middle of desert in upper Egypt, passing through Istanbul, Antioch (Antakya), Urfa, Diyarbakir, Mardin, Midyat in Turkey; Hassake, Aleppo, Seidnaya, Serjilla, Al-Barra, Damascus in Syria; Beirut, Baalbeck, Bsharre in Lebanon; West Bank, Jarusalem, Nazareth in Palestine; Alexandria, Cairo, Asyut, Kharga in Egypt.. These are the lands where three big religions emerged and spreaded. And, these were the lands where civilisations rised and declined one after another.
Dalyrimple's narrative is a lamentation to the extinction of multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Middle East. Author's ability to combine history with today's facts, to narrate with the knowledge and beautiful language of history and literature makes this book a feast of reading.
Moschos' Spiritual Meadow was about the decline of Byzantium, this book is about the extinction of what is left from Eastern Christianity and Ottoman multiculturalism.
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