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Summary: Wow! Talk about comprehensive!
Review: This book was really great. Anyone who has a passion for history would love this book. It takes us from the "late classical-early medieval" period up to the present in the middle east, with the thesis that only now is the final end of ancient Byzantium occurring. The ancient Christian civilization coexisted for 1400 years with the other cultures; now,however, for a number of reasons, the last Christians are feeling compelled to leave. I have already ordered John Moscos's "Spritual Meadow" so I can compare what Dalrymple says to my reading of the original. Also, I should comment on how delightful his stories about stays in the old, surviving monasteries were. A few of the chapters raised my eyebrows a bit--however, I was moved by the monastery of St. Anthony in Egypt, and what was said about monasticism and prayer. This is definitely a book to read, whether your interest is middle east history, religion, byzantium, or travel!
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Summary: A Journey Back in the Christian Timeline
Review: This book was recommended to me by an author and Catholic priest, who suggested that it be read as a way of understanding how Western Christianity will perish if we are not able to understand the lessons of the past and incorporate them into the future. As a ordained Christian minister, I have taken to not only showing this wonderful book to friends, family and parishoners, but buying an extra copy for the library at the parish. It is a wonderful, heart-breaking, interesting book that is very difficult to put down at night to sleep and leaves the reader full of questions about our current state of faith in Western Christianity. I cannot say enough about it's tale of lost religious culture(much I was unaware of) and the warnings to a future in the Christian faith.
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Summary: A must for 'travelling' Christians in the world
Review: This is a gem. I have given it as a gift to several friends who have either lived or travelled in the Middle East. If not a gift - I then have loaned a copy...here and there because I truly believe it to be a must read...Dare I say, required reading of anyone who wants to know about the comparitive history of early Christianity. I am so pleased that it has finally crossed the Atlantic!I am not so patiently waiting for the Scottish author to produce another....
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Summary: A moving book which breathes life and, above all, tolerance
Review: This is a profound and moving book, much more than a mere travel book... It is good, it is well written, it is scholarly, it is thorough, and it is a good read - but in purely artistic terms it is not always consistently crafted, as Chatwin is. For me it holds together in a much stronger way, and ultimately has a much stronger impact than a Chatwin book. While it does have that delight in discovery which makes it a travel book par excellence - in the momentum towards the final destination, in the physical discovery of the places the author visits, and in the consistent and binding theme of religious toleration and similarities of religious belief he finds along his way, there is also the raw emotion and anger which, while hardly ever being expressed or overdone, nevertheless comes out strongly from underneath the whole narrative. This book is many things. It is a cry for tolerance and humaneness in the face of the lethal attitudes which emerge when nationalism and bigotry are allowed (or encouraged) to have full sway. It is a warning that we live in a world which is structured in such a way that those attitudes are actually encouraged and manipulated for political ends (usually the exploitation of one people by another), and have as a result been gaining ground, especially over the 20th century. And it is a strong antidote against the hypocrisy and propaganda put out by nation-states whenever they are trying to justify state-sponsored grabbing of other people's lands and possession of their lives and persons. No nation or state has a monopoly on racism and xenophobia, and in every country there are exceptional and humane people as well as fanatics, but as collective nation-states the Turks, the Israelis and the Egyptians all come out particularly badly from this history: they are either systematically destroying minority peoples and their cultures or, by tacit or deliberate inaction - the classic excuse of the type "there's nothing we can do about it" - allowing them to be destroyed, and rewriting the history books accordingly in order to suit their purposes. I doubt whether there is any people or nation which would come out unscathed from an examination of this sort - one has only to think of the actions of the Chinese in Tibet, the Japanese in China, the Italians in Abyssinia, the Germans in Poland, and closer to today the Serbs in Kosovo or the Russians in Chechnya, - the list could go on and on. What is even more ironic is that oppressed peoples can over time themselves become, if not always genocidal killers, certainly oppressors. In the end, history shows that no nation or people can be exempt from the danger, and that a nation's degree of "civilisation" is no guarantee either that it will not perpetrate the most unspeakable atrocities. So just as it is important not to allow anyone to forget the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people - or, as is currently happening in some quarters, to say that it never took place - , so it is important not to allow history to forget other truly appalling genocides such as that carried out by the Turks on the Armenians in the early years of the 20th century. Even more importantly perhaps, as with a cancer, we have to recognise and react early on to the small and apparently insignificant signs. Whether the "disease" can be stopped, or the lethal attitudes rooted out, before they lead to those genocides, or to other equally appalling man-made catastrophes, is of course another issue. But it is the obligation of anyone with a concern for humaneness, and indeed for human life altogether, to make the effort. For William Dalrymple's work in making his journey and writing this book I therefore feel genuine admiration and respect, while at the same time identifying deep down with what he has to say and the way he says it. If you also feel this way about the book, you won't be able to put it down.
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Summary: ABANDONED, FORGOTTEN AND VULNERABLE
Review: This is a sad tale. The author retraces the steps of a Christian monk's journey through what is now Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt, which was made more than a century before the Middle East was conquered by Arab armies and permanently lost to Islam. It seeks to remind us that some of these countries made up what was once the heartland and cradle of Christianity with an overwhelmingly Christian population. This book covers many aspects such as history, religion, architecture, politics, ethnography as well as the author's account of the lives of the people he met during his journey. The book's primary focus, is what remains of the Christian Middle East although the lives and beliefs of the Muslims and adherents of other religions such as a strange sect known as the Yezidis, are mentioned in passing. As the author travels through each place, he refers to the accounts of his predecessor, John Moschos in the Spiritual Meadows, which gave a vivid detail of what life was like for its sixth century inhabitants. For a while we are taken back to a world lost forever. What I find amazing is that although centuries apart, we can perfectly relate to many of their lives and experiences. The author then gives a contemporary description of what he saw in that place and the conversations with the people he met. In many of the places, the large numbers of hermits and pious Christians as well as the quasi-Christian Gnostic sects of Moschos' Middle East are gone for good. In Istanbul, the once great Christian city of Constantinople, the author meets the remnants of the once large Armenian and Greek communities. The Greeks of Istanbul now number only a few thousand compared to 400,000 in 1923. Although, living in a secular country, they face discrimination and prejudice. Even the Orthodox Church's Patriarchate is constantly under threat from fundamentalist's bombs. In southeastern Turkey, the author meets with the last of the Turoyo-speaking Orthodox Christians known as Surianis, who speak a language close to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus. Once there were 300 Syrian Orthodox monasteries. Now, most of the monasteries and churches stand empty or have been converted into mosques. A pathetically small handful of old monks continue to maintain the last few functioning monasteries. There will be no replacements for them. What I found touching were tales related to the author by the Suriani and Armenian survivors of the Turkish massacres who lost their whole families. The Armenians of this region have been completely exterminated or expelled. In the 1915 massacres, the women of Diyabakir were gang-raped and the men had horse-shoes nailed to their feet. Out of a 19th century population of 200,000, the Surianis now number only 900 in their homeland, most of whom are the descendants of those who successfully defended themselves against the Turks and Kurds at a village called Ein Wardo (where they barricaded themselves when they knew what was being done to the Armenians). However, even now killings and kidnappings continue. In Antioch, once a bastion of Christianity in the 6th century, only a handful of Christians remain. Here, the author relates how an Italian missionary friar continues to secretly baptize Armenians from the mountains who have pretended to be Muslims ever since the 1915 massacres. In Egypt, the author met the Coptic Christians whose lives and those of their families are constantly under threat by Islamic fundamentalists. Here, hardline Muslim preachers attack Christianity on government TV and Christian schools had to raise wall for protection. So long as only the churches were burned and Christians killed, the government turns a blind eye until when the fundamentalists finally took up arms against them.
Although there are no polemics against Muslims in this book, I am grateful that the author was truthful enough to mention the sufferings of the Middle East Christians. Most politically correct Western authors who have written about the Middle East have displayed a clear Muslim bias and negate all historical facts which portray Islam in a negative light. Even though this book serves more as a travelogue, I believe people are more important than places. As a Christian living in a Muslim country, I can completely relate to the lives of those whom the author met. Abandoned and ignored by the Christians of the West and knowing that there will be none who would speak up for them (as the Muslims of the world have done for the Palestinians, Bosnians and Kosovar Albanians), the Middle East Christians keep silent on the atrocities committed against them for fear of retribution. America and the West are afraid of offending their Muslim allies even as the Muslims in these Western countries and their apologists are succeeding in their public relations campaign to mislead the general public that Islam is a tolerant religion. Western journalists do not want to cover the stories of Middle East Christians as it is politically incorrect to do so and they may be accused of prejudice against Islam. One must remember that the South Africans prevailed against apartheid because of world support and media coverage. They knew that the whole world was watching and every atrocity committed got published in the papers which in turn, turned public opinion against the regime, leading to its eventual downfall. Even today, Coptic Christians are regularly being killed by Muslim fundamentalists and yet not only such news are intentionally hidden or downplayed in the media but the same Muslim clerics who say "Islam means peace" used to preach in the same mosques where the faithful attack Christian homes and shops after performing Friday prayers. For those in the West who are interested in knowing more about Middle Eastern Christians, I suggest that they read this book together with "The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam" and "The Dhimmi" both by Bat Ye'or. An excellent book giving some information on the Jewish communities in Islamic lands is "Jewish Communities in Exotic Places" by Ken Blady.
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Summary: Great Armchair Travelling with a Historic Aim
Review: This is a truly great book in that it shows us how people from different cultures and religions were able to live together in the Middle East in a not so distant past.
It is really sad that this once very culturally rich area of the world is now dominated by hate and fear.
I gave the book only four stars because it lacks a table of contents, there are no maps whatsoever that may follow the author's travels and the pictures included, besides being only a few compared to all the places Dlrymple visited, don't have a coherent order.
Otherwise, the book is a true pleasure.
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Summary: My favorite travel book!
Review: This is a very insightful and compelling book. I have learned so much from this book. A real page turner. If you are interested in Byzantium history or the origins of early Christianity-- then you should read this book. I first heard mention of this book in Loreena McKennitt's CD The Book of Secrets.
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Summary: Everyone of conscience should read this book
Review: This is a wonderful account of a contemporary journey through ancient history, bringing characters to life through descriptions of places and events known, I suspect, to few except dedicated academics. It is an important book, well-written and sometimes witty, but very, very sad. Sad, because I and probably thousands of other Christians did not know very much of this history before and it begs the question of whether our leaders, in Church and secular Western society, are going to do anything to save the roots of our civilisation from destruction.Dalrymple has forced me to re-think my views of current Middle East tensions - I certainly have had my views and opinions shaken. I wish that I could follow in Dalrymple's footsteps and make the journey myself, but clearly the man put himself in considerable danger and it is unlikely that things will get any better in my lifetime.
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Summary: great read but . . .
Review: This is an excellent read, full of fascinating people and places and all, and Dalrymple's a great storyteller. The one problem I have with it is that,while the whole theme of the book is the tragic way Christians have been wiped out or marginalized throughout the Middle East over the past 100 years, the book often takes a somewhat condescending--even facetious--attitude toward the actual practices and beliefs of these same Christians. You want to ask, Is it worth trying to preserve, if so ridiculous and superstitious from our eyes? (but at the same time, what would be the strength of their faith if it was reduced to the bland Sunday-evening variety of Christianity which a lot of us know? does silliness go hand in hand with depth?) Well I guess it's a tension, in tone, that there was no way Dalrymple could get around. Among many other virtues, the book is pretty enlightening (I think) about the politics of the Middle East--like what a total mess occurred in Lebanon, no "good guys" to speak of.
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Summary: If you have travelled in the Near East, a must-read.
Review: This past summer I was doing archaeological work near Antakya, Turkey when a friend I was travelling with loaned me this book. I read it in just two days, and then went back and read it at a more leisurely pace. I think that Dalrymple is a fabulous author, and while much of the material that he writes of is quite distressing, he manages to make the book humorous at the same time. Quite a feat. This book is a must for anyone who has travelled in the Near East. You may find that you have run into some of the same characters as Dalrymple.
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