Rating: 
Summary: In search of the glory that was Byzantium
Review: What an impressive travelogue this tome is. This young Catholic Briton went traveling around the eastern Mediterranean, following in the footsteps of a late-antiquity monk, John Moschos. He meets many elderly representatives of the declining Orthodox churches in their ramshackle abbeys and monasteries throughout the Near East. Dalrymple had an amazingly keen ear for recording (or reconstructing) conversation, and the humor, quaintness, poignancy, and sometimes grief he evokes sounds true. He listens with a straight face to monks discussing recent appearances of St. Stephen, listens to a broken old priest describing the forcible dispersal of his flock, even pays a visit to the tomb of John Moschos himself. The church that houses it was once a thriving community of faith, but at the time of Dalrymple's visit only one old nun was left. Some of the humor is at his own expense. In Syria he tries to wrangle a visit to a remote community of archaic Christians, the Nestorians, or Assyrian Church. He is rebuffed, but a helpful local suggests that he contact an emigre community of these believers--back in his neighborhood of Ealing! "Such are the humiliations of the travel writer in the late twentieth
century: go to the ends of the earth to search for the most exotic heretics in the world, and you find they have cornered the kebab business at the end of your street in London." The book is marred by some ugly anti-Zionism that he must have soaked up in Britain during his university years. He treats his escapades with the Turkish and Syrian authorities almost as comic opera, but unloads some real loathing on Israel. Typical background passages begin something like, "After the 1948 war, in violation of international law, Israel..." as if the 1948 war were Israel's idea, or as if the Arab goal of exterminating the Jews were in accordance with international law. Several of the accusations made by the Armenian priests in Israel cry out for fact-checking, but since this is a travel and not an investigative book, there is none. Interposed through the text are excerpts and paraphrases from Moschos' book. From these we revisit the ancient stylites and dendrites, who inflicted physical mortification upon themselves in the belief that suffering in this life made for an easier time in the afterlife. Throughout, we also get a little archaeological background of different locations. They aren't all ancient: The Baron hotel in Damascus still has Lawrence of Arabia's unpaid bill framed behind the front desk, though the gardens and ponds outside have long since been replaced with urban seediness. A mostly fine travel book with a great premise.
Rating:
Summary: In search of the glory that was Byzantium
Review: What an impressive travelogue this tome is. This young Catholic Briton went traveling around the eastern Mediterranean, following in the footsteps of a late-antiquity monk, John Moschos. He meets many elderly representatives of the declining Orthodox churches in their ramshackle abbeys and monasteries throughout the Near East. Dalrymple had an amazingly keen ear for recording (or reconstructing) conversation, and the humor, quaintness, poignancy, and sometimes grief he evokes sounds true. He listens with a straight face to monks discussing recent appearances of St. Stephen, listens to a broken old priest describing the forcible dispersal of his flock, even pays a visit to the tomb of John Moschos himself. The church that houses it was once a thriving community of faith, but at the time of Dalrymple's visit only one old nun was left. Some of the humor is at his own expense. In Syria he tries to wrangle a visit to a remote community of archaic Christians, the Nestorians, or Assyrian Church. He is rebuffed, but a helpful local suggests that he contact an emigre community of these believers--back in his neighborhood of Ealing! "Such are the humiliations of the travel writer in the late twentieth
century: go to the ends of the earth to search for the most exotic heretics in the world, and you find they have cornered the kebab business at the end of your street in London." The book is marred by some ugly anti-Zionism that he must have soaked up in Britain during his university years. He treats his escapades with the Turkish and Syrian authorities almost as comic opera, but unloads some real loathing on Israel. Typical background passages begin something like, "After the 1948 war, in violation of international law, Israel..." as if the 1948 war were Israel's idea, or as if the Arab goal of exterminating the Jews were in accordance with international law. Several of the accusations made by the Armenian priests in Israel cry out for fact-checking, but since this is a travel and not an investigative book, there is none. Interposed through the text are excerpts and paraphrases from Moschos' book. From these we revisit the ancient stylites and dendrites, who inflicted physical mortification upon themselves in the belief that suffering in this life made for an easier time in the afterlife. Throughout, we also get a little archaeological background of different locations. They aren't all ancient: The Baron hotel in Damascus still has Lawrence of Arabia's unpaid bill framed behind the front desk, though the gardens and ponds outside have long since been replaced with urban seediness. A mostly fine travel book with a great premise.
Rating: 
Summary: packed with knowledge and sympathy
Review: What I most enjoyed about this wonderful book was not the fact that it was packed from cover to cover with knowledge -and it truly is- but the sympathy that the author obviously felt for the people he met in his journey.Dalrymple speaks about them with such a good-humoredly warmth that, after reading his narrative, you feel you would like to know more about their lives and you even worry about what is going to happen to them in the decadent and perilous world that the author depicts. I think this is the real triumph of this book: that the author makes us learn about a truly fascinating world while, at the same time, feeling respect and concern for the people who inhabit it and make it possible.And this is something quite unusual in the usually author-traveler centred travel literature I absolutely recomend it!
Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent, erudite but incomplete.
Review: Whilst travelling around the Middle East for the past two weeks ,I have enjoyed the companionship of such a well written account of the region, its politics and religion. What bothers me is that, while the author passed through Jordan on his way from one troubled Christian community to another, he failed to comment on the fact that a large minority of Christians appear to live in complete harmony with their Muslim neighbours in Jordan. Dalrymple covered the distressing tales of Turkey,Syria,Lebanon,Palestine,Israel and Egypt but ignored Jordan and its apparently contented and respected Christian community, perhaps because it did not fit with his gloomy synopsis.
Rating:
Summary: Dalrymple for President
Review: William Dalrymple's fascinating travelogue From the Holy Mountain deserves its immense critical acclaim. Dalrymple's journey in the steps of the sixth century John Moschos to witness the "final chapter" of Eastern Christianity's demise is an illuminating and often disturbing tale.
Perhaps most illuminating for the western reader is the rich Christian past of the areas that have of late seen the expulsion of Orthodox Christians; Dalyrmple carefully outlines how indebted the Western Christian tradition is to the theological formulations and cultural preservation of Byzantine Christianity.
As Dalrymple deftly shows, however, the recent advent of Muslim fundamentalism and Arab nationalism only begin to explain the disturbing persecution and expulsion of Christians in the region. Yet while his attention to detail and nuance preclude any one-sided judgments, Dalrymple can be righteously indignant with the best of them; a case in point is Dalrymple's dogged attempt to preserve the memory of the Armenian genocide in Turkey that has been systematically supressed by government officials.
Though Dalrymple is commendably vituperative in his treatment of the above injustices, he is likewise aware of the nuanced complexities that plague other regions of turmoil. With a keen understanding of geopolitical maneuvering, in his long sections discussing the plight of Lebanese and Palestinian Christians he records interviews and conversations with many personally affected by the politicking of the region, and thus manages to avoid simplistic moralisms. A evenhanded professionalism is maintained throughout.
While there is little to criticize about this book - it has been one of my favorite books of the year - a reader with religious leanings will be both grateful and grated by Dalrymple's erudition. For he weds a religious sensibility with what seems to be a covert personal skepticism. Perhaps Dalrymple's skeptical stance is merely a journalistic affection (western rationalism is equally detested), but at times it seems to trivialize the beliefs and struggles which fill the memories of those which Dalrymple aims to memorialize. Though his curiousity and empathic tendencies more than make up for his skeptical purview, at times Dalrymple's dispassionate treatment comes across as haughty candor.
Rating:
Summary: Dalrymple for President
Review: William Dalrymple's fascinating travelogue From the Holy Mountain deserves its immense critical acclaim. Dalrymple's journey in the steps of the sixth century John Moschos to witness the "final chapter" of Eastern Christianity's demise is an illuminating and often disturbing tale.
Perhaps most illuminating for the western reader is the rich Christian past of the areas that have of late seen the expulsion of Orthodox Christians; Dalyrmple carefully outlines how indebted the Western Christian tradition is to the theological formulations and cultural preservation of Byzantine Christianity.
As Dalrymple deftly shows, however, the recent advent of Muslim fundamentalism and Arab nationalism only begin to explain the disturbing persecution and expulsion of Christians in the region. Yet while his attention to detail and nuance preclude any one-sided judgments, Dalrymple can be righteously indignant with the best of them; a case in point is Dalrymple's dogged attempt to preserve the memory of the Armenian genocide in Turkey that has been systematically supressed by government officials.
Though Dalrymple is commendably vituperative in his treatment of the above injustices, he is likewise aware of the nuanced complexities that plague other regions of turmoil. With a keen understanding of geopolitical maneuvering, in his long sections discussing the plight of Lebanese and Palestinian Christians he records interviews and conversations with many personally affected by the politicking of the region, and thus manages to avoid simplistic moralisms. A evenhanded professionalism is maintained throughout.
While there is little to criticize about this book - it has been one of my favorite books of the year - a reader with religious leanings will be both grateful and grated by Dalrymple's erudition. For he weds a religious sensibility with what seems to be a covert personal skepticism. Perhaps Dalrymple's skeptical stance is merely a journalistic affection (western rationalism is equally detested), but at times it seems to trivialize the beliefs and struggles which fill the memories of those which Dalrymple aims to memorialize. Though his curiousity and empathic tendencies more than make up for his skeptical purview, at times Dalrymple's dispassionate treatment comes across as haughty candor.
Rating: 
Summary: An intriguing but biased travelogue
Review: Yes, this is the story of William Dalrymple's retracing of some of the footsteps of two monks (John Moschos and Sophronius), who travelled around the Middle East starting in 587 AD. Dalrymple travelled from Greece through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel to Egypt in 1994 AD.
The author tells all sorts of interesting stories. He explains that the Marcionites of the sixth century did not like the Old Testament heroes. So they made villains of those heroes, including the, um, devilish God of the Old Testament. And they made heroes of Cain, of the, um, goodly people of Sodom, and of the Serpent. As I said, it sounds fascinating. And maybe it's true and well known. Maybe not.
By the time we get to Lebanon, we can see that the author is going to be taking sides on a few political issues. So much so that I began to doubt some of his stories. He started by explaining that most folks blame the Maronites for the Lebanese Civil War. It was their "intransigence, their unapologetic Christian supremacism, their contempt for their Muslim neighbors, and their point-blank refusal to share Lebanon ..."
All this could be true. But isn't it interesting that Lebanon seemed to be getting by before Arafat and his thugs showed up? Anyway, it's Arafat's main enemies, such as Bashir Gemayel, that Dalrymple unleashes on.
Speaking of Arafat's enemies, Dalrymple tells plenty of anti-Israeli stories as well. He sure doesn't like the fact that there are Israeli settlements in the West Bank. I wonder if it ever occurred to him that both Arabs and Jews have a right to live there. And that neither has a right to ethnically cleanse the area. And that if there were a peace treaty that let both Arabs and Jews remain there, but insisted that neither side had a right to ban or expel the other, the Jews wouldn't be the side that refused. I wonder if he would want reactionary and irredentist terrorists to be rewarded so that he and his neighbors would be kicked out of his town.
The author deplores the fact that Christians are leaving the Middle East in droves. But he shows deference to the Muslims who are chasing them out. I think he ought to have shown a little sympathy for those who support the human rights of life, liberty, and property. Instead, I think he simply made fun of them.
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