Will I love From the Holy Mountain?

An amazing adventure recounting two journeys through the monasteries and shrines of the Middle East 1,400 years apart.

Dalrymple, an experienced journalist and traveler, conducted his incredible recreation at a time of turmoil and religious strife, making his feat almost beyond description for the hardships and risks he took.

The stories he presents of the two Byzantine monks in whose footsteps he followed provide us with both a historical and modern context filled with humorous anecdotes and strange characters from their individual narratives.

The pathos of his own journey reveals the desperation, anger, suffering, and perseverance of those surviving early… show more.

Are you a fan of travel literature? If so, then you will be as amazed as I was to find this remarkable account. In the 1990s, the author, a noted travel writer, undertook a task that would be impossible to duplicate today for obvious reasons. Based upon the contents of a rare manuscript, he decided to trace the footsteps of two eastern orthodox monks who, in the Sixth Century, traveled through much of the Byzantine World, moving from one ancient monastery to another while describing their adventures. Tracing their route, the author relates in a witty, yet always respectful and… show more.

Based on his travels through the Middle East in the mid-1990s, William Dalrymple retraces the footsteps of the sixth-century Christian travelers John Moschos and Sophronius the Sophist who traversed the holy sites of the Byzantine Empire from Greece to Syria to Egypt. From the Holy Mountain is a reflective travel narrative that captures both the spiritual depth of the Near East as well as the modern reality of persistent Christian peoples among the majority Muslim Arab states. The reader is welcomed to both accompany Dalrymple to visit these ancient places and peoples as well as to reflect with him on… show more.