Content alert - book review
Sep. 24th, 2003 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulroI read a really good book last week and thought I'd share.
It's From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple.
For those of you not familiar with the author, he writes travel books with really interesting historical stuff thrown in. From the Holy Mountain is a journey from Mount Athos through the Middle East to the desert in the south of Egypt in the footsteps of a 7th century monk called John Moschos, whose account of his trip is called The Spiritual Meadow, and was written just before Christianity ceased to be the dominant religion in the region. I may be a militant agnostic, but I'm fascinated by religion and how Christianity developed, and this book is full of that - particularly illustrating how early Egyptian models of monasticism were transplanted directly to the Celtic world.
There's a lot of the modern politics of the region. Chapter 2 is a long account that translantes nicely into "why Turkey should never be allowed to join the EU". The bit on Lebanon is just scary, and the rest quite depressing. I may not be a big fan of Christianity myself, but it is sad that what was for thousands of years a very cosmopolitan and mixed society is becoming a monoculture in most of the countries he visits. Christian communities that have been there since long before Western Europe became Christian are being wiped out within a generation or two. There's a lot of culture, history and architecture that's being destroyed along with it.
The whole thing is very well written and I highly recommend it.
As an added bonus, I was able to follow the whole journey in great detail thanks to my fancy new atlas!
It's From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple.
For those of you not familiar with the author, he writes travel books with really interesting historical stuff thrown in. From the Holy Mountain is a journey from Mount Athos through the Middle East to the desert in the south of Egypt in the footsteps of a 7th century monk called John Moschos, whose account of his trip is called The Spiritual Meadow, and was written just before Christianity ceased to be the dominant religion in the region. I may be a militant agnostic, but I'm fascinated by religion and how Christianity developed, and this book is full of that - particularly illustrating how early Egyptian models of monasticism were transplanted directly to the Celtic world.
There's a lot of the modern politics of the region. Chapter 2 is a long account that translantes nicely into "why Turkey should never be allowed to join the EU". The bit on Lebanon is just scary, and the rest quite depressing. I may not be a big fan of Christianity myself, but it is sad that what was for thousands of years a very cosmopolitan and mixed society is becoming a monoculture in most of the countries he visits. Christian communities that have been there since long before Western Europe became Christian are being wiped out within a generation or two. There's a lot of culture, history and architecture that's being destroyed along with it.
The whole thing is very well written and I highly recommend it.
As an added bonus, I was able to follow the whole journey in great detail thanks to my fancy new atlas!
