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From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium
William Dalrymple
The third book from the most gifted young travel writer at work today, author of the best-selling In Xanadu (‘one of the best travel books produced in the last twenty years’ – Scotland on Sunday) and City of Djinns (‘the best travel book I have ever read’ – George Mackay Brown).In the spring of 587 AD, 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 world shattered under the great eruption of Islam. More than a thousand years later, using Moschos’s writings as his guide, William Dalrymple set off to retrace their footsteps.Despite centuries of isolation, a surprising number of the monasteries and churches visited by the two monks still survive today, surrounded by often hostile populations. Dalrymple’s pilgrimage took him through a bloody civil war in eastern Turkey, the ruins of Beirut, the vicious tensions of the West Bank and a fundamentalist uprising in southern Egypt. His book is an elegy to the slowly dying civilisation of Eastern Christianity and the peoples that have kept its flame alive. It is a rich and gripping blend of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, laced with a thread of black comedy familiar to readers of Dalrymple’s previous work.
From theHoly Mountain
A JOURNEY
IN THE SHADOW OF
BYZANTIUM
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
Copyright (#u689e1b80-bc30-5b5d-8a2f-6bd3d9afa9ba)
Harper Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1998
Reprinted eleven times
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1997
Copyright © William Hamilton-Dalrymple 1997
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006547747
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007381326
Version: 2017-01-04
Praise (#u689e1b80-bc30-5b5d-8a2f-6bd3d9afa9ba)
From the reviews of From the Holy Mountain:
‘From the Holy Mountain is a further landmark in a writing career unblemished by failure and enlightened by an erudition worn as lightly as a cloak. Dalrymple’s lucidity and learning are woven into a writing style which is never pompous or smug … This is a brave book, intellectually, spiritually and physically. In a missive which brims with intelligence and a voracious appetite for knowledge, Dalrymple paints wonderful sketches of a twentieth-century landscape bedevilled by the conflicts of the past … a book which provokes thought as often as it entertains and beguiles’
HUGH MACDONALD, Glasgow Herald
‘A delightful tale … this book brings pleasure back to reading history and travel’
CHARLES GLASS, Sunday Express
‘William Dalrymple has effortlessly assumed the mantle of Robert Byron and Patrick Leigh Fermor … From the Holy Mountain is destined to be this year’s big book … an impressive achievement’
LUCRETIA STEWART, Guardian Books of the Year
‘In his third book William Dalrymple has dug deep to present the case of the Middle East’s downtrodden Christians. More hard-hitting than either of his previous books, From the Holy Mountain is driven by indignation. While leavened with his characteristic jauntiness and humour, it is also profoundly shocking. Time and time again in the details of Dalrymple’s discoveries I found myself asking: why do we not know this? The sense of unsung tragedy accumulates throughout the chapters of this book … From the Holy Mountain is the most rewarding sort of travel book, combining flashes of lightly-worn scholarship with a powerful sense of place and the immediacy of the best journalism. But more than that it is a passionate cri de coeur for a forgotten people which few readers will be able to resist’
PHILIP MARSDEN, Spectator
‘Dalrymple brings the past alive wonderfully and is a brilliant communicator. If In Xanadu was reminiscent of early Evelyn Waugh or the devil-may-care Peter Fleming, From the Holy Mountain evokes Robert Byron and Bruce Chatwin. It is a more poetic and disturbing book and all the better for that. It marks the maturing of a very fine writer’
ALEX FORSYTH, Scotland on Sunday
‘William Dalrymple has earned a rapid reputation as a brilliant young travel writer and From the Holy Mountain is a splendid, effective and impressive book’
J.D.F. JONES, Financial Times
‘Since his magnificent In Xanadu, William Dalrymple has been generally acclaimed as one of our best contemporary travel writers. In From the Holy Mountain he travels the Silk Route of ancient Byzantium through the present-day Middle East tracing the AD 578 journey of John Moschos, the great Byzantine monk, traveller and oral historian avant la lettre. His aim is to uncover the human archaeology of Eastern Christianity. It is realised in meditative, sensuous prose’
Independent on Sunday
‘Utterly compelling: a meaty, intriguing volume and a worthy successor to In Xanadu and City of Djinns’
TOM FORT, Financial Times Books of the Year
‘A huge, breathtaking book about a colossal journey. The writing is by turns learned and lyrical … a magnificent achievement’
Publishing News
‘Any travel writer who is so good at his job as to be brilliant, applauded, loved and needed has to have an unusual list of qualities, and William Dalrymple has them all in aces. The most important is curiosity and the intrepidity it generates. Then there has to be the feeling that there never has been such a book as this, and never will be again. He must be enough of a scholar, and it helps if his jokes are really funny, and if he discovers something and goes to unexpected places. Dalrymple scores high on all these points. He knows more than Robert Byron, is less of a mythomane than Bruce Chatwin and not so dotty as Robert Fisk. He does not go slumming or patronise, but his ear for conversation – or can it be his talent for impersonation? – is as good as Alan Bennett’s. The book is a good, long read, like the works of Gibbon … The best and most unexpected book I have read since I forget when’
PETER LEVI, The Oldie
‘Terrorists, devil-worshippers, nights spent in monastery cells … Dalrymple didn’t have to search out troubles during his intrepid, five-month trek through the Levant. His mentor and guide for the journey was John Moschos, a monk who travelled the same route in the sixth century AD and described the final flourish of Eastern Christianity. Dalrymple now bears witness to the almost-defunct Christian monasteries and sects of the Middle East, while also managing to recreate the world Moschos knew. It’s a wonderfully evocative book’
HARRY RITCHIE, Mail on Sunday
‘Because he has the interests and enthusiasms of a scholar Dalrymple, with his magnificent zest, inspires the reader. We relish the tense air of south-east Turkey, the threat of Lebanon, the menace of Upper Egypt; and so does Dalrymple, at least in the vigorous telling of it. Massacres without number, enforced migrations, local wars: the effect of these events on human beings is burned into the pages of this excellent book. Yet Dalrymple is a delightful companion for the reader: a sunny equanimity shines around him. The self-portrait which emerges from these pages shows us a Renaissance head, not swollen but large with knowledge, painted like that of the Duke of Urbino by Piero della Francesca, in profile, against a library window through which may be discerned the delectable landscape of adventure’
PHILIP GLAZEBROOK, Literary Review
‘His biggest book yet: a large, scholarly, funny, meandering and passionate tome … Dalrymple’s enthusiasm is infectious, and his gentle osmotic supply of theological and historical background to Byzantine culture means that by the end any reader feels half expert’
NIGEL SPIVEY, Business Weekly
‘From the Holy Mountain is a remarkable travel book, beautifully written, alive to the politics of the day, and informed on the history and theology of the region’
ADAM FORD, Church Times
‘Neither the panache of William Dalrymple, nor the allure of the places he describes – Mount Athos, Damascus, the Egyptian desert – are what makes From the Holy Mountain so compelling. Its secret is the sense of history derived from the author’s decision to base his journey on The Spiritual Meadow, a guide to the monasteries and holy men of the eastern Roman Empire, written in the sixth century by the monk John Moschos. Following in his tracks, often to the same churches, the author travels through the Levant, listening to the prayers and fears of the region’s Christians … Dalrymple describes his encounters with monks and murderers with a combination of humour and scholarship’
PHILIP MANSEL, Country Life
‘An eloquent, poignant and courageous account of a journey that pits the idealism of the past against the hatred, dispossession and denial of the present’
KAREN ARMSTRONG
‘Fascinating, compelling and deeply moving’
WILLIAM BARLOW, Catholic Herald
‘Memorable … William Dalrymple’s raw and direct approach is something new, and despite its author’s eye for humour and irony, Dalrymple’s West Asian travelogue is harder, bleaker and expressed with an equality of spirit absent from the accounts of typical English romantics. As a result, From the Holy Mountain makes a profound impression’
CHRISTOPHER WALKER, Times Literary Supplement
‘An assured blend of travelogue and history … Dalrymple is a born travel writer, with a nose for adventure and a reporter’s healthy scepticism. His quirky, exhilarating mosaic will appeal to readers of all faiths’
Publishers Weekly
‘Outstanding … To be a good writer takes courage. To be a good travel writer may take more. Dalrymple is a good writer in an absolutely unpretentious way. The trouble with many good modern minds is that they ignore the past. Dalrymple does not, and by telling us of the past as it is enveloped by the present he is also telling of the future. He is not a prophet, simply one of the very few good, honest writers left’
DOM MORAES, Outlook
Dedication (#u689e1b80-bc30-5b5d-8a2f-6bd3d9afa9ba)
For my parents with love and gratitude
Table of Contents
Cover (#u9cfd6b99-1c42-5414-b101-f416ac128972)
Title Page (#ub7417265-c740-59d4-98f3-a770bc776596)
Copyright (#u3084c18c-7cec-5407-9b9d-4c525f34a438)
Praise (#uffd85f2e-1aa6-52ab-9fdb-a988b0b94969)
Dedication (#u201e44e2-a63c-5bb5-a89c-3b1551b41890)
I. (#u682088de-653d-5d68-aa19-1e731201df85)
THE MONASTERY OF IVIRON, MOUNT ATHOS, GREECE 29 JUNE 1994. THE FEAST OF SS. PETER AND PAUL (#ulink_06a32934-2000-5bfe-b4d7-eb61935e1ced)
II. (#u36531a4a-65f1-5384-bd6f-739df65d6553)
PERA PALAS HOTEL, ISTANBUL, TURKEY, 10 JULY 1994 (#ulink_6d64d862-b573-5e11-9401-3ff029371214)
III. (#litres_trial_promo)
THE BARON HOTEL, ALEPPO, SYRIA, 28 AUGUST 1994 (#litres_trial_promo)
IV. (#litres_trial_promo)
HOTEL CAVALIER, BEIRUT, LEBANON, 23 SEPTEMBER 1994 (#litres_trial_promo)
V. (#litres_trial_promo)
THE MONASTERY OF MAR SABA, ISRAELI-OCCUPIED WEST BANK, 24 OCTOBER 1994 (#litres_trial_promo)
VI. (#litres_trial_promo)
HOTEL METROPOLE, ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT, 1 DECEMBER 1994 (#litres_trial_promo)
KEEP READING (#litres_trial_promo)
GLOSSARY (#litres_trial_promo)
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRINCIPAL SOURCES (#litres_trial_promo)
INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by William Dalrymple (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
I (#u689e1b80-bc30-5b5d-8a2f-6bd3d9afa9ba)
THE MONASTERY OF IVIRON, MOUNT ATHOS, GREECE 29 JUNE 1994. THE FEAST OF SS. PETER AND PAUL (#ulink_13383190-e2c4-5828-8dd3-eca95ee9b37e)
My cell is bare and austere. It has white walls and a flagstone floor. Only two pieces of furniture break the severity of its emptiness: in one corner stands an olive-wood writing desk, in the other an iron bedstead. The latter is covered with a single white sheet, starched as stiff as a nun’s wimple.
Through the open window I can see a line of black habits: the monks at work in the vegetable garden, a monastic chain-gang hoeing the cabbage patch before the sun sets and the wooden simandron calls them in for compline. Beyond the garden is a vineyard, silhouetted against the bleak black pyramid of the Holy Mountain.
All is quiet now but for the distant breaking of surf on the jetty and the faint echo and clatter of metal plates in the monastery kitchens. The silence and solemnity of the place is hardly designed to raise the spirits, but you could hardly find a better place to order your mind. There are no distractions, and the monastic silence imposes its own brittle clarity.
It’s now nine o’clock. The time has finally come to concentrate my thoughts: to write down, as simply as I can, what has brought me here, what I have seen, and what I hope to achieve in the next few months.
My reference books are laid out in a line on the floor; the pads containing my library notes are open. Files full of photocopied articles lie piled up below the window; my pencils are sharpened and upended in a glass. A matchbox lies ready beside the paraffin storm lantern: the monastery generator is turned off after compline, and if am to write tonight I will have to do so by the light of its yellow flame.
Open on the desk is my paperback translation of The Spiritual Meadow of John Moschos, the unlikely little book which first brought me to this monastery, and the original manuscript of which I saw for the first time less than one hour ago. God willing, John Moschos will lead me on, eastwards to Constantinople and Anatolia, then southwards to the Nile and thence, if it is still possible, to the Great Kharga Oasis, once the southern frontier of Byzantium.
