In From the Holy Mountain, William Dalrymple chronicles his travels through the Middle East and gives voice to the experiences and predicaments of the most often ignored Christians who reside there. Dalrymple’s style is excellent for the genre. His expertly sketched depictions of contemporary life in the Middle East shift into historical explanation and anecdotes that are clearly defined and yet, seamlessly interwoven. While a morbid sense of humor and appreciation for the absurd ease the tension where Dalrymple himself is in a dangerous situation, he maintains a serious and earnest voice when discusses the problems faced by religious minorities in the Middle East.
Several themes reoccur throughout Dalrymple’s travels. The first of these is the existence of a religious unity in practice among many of the inhabitants. He notes that “the Eastern Christians and the Muslims have lived together side by side for nearly one and a half millennia, and have only been able to do so due to a degree of mutual tolerance and shared customs unimaginable in the Christian West” (188, emphasis mine). Dalrymple notes a number of customs and popular expressions of piety that are shared by Christians and Muslims throughout the Middle East. At a church in Seidnaya, the attendees at the service are mostly Muslim women with their husbands seeking the intercessions of the Theotokos to help them in conceiving a child. A nun explains to Dalrymple that all are “children of God . . . the All Holy One brings us together” (190). Similar occurrences are reported throughout the book. Taken together with the statement of the nun, these incidences serve to create a sense of universal human worth and suggest the real belief in the possibility of universal salvation.
The theme of shared practice and sacred places is repeated just outside of Jerusalem at the shrine of St. George. The shrine used to be a site of pilgrimage for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and while Dalrymple found that Israeli Jews rarely visited anymore, both Palestinian Christians and Muslims both continued to come to the shrine to request the intercession of the saint. (339-341) Interestingly, both of overlapping Christian and Muslim pious practices Dalrymple notes in the book are centered on fertility. Muslim women flock to Seidnaya to venerate the icon of the Theotokos because it is believed that she can help them conceive. While St. George appears to be a little more of a multipurpose saint, the roots of the Muslim veneration of the shrine are linked to “the legendary saint of fertility known simply as Khidr, Arabic for green” (339). The name Khidr is used by all Palestinians, Christian and Muslim alike, and he invoked for aid with fertility – either personal or agricultural (341). As Dalrymple briefly notes, the function of the saint’s cult and manner of repaying the saint for his help (sheep to sacrifice) appears related to pagan practices.
Dalrymple also reports a convergence of artistic trends and traditions. He manages to obtain permission from one of the Lebanese warlords, who in his alternate life is a mild-mannered scholar of history (225), to view his collection of Byzantine mosaics, which he preserved from the destruction of the civil war. In comparison with other Byzantine mosaics, this collection eschews humanism in the choice of subjects and demonstrates a preference for geometric designs. Dalrymple links the difference in the mood of the mosaics to a shift in cultural mood that led to the iconoclast movement in the Byzantine Empire. Additionally, this collection of mosaics provides another bridge between the Christians of the Levant and their Muslim neighbors, who turned a preference for non-figurative designs into a prohibition on the depiction of human images (234). In Alexandria, Dalrymple notes the earlier adoption of pagan motifs and images by early forms of Christian art (386). The “cross-fertilization,” to borrow from Dalrymple, of art points to back to the rich web of practices shared amongst the inhabitants of the Middle East and illustrates the existence of a strong inclusivist attitude.
The deeper and richer sense of time and history is another feature Dalrymple highlights in his journal. Introducing the monastery of Mar Saba, he comments that landscape is strange, but “it is stranger still to find many of their superstitions, fears, and prejudices alive in the conversation of this, the last of the ancient monasteries of the Holy Land to survive as a functioning community” (279). A nun, who tends the grave of John Moschos at the Abbey of St. Theodosius, repeats the theme of a long, near timeless memory. Asked when Persians attacked the monastery, she replies, “Not so long ago . . . around 614 A.D.” (284).
The long memory of the Middle East and the intermingling of religious practice and sacred places have contributed to the manner in which the effects of modern nationalism and European colonialism have played out in the region. Dalrymple dates the being of the end for religious tolerance and syncretism to the twentieth century (188). The violent political ferment of the area is not some innate and inexplicable hatred between tribes. Western colonialism, and particularly the way in which official colonialism of the Middle East was brought to an end, bear much of the responsibility. Additionally, the long memory of the region shapes the way in which conflicts have played out.
The Maronite communities of Lebanon were created as a persecuted by minority by being named heretics by the ecclesiastic authorities of the Byzantine Empire. They retreated to the mountains and lived essentially under siege until the Crusades, when they came into communion with Rome and under the protection of France. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, they were granted their own state. (197) The Maronites have created their own national mythology and adopted the language and culture of France. Their mythology of a different ethnic extraction from the rest of the area grounded a “contempt for their Muslim neighbors” (198).
Until very recently, the Maronites were a numerical majority in Lebanon, and could thus, easily maintain political control. The echoes of their history as a persecuted minority living under siege can be heard in their response when they became a cultural and religious minority. Rather than attempting to renegotiate the political system into one that could serve all groups in the Lebanese population, the Maronites prepared for a civil war and resurrected the mythology of the Crusades as a rallying point. In this case both the memory of the distant past of the Maronite community and the constructed national mythology have played into the present political situation of the region. A lingering siege mentality seems to have informed the blanket refusal to share power, and the self-righteous brutality of the Crusades followed with the trappings adopted by the Maronite militias (198).
The manipulation of the past by the modern Israeli state differs from the manipulation by the Maronites. Dalrymple focuses on the ways in which archaeology is used by the Israeli government to create the appearance of a national history in support of the political agenda of the modern nation-state. The Armenian Bishop Hagop shows Dalrymple a newly constructed highway and described the Greek and Armenian monasteries over which it was constructed. He then points to a garden built to protect a section of wall constructed by King Herod. The Bishop describes the presence of the archaeological garden without any commemoration of the presence of the monasteries as “nationalistic bigotry” (331). He claims that the monasteries were problematic for the Israeli government because they “are evidence of a Christian-dominated Jerusalem” (330) and thus a challenge to national mythology that the Jews have a right to the land of Palestine. News reports later looked up by Dalrymple confirmed the Bishop’s indignation. The supposed archaeological identification of ancient Jewish settlements has been used as justification for new Israeli settlements on land confiscated from Palestinians (333).
Another facet of the political turmoil of the Middle East which was brought to light by Dalrymple was the way in which Palestinian Christians have been and continue to be overlooked in the coverage of the conflict by the American media which prefers to reduce the tension to a conflict between Jews and the Muslims. Dalrymple visits a Palestinian Christian family who lives in exile, poverty, and constant low-level terror in Lebanon (266-275). The American government’s near-unconditional support of the Israeli government is baffling to Palestinian Christians. A Christian priest comments to Dalrymple, “Because we are Christians no one seems to care” (359).
The erasure of Palestinian Christians by the American media seems based in a conflation of Christian with Western, European, and White. Thus, acknowledging the plight of Palestinian Christians (or to be more timely, Christians in Iraq) would conflict with American ideology of America as the chosen, Christian nation who must rescue, save, and dominate the heathen nations. The idea that Christians suffer from the political and foreign policies of the United States troubles the American national myth of messianic nation mandate. I’ve frequently heard that American dominance in the Middle East is justified because people who have never heard the gospel can be evangelized. The continued invisibility of Christians in the Middle East allows for the continuation of this reasoning.
From the Holy Mountain complicates the overly simplistic portrayal of the state of religion in the Middle East by the Western media. The idea of discrete divisions between religions is undermined by Dalrymple’s observance of overlapping pious practices held in common, presently, by both Christians and Muslims, and in the past by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Dalrymple’s work also highlights the presence of Christians in a conflict that tends to be reduced to a battle of the Jews against the Arabs. ( )

Luscious language describing a fantastic journey of discovery of what remains of Christianity in the Near East. ( )

Dalrymple's speciality is going to dead places that the modern world has killed, and rooting around to discover those trace elements of its mysterious golden past that still exist below the surface.

He comes across as a modest man of learning and good humour; certainly he has good eyes and ears. For me this book worked at every level; finely observed cameos of people and places, most definitely educational, and sometimes powerfully moving in its evocation of the tragedies and heroism of this region. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/913672.htm...

It is a tremendous book. Dalrymple travels through Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, the West Bank and Egypt, following the seventhy-century travels of John Moschos, looking for the remaining evidence of Christianity in archtitecture, culture and population. It is a terrifically sad book. Many of the communities he visits were dwindling at the time of writing, in 1994; several of them wonder if they will even still be there in ten years' time. He is fantastic at capturing the characters he meets, especially among the dwindling Christians: some are stupid, some are bigoted, some are deluded, but all are part of a chain of culture going back two thousand years.

He is also at pains to stress that Islamic fundamentalism is not really the problem. In south-eastern Turkey, the local Christians are bit-players in the war between the Turkish state and the PKK. In Lebanon, sections of the Christian community have been the authors of their own misfortune. In the Holy Land, Christian Palestinians face the same pressure from Israel as their Muslim neighbours (and do not understand why their co-religionists in the West do not speak up for them). In 1994, Islamic fundamentalists were a big part of the picture only in Egypt.

Turks and Israelis may well feel that Dalrymple's picture is not balanced. I would agree; but I think it is fair. He is writing here of a particular religious tradition at a particular time, and the systematic destruction of their monuments and erosion of their population base is a big part of the story. Of course there are and have been Christian cities and countries where other religions have been oppressed, but that sort of point-scoring is not relevant to Dalrymple's approach. Instead he is at pains to avoid essentialism; to attribute government policies to government leaders themselves, rather than to their religion or race; and to look for links between the cultures of the region, and for insights into how the past remains present.

It would be interesting to read a follow-up of what the situation is now for some of these communities. I can't imagine that many of them (except perhaps the Lebanese) have seen much improvement in their lot since 1994. Anyway, this is fascinating stuff. Strongly recommended. ( )

150 pages in so far a few interesting stories but on the whole disappointing, I will reserve judgement

Update. I didn't manage to finish this book; as I suspected, my final view is that it was disappointing. Having read a couple of William Dalrymple's other works of non-fiction I had high expectations of this book. Unfortunately, for me it focused too much on religion and not enough on observations and travel. I have up after 300 odd pages... having made it as far as Egypt. ( )