Title: From the Holy Mountain
Subtitle: a journey among the Christians of the Middle East
First published: 1998
Description: In the spring of A.D. 587, 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 fragile world finally shattered under the great eruption of Islam.

More than a thousand years later, using Moschos's writings as his guide and inspiration, William Dalrymple sets 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 takes 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.
Subjects: Ethnic relations, Description and travel, Christians, Church history, Primitive and early church, Travel, Christians, middle east, Church history, primitive and early church, ca. 30-600, Middle east, ethnic relations, Middle east, description and travel, Biography, Travel and tourism
Places: Middle East
Time periods: Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600