From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium

From the Holy Mountain

A JOURNEY

IN THE SHADOW OF

BYZANTIUM

WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

Copyright

Harper Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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

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Praise

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

For my parents with love and gratitude

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

I.

THE MONASTERY OF IVIRON, MOUNT ATHOS, GREECE 29 JUNE 1994. THE FEAST OF SS. PETER AND PAUL

II.

PERA PALAS HOTEL, ISTANBUL, TURKEY, 10 JULY 1994

III.

THE BARON HOTEL, ALEPPO, SYRIA, 28 AUGUST 1994

IV.

HOTEL CAVALIER, BEIRUT, LEBANON, 23 SEPTEMBER 1994

V.

THE MONASTERY OF MAR SABA, ISRAELI-OCCUPIED WEST BANK, 24 OCTOBER 1994

VI.

HOTEL METROPOLE, ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT, 1 DECEMBER 1994

KEEP READING

GLOSSARY

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRINCIPAL SOURCES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

Also by William Dalrymple

About the Publisher

I

THE MONASTERY OF IVIRON, MOUNT ATHOS, GREECE 29 JUNE 1994. THE FEAST OF SS. PETER AND PAUL

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.

This morning, six days after leaving the damp of a dreich Scottish June, I caught ship from Ouranoupolis, the Gate of Heaven, down the peninsula to the Holy Mountain.

We passed a monastic fishing boat surrounded by a halo of seagulls. Opposite me, three large monks in ballooning cassocks sat sipping cappuccinos under an icon of the Virgin; over their grey moustaches there rested a light foam of frothed milk. Behind them, through the porthole, you could see the first of the great Athonite monasteries rising up from sandy bays to crown the foothills of the mountain. They are huge complexes of buildings, great ash-coloured fortresses the size of small Italian hill-towns, with timber-laced balconies hanging below domed cupolas and massive, unwieldy medieval buttresses.

The first monastic foundation on Athos was established in the ninth century by St Euthymius of Salonica who, having renounced the world at the age of eighteen, took to moving around on all fours and eating grass; he later became a stylite, and took to berating his brethren from atop a pillar. Some two hundred years later – by which time St Euthymius’s fame had led to many other monasteries and sketes springing up around the saint’s original foundation – it came to the ears of the Byzantine Emperor that the monks were in the habit of debauching the daughters of the shepherds who came to the mountain to sell milk and wool. Thereafter it was decreed that nothing female – no woman, no cow, no mare, no bitch – could step within its limits.

Today this rule is relaxed only for cats, and in the Middle Ages even a pair of Byzantine Empresses were said to have been turned away from the Holy Mountain by the Mother of God herself. But 140 years ago, in 1857, the Virgin was sufficiently flexible to allow one of my Victorian great-aunts, Virginia Somers, to spend two months in a tent on Mount Athos, along with her husband and the louche Pre-Raphaelite artist Coutts Lindsay. A letter Virginia wrote on her visit still survives, in which she describes how the monks had taken her over the monastery gardens and insisted on giving her fruit from every tree as they passed; she said she tasted pomegranate, citron and peach. It is the only recorded instance of a woman being allowed onto the mountain in the millennium-long history of Athos, and is certainly the only record of what appears to have been a most unholy Athonite ménage-à-trois.

This unique lapse apart, the Holy Mountain is still a self-governing monastic republic dedicated to prayer, chastity and pure, untarnished Orthodoxy. At the Council of Florence in 1439 it was Athonite monks who refused to let the Catholic and Orthodox Churches unite in return for Western military help against the Turk; as a result Constantinople fell to the Ottomans within two decades, but Orthodoxy survived doctrinally intact. That deep pride in Orthodoxy combined with a profound suspicion of all other creeds remains the defining ideology of Athos today.

I disembarked at Daphne, caught the old bus to the monastic capital at Karyes, then walked slowly down the ancient foot-polished cobbles, through knee-high sage and clouds of yellow butterflies, to the lavra* of Iviron.

The monks had just finished vespers. As it was a lovely balmy evening, many were standing around the courtyard enjoying the shade of the cypresses next to the katholikon. Fr. Yacovos, the guestmaster, was sitting on the steps of the domed Ottoman fountain, listening to the water dripping from the spout into the bowl. He stood up when he saw me enter the courtyard.

‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’

Yacovos was a garrulous, thick-set, low-slung monk, bearded like a brigand. On his head, tilted at a jaunty angle, sat a knitted black bonnet. He took my bags and led me to the guest room, where he poured a glass of ouzo and offered me a bowl full of rose-scented loukoumi. As he did so, he chattered happily about his life in the merchant navy. He had visited Aberdeen on a Cypriot ship in the winter of 1959, he said, and had never forgotten the fog and the bitter cold. I asked where I could find the librarian, Fr. Christophoros. It had been Fr. Christophoros’s letter – surmounted by the great Imperial crest, the double-headed eagle of Byzantium – that had originally lured me to Athos. The manuscript I was looking for was in Iviron’s monastic library, he had said. Yes, it had survived, and he would try to get the Abbot’s permission for me to see it.

‘Christophoros will be down at the Arsenal at this time,’ said Fr. Yacovos, looking at his fob watch, ‘feeding his cats.’

I found the old man standing on the jetty, holding a bucket full of fishtails. A pair of enormous black spectacles perched precariously on his nose. Around him swirled two dozen cats.

‘Come, Justinian,’ called Fr. Christophoros. ‘Come now, Chrysostom, wisswisswisswiss … Come on, my darlings, ela, come …’

I walked up and introduced myself.

‘We thought you were coming last week,’ replied the monk, a little gruffly.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I had trouble getting a permit in Thessaloniki.’

The cats continued to swirl flirtatiously around Christophoros’s ankles, hissing at each other and snatching at the scattered fins.

‘Have you managed to have a word with the Abbot about my seeing the manuscript?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Christophoros. ‘The Abbot’s away in Constantinople. He’s in council with the Ecumenical Patriarch. But you’re welcome to stay here until he returns.’

‘When will that be?’

‘He should be back by the Feast of the Transfiguration.’

‘But that’s – what? – over a fortnight away.’

‘Patience is a great monastic virtue,’ said Christophoros, nodding philosophically at Kallistos, a rather scraggy, bow-legged old tom-cat who had so far failed to catch a single fishtail.

‘My permit runs out the day after tomorrow,’ I said. ‘They only gave me a three-day diamonitirion. I have to leave by the morning boat.’ I looked at the old monk. ‘Please – I’ve come all the way just to see this book.’

‘I’m afraid the Abbot insists that he must first question anyone who …’

‘Is there nothing you could do?’

The old man pulled tentatively at his beard. ‘I shouldn’t do this,’ he said. ‘And anyway, the lights aren’t working in the library.’

‘There are some lamps in the guest room,’ I suggested.

He paused for a second, indecisive. Then he relented: ‘Go quickly,’ he said. ‘Ask Fr. Yacovos: see if he’ll lend you the lanterns.’

I thanked Christophoros and started walking briskly back towards the monastery before he could change his mind.

‘And don’t let Yacovos start telling you his life story,’ he called after me, ‘or you’ll never get to see this manuscript.’

At eight o’clock, I met Fr. Christophoros outside the katholikon. It was dusk now; the sun had already set over the Holy Mountain. In my hands I held the storm lantern from my room. We walked across the courtyard to the monastic library, and from his habit Fr. Christophoros produced a ring of keys as huge as those of a medieval jailer. He began to turn the largest of the keys in the topmost of the four locks.

‘We have to keep everything well locked these days,’ said Christophoros in explanation. ‘Three years ago, in the middle of winter, some raiders turned up in motorboats at the Great Lavra. They had Sten guns and were assisted by an ex-novice who had been thrown out by the Abbot. They got into the library and stole many of the most ancient manuscripts; they also took some gold reliquaries that were locked in the sanctuary.’

‘Were they caught?’

‘The monks managed to raise the alarm and they were arrested the following morning as they tried to get across the Bulgarian frontier. But by then they had done much damage: cut up the reliquaries into small pieces and removed the best illuminations from the manuscripts. Some of the pages have never been recovered.’

Three locks had now opened without problem; and eventually, with a loud creak, the fourth gave way too. The old library doors swung open, and with the lamps held aloft, we stepped inside.

Within, it was pitch dark; a strong odour of old buckram and rotting vellum filled the air. Manuscripts lay open in low cabinets, the gold leaf of illuminated letters and gilt haloes from illustrations of saints’ Lives shining out in the light of the lantern. In the gloom on the far wall I could just see a framed Ottoman firman, the curving gilt of the Sultan’s monogram clearly visible above the lines of calligraphy. Next to it, like a discarded suit jacket, hung a magnificent but rather crumpled silk coat. Confronted dragons and phoenixes were emblazoned down the side of either lapel.

‘What is that?’ I whispered.

‘It’s John Tzimiskes’s coat.’

‘The Emperor John Tzimiskes? But he lived in the tenth century.’

Christophoros shrugged his shoulders.

‘You can’t just leave something like that hanging up there,’ I said.

‘Well,’ said Christophoros irritably, ‘where else would you put it?’

In the gloom, we found our way past rank after rank of shelves groaning with leather-bound Byzantine manuscripts, before drawing to a halt in front of a cabinet in the far corner of the room. Christophoros unlocked and opened the glass covering. Codex G.9 was on the bottom shelf, wrapped up in a white canvas satchel.

It was a huge volume, as heavy as a crate of wine, and I staggered over to a reading desk with it, while Christophoros followed with the lamp.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, as I lowered the volume gently onto the desk, ‘but are you Orthodox or heretic?’

I considered for a second before answering. A Catholic friend who had visited Athos a few years previously had warned me above all never to admit to being a Catholic; he had made this mistake, and said that had he admitted to suffering from leprosy or tertiary syphilis he could not have been more resolutely shunned than he had been after that. He told me that in my case it was particularly important not to raise the monks’ suspicions, as they have learned to distrust, above all their visitors, those who ask to see their manuscripts. They have long memories on Athos, and if the monks have never forgiven the Papacy for authorising the ransacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade over eight hundred years ago, they have certainly not forgotten the nineteenth-century bibliophiles who decimated the libraries of Athos only a century ago.