From the Holy Mountain, by William Dalrymple
William Dalrymple is a gifted travel writer who skillfully draws on church history, theology, Middle East politics and comparative religions to tell the story of Middle East Christians. His journey begins on Greece's Mt. Athos ("the holy mountain") and follows the route taken by the monk John Moschos in 587 CE, a time when Middle Eastern Christianity was at its peak. Moschos's book The Spiritual Meadow--which Dalrymple calls "the most rich and detailed portrait that survives of the Byzantine Levant immediately before the advent of Islam"--provides a counternarrative.