Nicholas Dylan Ray grew up next to an American national park, whose
mountains and forests he explored to escape his troubled home. As a
young man, he left the United States, and aged twenty-two set out
on a six-month journey from France to Tibet, travelling through
Turkey. That journey forms the first chapter of this book, and led
to a career working with the Middle East. In middle age, the author
returned to the road, travelling throughout Turkey. In the six
subsequent chapters, one for each journey, he recounts his
adventures, discusses the archaeology and history of the places
visited, and the people met along the way. In Konya he is
transported by the beauty of an Arabic quotation from the Qur'an
inscribed on Rumi's tomb. In Istanbul, among Syrian refugees, he
considers the concept of charity in Islam. In Antalya, just after
the Islamic State terrorist attack in his home country of France,
he analyses the textual foundations of jihadism in Islamic law.
Within earshot of the shelling in Syria, he contemplates genocide,
and climbs Musa Dagh mountain, the last redoubt of the Armenians
who fought the Ottoman troops in 1915. In the coastal region of the
Black Sea, he examines the monastic urge in religion and
experiments with fasting during Ramadan. And finally, on the
north-western Mediterranean coast, he visits two battlefields, Troy
and Gallipoli, before returning to Istanbul for a last visit to
Sultanahmet, the centre of the Islamic world for five centuries.
During these wanderings Nicholas Dylan Ray shares with the reader
his deep knowledge of Islamic religion, culture and history,
discussing the foundational texts and their role in current events
in the Middle East. He also takes note of those who have travelled
these lands before him and reflects on the mixed experience of
travel itself.
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