| October 2006 - Joan Taylor's
latest book has local launch on Friday 10th November 2006
The
Englishman, the Moor and the Holy City: The True Adventures of an
Elizabethan Traveller
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In
1601, an English sea captain sets off from London in his ship to
trade. Leaving behind a wife and children, he voyages to Alexandria,
then overland to Cairo. There he forsakes his enterprise for a new
quest: to see the Holy City of Jerusalem. He travels by camel
caravan to Gaza, encountering a Bedouin ambush along the way. But
Henry Timberlake then meets a companion who will change his life. A
Moroccan Moor going to Mecca saves Timberlake's life, not once, but
twice. They become travelling companions as the Moor detours to join
the Englishman in his journey of discovery. In this fascinating true
story of a
seventeenth-century
adventurer, Joan Taylor explores the relationship between East and
West, Islam
and
Christianity at the foundation of the modern world. She provides a
vivid picture of Jerusalem and the Middle East at the time of the
Ottoman Empire, as well as Elizabethan London, and brings to life
the true tale of fellowship between two very different people whose
paths
happened
to cross on the road to adventure... |
| Four
hundred years ago, only the desperate, feckless or extremely
pious chose to leave the safety of home in England and travel
into distant lands. Based
on a manuscript account of a journey to Jerusalem made in
1601, Joan Taylor’s compelling new book charts the
adventures of one such, the Elizabethan mariner Henry
Timberlake. At the heart of the story is Timberlake’s
extraordinary relationship with an un-named Moor who rescues
the Englishman from imprisonment at the hands of the Ottoman
authorities. Supplemented by extensive research and her own
travels in the region, Taylor’s gripping account brings to
life an age when personal contact proved more powerful than
national or religious differences. This fascinating story is
told with vigour and provides a timely reminder of how
friendship can flourish between Christian and Muslim.
Gerald
MacLean, author of The Rise of Oriental Travel:
English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580-1720 (2004), and
editor of Re-Orienting the Renaissance: Cultural Encounters
with the East (2005).
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The
Englishman, the Moor and the Holy City is a kind of
Rough Guide to Palestine in the Seventeenth Century, full of
information about the hardships and exotic marvels to be
encountered on the way to the Holy City. In 1601 Henry
Timberlake, Protestant, merchant and 'great Traviller', sets
out on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Joan Taylor shadows him
and his charitable companion 'the Moor' and, in a brilliant
exercise in historical empathy and close reading, uses their
journeyings as a way into a lost world of faith, culture,
commerce and banditry.
Robert
Irwin, author of For Lust of
Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies (2006); The
Penguin Anthology of
Classical Arabic Literature
(2006); The Alhambra (2005).
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