How Many Miles to Babylon?

Annotation. "After the conflicts of the Crusades, increasing numbers of western merchants established trading companies in Egypt to channel the lucrative spices and oriental luxuries into Europe. Besides these traders, Christian pilgrims also travelled to Egypt, drawn to sites associated with the Holy Family in Cairo, St. Mark in Alexandria and St. Catherine in Sinai. Many of these merchants and pilgrims left first-hand accounts of their experiences, and these stories are the basis for How Many Miles to Babylon?" "Among the visitors were Emanuel Piloti, a Venetian merchant from Crete, whose endearing personality won him widespread affection from fellow traders and Muslims alike; Christopher Harant, a nobleman from Prague, who survived the perils of the desert journey across the Sinai desert to the Monastery of St. Catherine, only to be robbed by brigands on the return journey; and Johann Wild, a German soldier captured by the Turks and sold in the Cairo slave market to a tyrannical Persian merchant." "These accounts portray an Egypt ruled by the despotic Mamluk sultans and the early Ottoman governors, a society at once cruel and sophisticated, dangerous and alluring. The Europeans' wonderment at the exotic flora and fauna, the ancient ruins of temples and pyramids and the astonishing summer rise of the Nile to irrigate the crops and replenish the lakes and waterways of Cairo is well conveyed by these travellers' tales. How Many Miles to Babylon? is a picture of the people, customs and culture of Egypt from the fourteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.