Palestine and Egypt--Allon, Henry

MANUSCRIPT, folio (365 x 290mm.), c.200 pages, ILLUSTRATED with c.45 ALBUMEN PRINTS, including photographs by Francis Bedford, Francis Frith and John Cramb, and 6 CARTES-DE-VISITE of the author and his travel companions, and c.75 prints of views in Egypt, Palestine and Syria; the manuscript details a pilgrimage tour of Egypt and the Holy Land as part of a group of British Nonconformist ministers from 7 February to 22 May 1865, providing a detailed and learned account with extensive historical and theological references, describing Cairo, climbing the Great Pyramid, an expedition to Sinai (6 March, "...We resumed our pilgrim-march early in the morning, guided by the camel-tracks, meeting no human being, and seeing no indications of civilized life...") including a stay at St Catherine's Monastery, then on to Jerusalem, describing the principal religious sites including the Wailing Wall (31 March, "...There were perhaps 50 or 60 present. One, a rabbi, was reading aloud prayers and scriptures, - a number of Jews were seated round him and in various parts of the quadrangle, repeating the responses; - many were kneeling against the old stones, passionately sobbing. Old men with venerable beards, and old women with tottering steps, burying their faces in the broken interstices of the wall, & lamenting that 'the heathen are come into their inheritance', and 'How long, Lord, how long?'..."), the Dome of the Rock, and with a very critical account of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ("...Jerusalem, indeed, is full of these lying wonders of priests and monks..."), then visiting Bethlehem, the Jordan Valley (..."The whole appearance ... was of great sterility, except the green fields around Jericho, some ten miles northward, - the green strip which marked the course of the Jordan, near to Moab..."), Nablus ("...a long narrow town, fringed all round with olives, pomegranate, & other trees...") where the group attended a Samaritan Jewish service ("...the recitative often broke into a chant, and the harsh staccato jerking effects were most striking...") and saw the famous Abisha Scroll of the Samaritan Pentateuch, then on to Nazareth, Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, Damascus, Baalbek ("a wonderful scene of departed glory"), and homeward via Ephesus, Constantinople (describing Hagia Sophia as "perhaps the most magnificent temple of worship ever erected"), and Athens, with hand coloured title page, introduction, three sectional titles, and occasional initial miniatures and vignettes, preface dated 1866, contemporary black morocco gilt, binding repaired and rebacked

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AN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT ACCOUNT OF TRAVELS THROUGH EGYPT, SINAI, PALESTINE, SYRIA, LEBANON, RHODES, TURKEY AND GREECE IN 1865, ILLUSTRATED WITH PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS. Henry Allon (1818-1892) was for nearly fifty years minister at the Union Chapel, Islington. He was a highly cultured man who reviewed widely, edited the British Quarterly Review, and wrote a number of hymns. He was a representative of the broad-minded and ecumenical strand of British Nonconformity, as is amply shown by the sensitive responses to other religions, especially Judaism, that is found in this record of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Indeed, whilst he is consistently respectful when describing Jewish and Muslim sites, he treats the claims of certain Christian churches to be the site of Biblical events with considerable scepticism.