Armies in the Sand: The Struggle for Mecca and Medina

A most enjoyable and entertaining book to read! I could hardly bear to stop reading it! From the book's dustjacket: [During the 1800s] "As Puritan [Wahhabi] religious fervor sweeps across Islam, God-inspired militants rise up to purge Arabia of corrupt foreign influences, to secure the Holy Places of Islam from idolatrous Westerners and western-backed Egyptian mercenaries...[This book] is full of incident, anecdote, portraits and pageantry. The Egyptian-Wahhabi War coincided with the era when the Hijaz and the Holy Places, once terra incognita in the West, were revealed in fascinating detail by a band of perceptive and sometimes disreputable travelers. The cast includes Ali Bey, John Lewis Burckhardt, Captain Richard Burton, Carsten Niebuhr, James Bruce, Eyles Irwin, Ibrahim Pasha, Thomas Eith, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Pitts, George Sadleir, Henry Salt, Captain Thornhill, Ludovico Varthema, and many others. 'Armies of the Sand' will plunge the reader into the harsh world of the desert and into the extraordinary spiritual drama enacted by the pilgrims to Mecca and Medina." The author did an excellent job in describing the horrors experienced by Westerners traveling through Arabia, the tragedy of Westerns who found themselves at the mercy of Bedouin bandits, and the harsh and cruel punishments dealt by victorious Arab soldiers over their defeated opponents. Besides the many military exploits that are recounted, the author also presents fine insights of Western travelers who left eye-popping accounts of their impressions of the dreary life of the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina, slave sales, and the temporary renting of young boys to licentious older men inside the Prophet's mosque itself.