Mapping the Holy Land
A stunning journey through the Holy Land, as told by the rare maps and prints that have long inspired Jewish, Christian, and Muslim pilgrimages. How have people imagined the Holy Land, from the earliest days of the Roman Empire to the Modern Era? While Judaism and Islam sunk roots and flourished in the territory of their founders, Christianity came of age in Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire. Ever since, Christians have yearned to walk in the footsteps of the Bible, to imagine the route of the Exodus or the places of Jesus's ministry. Muslims, too, longed to see the geographical contours of the ummah, the greater Muslim community. In response, cartographers from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age drew their inspiration from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim pilgrimages to depict, with growing confidence, the exotic locations of the Holy Land. Mapping the Holy Land is the first book to tell the thrilling story of these pilgrimages and the incredible prints and maps that their travels spawned. Illustrated with rare, hand-colored maps and engravings throughout and riveting scene-setting history, this remarkable volume from rare maps collector Neal Asbury, CEO of The Legacy Companies and host of Neal Asbury's Made in America, and National Geographic best-selling author Jean-Pierre Isbouts, coauthors of Mapping America, shows how the faithful overcame impossible odds to reach the Holy Land, and dives deep into the historical understanding of these elusive lands from Roman times up to the nineteenth century era of Ottoman Palestine.