Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms
Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East

Gerard Russell has undertaken a highly personal and humane but also finely judged and largely objective review of the history and current status of seven 'disappearing religions': the Mandaeans, the Yazidis, the Zoroastrians, the Druze, the Samaritans, the Copts and the Kalasha of Afghanistan. Each h......more

A wonderful book about the author's interactions with seven lesser-known religions. These religions are: the Christian Copts in Egypt, the Kalasha in the remote northern valleys of Pakistan, the Zoroastrians of Iran, the Druze in Lebanon, the Samaritans in Israel, the Mandaeans of Iraq and the Yazid......more

We tend to see the Middle East as one turgid mass of Sunni and Shi'a Muslims who are all at each others' throats. There are, however, a number of isolated religious communities that, over the last two thousand years, managed to retain a tenuous independence from the emerging mainstream. These includ......more

A journalistic book, and a very good one: it's unlikely that you know much about the religions covered here (I certainly didn't), and Russell is a nice entry point. It's very mixed--some theology, some history, some sociology, but mostly travel narrative, interviews and memoir. Russell talks to and......more