The Crossing Place: A Journey among the Armenians

Well written and thought provoking book. Highly recommend

Interesting perspective on the history of the Armenian people. Anyone going to Armenia should read this book.

Marsden captures a time and place (and a people), blending travel and history that throws a light on something barely touched in other travel literature. So much of today's travel writing seems gimmicky, people striving to do something because they can. Whereas Marsden is one of those travellers who becomes possessed by an idea, an obsession to learn something that they can best understand through a journey.

This book came highly recommended as another "must read" travel book. Personally I was disappointed. I felt that the writer lacked emotional maturity, perhaps not so surprising considering the young age at which he undertook the work. He travelled through the regions of the Armenian diaspora and managed to track many interesting informants, sometimes in most unlikely circumstances. Yet for all that, I would have wanted more of actual Armenian history. Besides, for me, there was an underlying taint - an outsider making hay out of someone else's failed harvest. I would rather read a book like this by an Armenian. Maybe there is one and I am yet to discover it.

More than an engaging travel narrative by an Englishman travelling across the Middle East, Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union and finally Armenia to discover and understand Armenians, this book tells the stories of Armenian people, stories told by different people in different countries, among different cultures, united by common heritage, language and religion, and perhaps the greatest tragedy in our history - the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The subject of Genocide is inseparable from the storyline, yet this book is not a depressive reading but an absorbing story of one man's desire to understand another culture, distinct yet interwoven with nations and peoples across Europe, Middle East, and beyond.

A very important book exploring the Armenian holocaust and diaspora. Well written and well informed.

Philip Marsden's lyrical book The Crossing Places - A Journey Among the Armenians describes the lives, trials, defeats and triumphs of these people, who are still scarred from their genocide in 1915, and the loss of the centre of their spirituality and faith - Mt Ararat - to the perpetrators of that slaughter, the Turks. The Armenians, like the Jews, are an ancient race. They have been scattered across the world, and like the Jews, have established for themselves an influence entirely disproportionate to their population in almost every region they inhabit. Marsden has followed their fortunes across twenty countries with a becoming empathy and grace. However, he has let his prejudice colour his descriptions of the few Turks he meet: they appear in his eyes shifty, xenophobic, disdainful. This reminds me of the old story about a traveller arriving at a new town and asking a resident what the townfolk were like. The resident wants to know how the traveller found the people in the previous town. "Oh, they were wonderful", gushes the traveller. "Welcoming and friendly, honest and open." The resident tells him he would find this town pretty much the same. A while later, another traveller appears and asks the same resident what the townspeople are like."What were the people like in the last town you were in?" asks the resident."Oh, they were a bunch of crooks, inhospitable and cruel", says the traveller."Well", says the resident. "You'll find the people in this town are more or less the same."

Excellent, have understood now what is going on in that country. Very good read.

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A fellow Amazon reviewer introduced me to the works of Philip Marsden. I recently read and reviewed  Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place , a detailed, fascinating examination of several dimensions of Cornwall, from renovating an old farmstead to a walk from one end to the other which is rich in the history and economics of the places involved.The Armenians. A people who call their native land Hayastan. A People who have struggled to maintain their identity, given some very bad geography, wedged between much larger empires: Persian, Ottoman and Russian. They were the very first nation, as a whole, to become Christian, just a bit before the Emperor Constantine adopted this new religion for the Roman Empire. They have maintained their unique brand of Christianity, which is neither Roman nor Orthodox, and have been repeatedly buffeted by their neighbors who adopted Islam. They have endured two crushing events that have almost destroyed them as a people, creating two waves of diaspora. I knew one Armenian, a medical doctor, from Aleppo, who could read Arabic, spoke several languages, and I knew, in a vague sort of way that his family arrived in Aleppo due to the “discourtesy” of the Turks. Even today, I kick myself for not asking him more about his background. In ways, Marsden filled in some blanks.The year was 1991. Marsden undertook a journey that was worthy of the great European explorers of prior centuries. In many ways he just had to “wing it.” On the other hand, he prepared for it better than 99.9% of travelers. He read extensively about the Armenians. He obtained letters of introduction. Most importantly, he went to the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem, and learned Armenian. Marsden was 30 years old when he commenced his journey. He would travel through 20 countries, seeking out members of the diaspora, before finally arriving in Armenia. He commenced in London, supposedly obtaining some visas through the “Armenian connections” that generally served him well, but the visas did not arrive as scheduled. From Venice he traveled through the Balkans to Cyprus, thence to Lebanon and Syria, north across Turkey, through Bulgaria, Romania, and around the northern shore of the Black Sea, eventually reaching the small enclave of a country that is modern day Armenia, just as the Soviet Union, of which it was a part, was collapsing. The “winging it” part involved numerous countries in which there was active fighting among various factions, such as Lebanon and Syria, as well Armenia itself. Banditry was more the problem in Romania. And Marsden managed to enter the Soviet Union, in its dying days, without a visa, and crossed the entire portion of it above the Black Sea. In several areas, from Syria to Armenia, “inquisitive lone tourists” are assumed to be spies, working for the CIA or the Russians, depending on the perspective and locale.When Europe was in its “Dark Ages” following the collapse of the Roman Empire, Armenia was one of the bright spots of civilization. This came to a crushing end via the sword of the Seljuk Turks in 1064, when they invaded and destroyed the Armenia capital at Ani. I highly recommend looking at the images of the Cathedral at Ani, easily available on the internet, still standing, ever so desolate and damaged, a millennium later. Ani is in far eastern Turkey today, but visible from modern Armenia, as is their symbol, that adores so many of the homes of the diaspora: Mount Ararat. The northern branch of the first Armenian diaspora scattered as far as Romania; Marsden seeks out and talks with the descendants. In 1915 the Ottoman Empire was fighting on the side of the Central Powers in the First World War. They distrusted the Armenian Christian minority in Anatolia, around Lake Van. They forced them out, slaughtering perhaps a million in the process, a genocide that the United States still will not recognize, “for geopolitical reasons.” The author seeks out the descendants of this genocide in Aleppo, but also travels to far eastern Syria, visiting places such as Deir es Zor, where wells were stuffed full of Armenians, as well as the Euphrates River, where their emaciated bodies were often thrown. Marsden provides an important preface to the 2015 edition of his book, noting that Deir es Zor fell to the forces of ISIS in the summer of 2014. The fall underscores that Marsden undertook the journey when he could, was a bit lucky at times (for example, not being taken as a hostage in Beirut, when that was the custom), and did see areas of the world that are now still closed to us…particularly the lone inquisitive Western traveler, who could so easily be mistaken for a spy.In terms of rating this book, there is no question that I would give him my special rating of 6-stars for the journey alone; likewise, he deserves this rating for his unique erudition, particularly for being 30 at the time, and imparting to me so much that I did not know. However, I have concerns on “the pass” that he gave to Gurdjieff, the author of  Meetings with Remarkable Men . Marsden and I read this book, when both of us were around the same age. I was amazed that this book, with so many outlandish tales, for example, of walking on stilts through the Gobi desert, was respected and well-read. In my opinion, Gurdjieff is the classic “guru – con artist.” Marsden himself must suspect something is amiss, but, concerning Gurdjieff’s claimed stay at Ani, lets it go with a far milder: “Whether this story is true or not, it holds a considerable symbolic weight” (p. 192).Overall, a fascinating, informative read. 5-stars, plus Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of PlaceMeetings with Remarkable Men

The armenian tragedy following the "genocide" is shown in all its past and present aspects. A comprehensive view on the Armenians in their homeland as well as in other parts of the Middle East where they started a new life. The history of a small but resistant Nation is told vividly incorporating both hapiness and sorrow. An elegy to the human faith in his own power and will to survive against all odds.

Armed with a broad reading of the tragic banishment from their spiritual homeland, Philip Marsden travels around the Mediterranean to talk with surviving pockets of the Armenian diaspora. He finds a haunting allegiance to the nostalgia of a proud and unique culture, the first state to adopt Christianity (in the 3rd century). The magnificent churches that they raised in the Middle Ages still stand in lonely yet splendid isolation in their abandoned ancient holy lands around Mount Ararat on the borders of modern-day Turkey and Iran and in the ex-Soviet states of Georgia, Azerbaijan and present-day Armenia. Marsden undertakes an arduous and exhausting journey, both emotionally and physically but manages to capture both the poignancy and the humour of his quest. The writing is not quite of the caliber of Colin Thubron, but is pretty darned good. Great as armchair reading, his story is a fascinating and erudite insight into the terrible persecution the Armenians. But it might, as it did for me, prompt you to take out a map, buy an air ticket, brush off your old walking boots and set off to wander in the shadows the ancient churches and monasteries of an almost-lost civilization.

Fascinated with the Armenians, their civilization, and their resilience in the face of numerous efforts throughout history to eradicate them, Philip Marsden toured Armenia and some of the places the various Armenian diasporas took them. His book, THE CROSSING PLACE, can be given a modest recommendation to anyone interested in travel writing and a somewhat heartier recommendation to those interested in the Armenians.Most of Marsden's trip occurred around 1991. His travels and account take place in three general regions: the Near East (Cyprus, Jerusalem, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey); Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, and the eastern shore of the Black Sea); and, finally, Armenia itself.The book contains a history of sorts of Armenia and the Armenians, albeit in somewhat disjointed fashion. A little known fact is that Armenia was the first country to make Christianity the state religion (in 301 CE). Located on the frontiers of clashing empires and religions, the Armenians have been overrun and expelled time and again. If possible, many return, and most of those who don't stubbornly maintain their Armenian identity and character in exile. Over the millennia they have been the victims of several genocides, the most recent large-scale one, in 1915, at the hands of the Turks (something that most Turks deny more vehemently than all but the worst Holocaust-deniers). In his travels, Marsden visits several sites of the worst massacres -- Shadaddie, Deir az Zor, and Ras ul-Ain -- and he talks to several survivors of the Turkish genocide. Even though I have become rather inured to twentieth-century man's inhumanity, some of these Armenian tales nonetheless provoked a feeling of nausea.Violence against the Armenians continues to this day. While Marsden was travelling in Armenia, he witnessed or was close to attacks by the Russians, the Turks, and the Azeris. And in the years since 1991, Armenians have been removed (either through murder or flight) from some of their places of refuge in Syria.THE CROSSING PLACE also contains much about the cultural achievements of the Armenians, again, however, in somewhat haphazard fashion. Of those cultural highpoints, the area that receives the most attention is architecture (and the extraordinary masonry that makes that architecture possible).The overarching question about the Armenians that Marsden tries to address in the book is: What makes them endure as Armenians, even after being alienated from their homeland for generations? Unfortunately, Marsden never reaches a satisfactory answer. About the best he comes up with is: "Sometimes it seems to me as if long ago, far back in a collective past that pre-dates most of the world's existing ethnic groups, the Armenians discovered a secret, and swore never to disclose it but hand it down from generation to generation, wherever they happened to be. It's a secret that's been so closely guarded for so many centuries, that what remains is less the secret itself than the habit of keeping it."About six months ago, I read Marsden's "Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of Place". It was one of the ten best books I read in 2016. THE CROSSING PLACE is not as good. The Philip Marsden who wrote it (back in 1993) clearly is less mature both as a writer and a person. Too often the writing lapses into the melodramatic or mushy; a few of the conclusions seem facile and pat; and, as mentioned, the book is rather disjointed. Still, not enough is known or written about the Armenians, and on that score the book is to be heartily commended.