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    In Search of King Solomon's Mines: A Modern Adventurer's Quest for Gold and History in the Land of the Queen of Sheba
    Unavailable
    In Search of King Solomon's Mines: A Modern Adventurer's Quest for Gold and History in the Land of the Queen of Sheba
    Unavailable
    In Search of King Solomon's Mines: A Modern Adventurer's Quest for Gold and History in the Land of the Queen of Sheba
    Ebook339 pages6 hours

    In Search of King Solomon's Mines: A Modern Adventurer's Quest for Gold and History in the Land of the Queen of Sheba

    By Tahir Shah

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A thrilling, modern-day quest into our ancient past to find a legendary historical site buried in memory and time.

    King Solomon, the Bible’s wisest king, possessed extraordinary wealth. The grand temple he built in Jerusalem was covered in gold from the porch to the inner sanctum, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. Long before H. Rider Haggard’s classic adventure novel King Solomon’s Mines unleashed gold fever more than a century ago, many had attempted to find the source of the great king’s wealth. In this new adventure, Tahir Shah tries his hand at the quest.

    Intrigued by a map he finds in a shop not far from the site of the temple, Shah assembles a multitude of clues to the location of Solomon’s mines. Some come from ancient texts, including the Septuagint, the earliest form of the Bible, and some from geological, geographical, and folkloric sources. All point across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, the land of the Queen of Sheba, Solomon’s lover, who bore Solomon’s son Menelik and founded Ethiopia’s imperial line. Shah’s trail takes him on a wild ride—by taxi, bus, camel, donkey, and Jeep—that is sure to delight all travelers.

    “A hybrid of Indiana Jones and Herodotus.” —The Sunday Times

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateDec 17, 2014
    ISBN9781628724981
    Unavailable
    In Search of King Solomon's Mines: A Modern Adventurer's Quest for Gold and History in the Land of the Queen of Sheba

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    Reviews for In Search of King Solomon's Mines

    4/5

    31 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A keen observer of culture and place, Shah sets off on a quest through largely undeveloped landscape. He hires a nominally-Christian cab driver to take him via roads often more than ruts and bare ground. I really enjoyed (?) this adventure -- one I'll never have the courage nor opportunity to take.
    • 3/5
      Makes me want to go to Ethiopia (visit Lalibela's rock-cut churches and stay in the Jerusalem guesthouse). But it's not as good as Shah's best, The Sorceror's Apprentice - the narrative here is less coherent and more rushed.
    • 5/5
      After finding an intrigueing map in a tourist shop in Old Jerusalem Shah became obsessed with finding the legendary King Solomon's Mines.He traveled extensively through Ethiopia in search of the source of King Solomon's celebrated wealth, and this is his account of those travels.The destinations that he visited were so remote and rugged that this book might well have been written in the 19th Century, but it was written just a few years ago.I'm a confirmed arm-chair adventurer. I adore reading about a time when the world was so much bigger, when there was so much left to discover. In Search of King Solomon's Mines both satisfied and inflamed my appetite for travel/adventure writing.I must read more of Shah's travel writing, not to mention H. Rider Haggard's famous novel of a similar title.
    • 3/5
      A fun book by a writer whose style is unobtrusive and light-hearted. This one takes the reader to Ethiopia and on an adventure to discover the fabled gold mines of Biblical times.
    • 5/5
      Tahir Shah is one of the best travel writers ever. Period. I want desperately want to travel with him. No, scratch that, I want to BE him. I want to get paid to go on grand adventures with the threat of death and disease in foreign countries in pursuit of impossible goals. Is this so much to ask?
      Shah’s first two books take place in India and Peru respectively. In this book, Shah finally writes about a continent near and dear to my heart – Africa. While on vacation in Isreal, Shah finds an “old map” in Ali Baba’s shop in one of the many touristy sections of town. It claims to be a map to King Solomon’s gold mines in Ophir. The location of Ophir is something of great debate between religious scholars, but Shah decides to go with the ones that advocate Ethiopia as being the mystical land of Ophir. And so, he goes in search of King Solomon’s gold mines in various regions of Ethiopia, including Gondar, Lalibela, and eventually into the mountains on the border between Ethiopia and Somalia. As in his other adventures, he finds a guide somewhat arbitrarily. In this case, he meets Samson, a taxi driver who used to be a gold miner. He happily employs Samson and takes off in search of gold. On the way, he experiences what I would consider to be hellish circumstances, but he always manages to relay these in a humorous and self-deprecating manner.
      Shah is one of the most underrated travel writers ever. WHY AREN’T YOU ALL READING HIS BOOKS? And that’s all I have to say about that.