Indians at Herod’s Gate A Jerusalem Tale

01 October, 2014

Navtej Sarna

Rupa Rainlight

208 pages, Rs. 500

Eight hundred years ago, Baba Farid, the great Sufi saint, visited Jerusalem, freshly wrested back for Islam from the Crusaders by Saladin. The saint meditated there for forty days in an underground room. Later, a hospice was set up around that room for Indian pilgrims and soldiers in the holy city. Sarna sifts through fact and fable to tease out the unique story of the hospice, and the Ansari family that has cared for it over the centuries.