The Jerusalem Quartet / Sinai Tapestry / Edward Whittemore

In 1840, Plantagenet Strongbow, the twenty-ninth Duke of Dorset, the greatest swordsman and botanist of Victorian England, leaves the family estate and disappears into the Sinai desert, carrying only a large magnifying glass and a portable sundial. Forty years later, he reappears as an Arab saint and anthropologist who has now written an extensive study of sex in the Levant – and is the secret owner of the Ottoman Empire.
Meanwhile, Skanderbeg Wallenstein has discovered the original Bible, which had been lost on a dusty shelf in the monastery library. To his astonishment, it contradicts every truth held by the three great religions. Almost a century later, Haj Harun, an antiquities dealer who has acted as a guardian of the Holy City for three thousand years, discovers the hidden Bible. Sinai Tapestry is the first volume of the Jerusalem Quartet, which continues with Jerusalem Poker, Nile Shadows and Jericho Mosaic.