As Puritan religious fervor sweeps across Islam, God-inspired militants rise up to purge Arabia of corrupt foreign influences, to secure the Holy Places of Islam from idolatrous Westerns and western-backed Egyptian mercenaries. The time is early in the 19th century, but the bitter clash between the Egyptians and the Wahhabis will reverberate through the 20th century. This book will plunge the reader into the harsh world of the desert and into the extraordinary spiritual drama enacted by the pilgrims to Mecca and Medina.