The Abyssinian Proof

"Constantinople, May 1453. As seven thousand armed men prepare to defend Byzantium against the invading Turks, Isaak Metochites and his family are entrusted with a silver reliquary carved with the figure of a weeping angel and an inscription: Behold the Proof of Chora, Container of the Uncontainable." "Four hundred years later, in Ottoman Istanbul, the local magistrate, Kamil Pasha, is plagued by thefts of antiquities from mosques and churches, which quickly appear for sale in Europe. Christians and Muslims blame each other for the desecrations, and the city is on the verge of riots. Adding to the tensions is a series of murders in which all the bodies bear the same distinctive mark." "Sources lead Kamil to a hidden sect descended from Abyssinian slaves living in an abandoned cistern in Istanbul's gritty underworld. The reemergence there of the ancient reliquary and its subsequent theft set off a brutal race between those sworn to protect it and those who will stop at nothing to gain its explosive secret that could rewrite history." "As Kamil uncovers the sect's secrets and its connection to the reliquary, his most cherished beliefs about his family and his past are also destroyed. Caught up in the savage struggle over the mysterious box, Kamil finds not only his life in danger but his moral compass as well." --Book Jacket.