ABSTRACT
Harry Pirie-Gordon was born on 12 February 1883, the son of Edward, twelfth Laird of Buthlaw in Aberdeenshire and his wife Louise. In 1907/1908 Harry and Harry Luke went on a tour of Greece, Turkey, the Holy Land and Syria, and Luke states in his biography that it ‘was mainly for the clash and interplay of Cross and Crescent in the Crusading Kingdom and principalities that the Asiatic part of our journey was planned’. Harry Pirie-Gordon’s photographs and maps of the area later proved useful to T. E. Lawrence. Harry Pirie-Gordon was a prominent member of the Order of St John and a great enthusiast for the history of the crusades, who travelled extensively in the Middle East, who in the early 1900s decided to found their own Order, called the Order of Sanctissima Sophia. Luke served as the first Grand Master from October 1906 to June 1907 and was then succeeded by Pirie-Gordon.
