Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was the granddaughter of a British baronet and the daughter of an influential iron-and-steel dynasty. She was only 3 when her mother died, but she was lucky having an affectionate and imaginative father. But this headstrong, clever child lacked challenge. As a teen she seemed to be facing a life of cocktail parties whereas her brain actually required education beyond the mandatory French, German and etiquette training.
Gertrude Bell and T.E Lawrence (top image)
Credit: Eleanor Scott ArchaeologyIn 1884 she was sent to Queen’s College and then attended Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford University. She completed their history degree in just 2 years, and was the first woman to win a 1st Class Honours in Modern History. Bell now looked for a role in life.
Gertrude spent the next 15 years in constant travel, to Persia, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico, Japan, China, Greece, Lebanon, Palestine, Burma, Egypt & Algiers. In Switzerland she developed a new passion that became central to her life: risk-taking mountaineering.
The chance to direct herself to a valuable cause only came in 1899 when she met archaeologist David Hogarth and his world of Middle East antiquity. Already fluent in Persian, French and German, Bell studied Arabic and Hebrew as well, and in 1900 she completed the first of her desert travels through Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. It was then she began learning desert rules and the social practices of nomadic Bedouin, building up valuable friendships among sheiks, warriors and Mesopotamian merchants.
But from 1900-12 her focus was on developing her skills as an archaeologist, map-maker and ethnographer in a tough part of the world. She became a specialist in Byzantine religious architecture, and her 1907 trips with Sir William Ramsay in Anatolia became the basis for her book, The Thousand and One Churches (1909).
After a long excursion along the Euphrates River, Bell discovered and surveyed an C8th Abbasid fortress at Ukhaidir. She wrote the account in her 1909/10 journeys, Amurath to Amurath. And wrote an architectural monograph, The Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir (1913).
1911 was when met the young archaeologist T.E Lawrence (1888–1935) aka Lawrence of Arabia. They shared a passion for Arabic culture and antiquities, becoming powerful forces in the next decade promoting Arabic independence from the Ottomans and from Europe. Years earlier she had had her first romance in Tehran with British foreign serviceman Viscount Henry Cadogan; sadly Cadogan soon died. Later in Turkey and Syria, she loved married British army officer Charles Doughty-Wylie, killed at Gallipoli (1915).
In 1913 Bell travelled by camel through modern Saudi Arabia and Iraq, hoping to reach the famed White City of Hayyil. She negotiated her way through contested territories, critical water shortages, hostile tribes and the shifting sands. Then she went home with maps and knowledge of Arabia that were invaluable as Europe faced WW1.
With Turkey and Germany allied, the Middle East suddenly became an area of military importance remote from British intelligence. Who were the relevant powers there? Who did they support? So in 1915 Gertrude Bell travelled to Cairo, to work with British Intelligence, compile information and form a strategy for organising Arabic resistance to Turkish rule. However she did not participate in the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 that led to the division of Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.
Bell attended the Paris Peace Conferences (1919-20) to honour the Allied promise of Arabic independence. She opposed French delegates who were setting up their mandate in Syria. And she opposed the British delegates who were creating a British mandate in Iraq and creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. She wrote about the creation of a Jewish homeland after the Balfour Declaration. “I hate Mr Balfour’s Zionist pronouncement about Greater Syria. It’s my belief that it can’t be carried out; the country is wholly unsuited to the ends the Jews have in view; a poor land, incapable of great development and with a solid two thirds of its population Mohammedan Arabs who look on Jews with contempt. It’s a wholly artificial scheme divorced from all facts and I wish it the ill-success it deserves.”
Among the 39 participants of the 1921 Cairo Conference, Sphinx of Giza
Left to right: Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell and TE Lawrence.
She went to the 1921 Cairo Conference. While other British officials argued for Iraq’s continued subservience to Britain, Bell argued forcefully for their independence, and for the promotion of a larger Arabic state from France. For a newly unified Iraqi state, Bell and D.H Lawrence recommended Faisal bin Hussein, former commander of the Arab forces that helped the British during the war. And through his charismatic leadership, a nation was forged! Bell became one of King Faisal’s most trusted advisors, and a figure beloved by Baghdadis.
Bell wrote books during her travels and left 7,000 negatives of photographs from her journeys, which arepapers at the Gertrude Bell Archive at Newcastle Uni. She photographed some of the precious ancient sites, thus providing some of the last remaining evidence of Aleppo and Raqqa, later destroyed by ISIS.
Bell’s greatest legacy was in the recovery and preservation of ancient artefacts and archaeological sites all over the Middle East. She promoted greater literacy in her role as president of Baghdad Public Library and saved thousands of ancient manuscripts. In 1922, Bell began assembling items taken by European and American archaeologists, getting the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad established in 1926. The Museum’s collection of artefacts from the 5,000+ year of Mesopotamian history were in 28 galleries. Sadly much of this was looted in the US invasion.
She died in 1926 in Baghdad at 57 from malaria, pleurisy and lung cancer. The citizens lined the streets to pay respect to this wealthy British atheist who’d dedicated her life to Arab culture.
Bell wrote books during her travels and left 7,000 negatives of photographs from her journeys, which arepapers at the Gertrude Bell Archive at Newcastle Uni. She photographed some of the precious ancient sites, thus providing some of the last remaining evidence of Aleppo and Raqqa, later destroyed by ISIS.
Bell’s greatest legacy was in the recovery and preservation of ancient artefacts and archaeological sites all over the Middle East. She promoted greater literacy in her role as president of Baghdad Public Library and saved thousands of ancient manuscripts. In 1922, Bell began assembling items taken by European and American archaeologists, getting the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad established in 1926. The Museum’s collection of artefacts from the 5,000+ year of Mesopotamian history were in 28 galleries. Sadly much of this was looted in the US invasion.
She died in 1926 in Baghdad at 57 from malaria, pleurisy and lung cancer. The citizens lined the streets to pay respect to this wealthy British atheist who’d dedicated her life to Arab culture.
Read Georgina Howell’s book Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert (2006) and Gertrude Bell, Byzantine Archaeology And The Founding Of Iraq by Dale Debakcsy.