Britain and the Arab Middle East

by Cooper, Lisa;

  Once her measurements had been made, Bell drew the ground floor of the whole complex out to scale, lying on the floor of one of the cool, shady rooms of the castle's stable, her own tents too dusty during the daytime for such careful work.30 She also measured the two upper storeys of the castle on the day before her departure. In all, she completed the entire task with some pride, remarking that her plan worked out to within 40 cm of Mr Watt's measurements taken on the first day.31 It was this plan that was reproduced in the first two of Bell's publications to describe her findings at Ukhaidir, these appearing in 1910 and 1911, respectively.32

  Fig. 3.3 A page from Gertrude Bell’s field notebook, showing her sketch plan of the south-eastern sector of the Ukhaidir palace and her measurements. Bell is holding this notebook in Fig. 3.4.

  In the early months of 1911, during her second journey to Mesopotamia, Bell included a short stop at Ukhaidir, staying three days to take additional measurements and photographs. By this time, the Jawf Arabs had left, replaced by the Zagarit – a sub-group of the Shammar tribe – whose tents were pitched nearby. During the day, when Bell was working on her measurements, the Zagarit would appear in the castle, sitting in a circle around her expedition's tents in the inner courtyard, sewing new shirts and watching her progress.33 It would appear that Bell had possession of a plane table on this trip, for she mentions using it to make a plan of the castle and to assist with taking elevations, a task that consumed much of her time.34 Even with this effort, however, she remained satisfied with her earlier 1909 plan, describing it as ‘wonderfully accurate’ and possessing only one or two mistakes.35 For photography, she took shots of architectural features that she had missed in 1909 and used a telephoto lens for additional close-range details.36

  Fig. 3.4 Bell recording one of Ukhaidir’s walls in her field notebook. Her travelling companions are holding her measuring tape, rifles slung over their shoulders. Bell noted: ‘nothing will induce them to leave their rifles in the tents. They are quite intolerably inconvenient; the measuring tape is forever catching round the barrel or getting up in the stock, but I can’t persuade them to lay the damnable things down for an instant’ (GB letter to her family, 29 March 1909).

  Description of Ukhaidir

  Bell provided descriptions of the location, layout and architecture of the palace and mosque of Ukhaidir in various publications, but her final report on the site, published in 1914, was the longest and most detailed.37 Because the palace is made up of many interior rooms, corridors and open spaces, it was necessary for her to devise a system for distinguishing individual spaces and thus facilitate the matching of text descriptions of these spaces with associated plans and photographs. Bell appears to have abandoned her earlier, lettered room designations in favour of the numbered spaces employed by Oskar Reuther after he had visited Ukhaidir and published his own report in 1912.38 Reuther's numbering system was also later adopted by K.A.C. Creswell,39 and it is the system used here to locate and describe various spaces within the palace (Fig. 3.5). Given that Bell, Reuther and Creswell have all provided thorough, reliable descriptions of Ukhaidir's extensive architecture, mine is a much abbreviated report based mainly on Bell's description and plans. It is intended to highlight the palace's complexity and underscore Bell's remarkable achievement in recording it as accurately as she did in the few days she spent at the site. Creswell's own account of Ukhaidir, based on visits he made 21 years or more after Bell, does little to augment her architectural observations and descriptions, and his photos duplicate, sometimes to lesser effect, her detailed and informative shots. The description of the layout of the complex provided here, along with its accompanying plan (Fig. 3.5), should also help to place Bell's architectural analyses, partially described later in the chapter, within a more comprehensible context.

  Fig. 3.5 Plan of Ukhaidir, adapted from Bell’s published plan of the castle. The plan is based entirely on her own measurements and sketch plans undertaken at the site during her 1909 and 1911 visits. The numbers for the interior spaces, however, were adopted from Oskar Reuther’s numbering scheme for Ukhaidir.

  Located about 45 km south-west of the city of Kerbela, the castle of Ukhaidir is situated in what is largely a lifeless desert, although the nearby Wadi al-Ubaid, which runs past the site, would have provided it with fresh water in antiquity.40 Bell conjectured, probably correctly, that more favourable, moister environmental conditions in earlier times may have supported various fowl, boar and other wild animals, and that the residents of Ukhaidir would have found ample game to hunt.41

  Ukhaidir itself consists principally of a large and high rectangular enclosure wall made of thin stone slabs and fortified with round towers, within which a palace structure and a smaller subsidiary building were set (Fig. 3.6).42 Bell recognized the defensive character of the enclosure wall by features such as narrow window slits or loopholes, located in the towers and the wall in between, through which arrows or other missiles could be discharged.43 She also noted gaps in the floor at each arrow slit – machicolations – which were another means by which missiles could be launched at the enemy standing at the foot of the wall.44

  An arched gate on the northern side of the outer enclosure wall gave immediate access to the palace's main entrance, which was set almost directly inside the wall. The palace was itself furnished with towered walls and constructed of the same stone masonry as the outer enclosure, with baked brick used only for some of the vaults.45 It has been pointed out that today the structure looks crude and inelegant, but one has to imagine that originally most of its interior wall surfaces would have been coated with a layer of smooth plaster and in some cases even raised stucco designs, providing a more polished, albeit somewhat sombre, opulence to the palace's interior.46

  The focal point at the heart of the Ukhaidir palace interior was an open court, dubbed the ‘Court of Honour’. One accessed this court through a series of domed and vaulted spaces47 that led from the northern gate, the most impressive being the ‘Great Hall’ (Fig. 3.7). This grand two-storeyed space, the largest covered room in the palace, supported a magnificent, slightly pointed, brick vault whose construction greatly intrigued Bell and assisted in her proper identification and date of the palace as a whole (and about which more will be discussed later).48 Of the central ‘Court of Honour’, that its elegant façade consisted of blind arcades on all sides (Fig. 3.8).49 While the east, west and south sides of the court were one storey high, the north side, from which one had entered through the front gate and the ‘Great Hall’, comprised an imposing three-storeyed block, each level equipped with various living spaces accessed by stairs or ramps accessed from the ground floor beside the ‘Great Hall’ (Fig. 3.9).50

  Fig. 3.6 Bell’s photograph of the south-eastern corner of the interior of Ukhaidir’s enclosure wall, showing the remains of a staircase leading to an outwardly projecting corner round tower. On either side, blind, slightly pointed arches face the interior. The narrow windows above, accessed from a vaulted walkway that is no longer preserved in this corner, served as slits from which arrows or other missiles could be discharged. The square holes visible in the stonework mark the places where wooden ties once existed.

  The façade in the south side of the Court of Honour led to some of the principal rooms of the palace. In the centre, a wide and tall arched doorway – possibly one of the earliest examples of a so-called pishtaq (a square framed archway, common in later Persian architecture, used to mark grand entrances)51– gave access to a deep, brick, barrel-vaulted chamber, which Bell dubbed an iwan, or principal reception hall (Room 29) (Fig. 3.10). Doorways on either side opened to flanking Rooms 31, 32, 41 and 42, placed at right angles to the iwan, while a doorway at the rear gave access to Room 30.52

  With their elaborate stuccoed vaults, Bell observed that Rooms 31 and 32 were among the most important spaces within the palace as a whole. It is conceivable that these chambers were used as formal living rooms, where guests could sit on the floor on cushions, their backs against t
he wall, the centre of the back wall being the place of honour.53 The vault in Room 31 featured a corrugated stucco pattern and a decoration of variously embellished square coffers in the ceiling, while blind windows marked the ends of the room.54 Even more charming and original were the ceiling decoration and vaulting system of Room 32 (Fig. 3.11). As in Room 31, the barrel vaults, set between transverse arches, were embellished with stucco patterns, but here they comprised an even more elaborate arrangement of coffered designs and corrugations. Some of the vaults terminated against semi-domes, the corners of which were resolved by small recessed squinches or horizontal brackets.55 On the wall between the arches, as well as at each end of the room, pairs of elaborately embellished blind windows further contributed to the distinctive character of this chamber (Fig. 3.12).56

  Bell observed that the entire central block of spaces just described – namely, the Court of Honour, the principal iwan and flanking reception rooms, as well as additional chambers surrounding Room 30 at the rear – was enclosed by a narrow roofed corridor (Corridor 28).57 The corridor created a physical divide between this central block of the palace, which clearly represented its ceremonial heart, and the remaining components. Of these remaining sections, four suites of living rooms – otherwise referred to as baits (from the Arabic for ‘houses’) – located on either side of the central ceremonial block filled much of the interior palace space. These units had central courts (B, C, G and H), at each end of which were long reception rooms flanked by living room chambers, referred to by Bell as ‘liwan groups’ (henceforth, ‘iwan groups’).58 Creswell conjectured that the groups of rooms facing the south would form the winter residence, while those facing north would be used in the summer.59 To the north and south of the iwan groups, the baits were completed by the presence of rectangular chambers with barrel vaults pierced with terracotta pipes, and central open spaces (Rooms 47, 51, 56, 60, 74, 78, 83 and 87). It is highly likely these spaces served as kitchens.60

  Fig. 3.7 Bell’s photograph of the Great Hall (no. 7), facing north, with its recessed arched doorway in the centre leading back to the main gateway. Directly above, a shallow semi-dome is flanked by two niches. Even further above, three windows provide light into Room 88, located on the second storey of the palace.

  Fig. 3.8 Bell’s photograph of the north-western interior corner of the blind arcaded Court of Honour. The multi-storeyed northern gateway block rises up on the right at right angles to the single-level western side of the palace. In the foreground, tribesmen of the Zagarit, whom Bell encountered during her visit in 1911, are clustered around one of her tents. Bell’s servant, Fattuh, is standing at the tent’s entrance.

  Bell determined that the arrangement of rooms in the north-western corner of the palace comprised the edifice's mosque (about which more will be said below). It consisted principally of a rectangular court surrounded on three sides by covered porticoes. On the north side were the principal doors into the mosque court (Fig. 3.13). The vaulting on the southern arcade was elaborately decorated with stucco, not unlike that observed in Rooms 31 and 32 in the palace.61 Nine transverse arches carried across the southern side, each decorated with coffers of stepped lozenges, inside of which were smaller circular recessed coffers.62 Between the arches, the vaulting was decorated in corrugated stucco. At either end of the vaulted arcade were two fluted semi-domes, each divided down the centre by a transverse arch decorated with stucco, while fluted squinches at the corners effected the curvature of the springing of the vault (Fig. 3.14).63 In the centre of the south wall of the mosque was the mihrab, consisting of a rectangular niche covered by an undecorated semi-dome (Fig. 3.23).64

  Bell observed and planned still other areas of the palace, including Court A in the north-eastern corner, surrounded by small chambers (Rooms 20–6),65 and Court E at the southern end, this giving access to another iwan group (Rooms 63–5) and a kitchen to the west (Room 69).66 To the south-east was Court D, accessed from Corridor 28 by a groined vaulted vestibule and also entered by a doorway from the palace yard outside.67 A building known variously as the ‘East Annex’ or ‘Inner Annex’ existed to the east of the palace in the yard, within the fortified enclosure. Although this structure was probably a later addition, it shared much in common with the palace, so it was not likely to have been constructed much later.68 As the internal arrangement of the rooms of the East Annex closely resembles the suite of rooms on the southern side of the Court of Honour (Rooms 140–7), it is conceivable that the East Annex functioned in a similar way to the palace's ceremonial suite, acting as the living and reception chambers of a person of honour.

  Fig. 3.9 The second (a) and third storeys (b) of the northern gateway block of the Ukhaidir palace, adapted from Bell’s 1914 published plan.

  Other structures existed outside the palace and beyond its enclosing wall. The Northern Annex is a complex of rooms located just to the north of the palace enclosure, one of its walls fortified with solid round towers, to the east of which is a large courtyard and 15 vaulted rooms.69 A small, two-chambered bath, or hammam, was also found outside the enclosure, this located at some distance from the north-east of the palace. Although now entirely fallen, the bath's principal chamber would have been vaulted. Buttresses on the outside of the building helped to relieve the thrust of the vault, the only occurrence of this feature at Ukhaidir.70

  A number of further walls enclose the Ukhaidir palace complex, these most clearly seen in an aerial mosaic provided by the Royal Air Force at the request of K.A.C. Creswell. Today these walls appear only as low mounded lines above the ground.71 Bell observed many of these wall lines herself while standing on the top of the palace, and her own notes on these features probably provided the incentive for Creswell's later inquiries.72 It is conceivable that the second, outer enclosure allowed camels to graze near the complex without risk of them escaping or being stolen.73 The aerial view also discerned a number of rectangular enclosures between the northern wall and the edge of the Wadi Ubaid, these probably representing cultivated plots surrounded by low banks that would have helped to contain irrigated water.74

  Fig. 3.10 Reuther’s drawing of the southern part of the Court of Honour shows his reconstruction of the pishtaq, the high rectangular frame set above the arched doorway leading into Room 29, the palace’s principal iwan. It is surprising that none of Bell’s photographs provide a complete view of the surviving stonework of this important southern façade; one must turn to either Reuther’s or Creswell’s reports for such images.

  Other Early Twentieth-Century Visitors to Ukhaidir

  Leaving Ukhaidir after her first visit in late March 1909, Bell felt triumphant, having carefully planned, described and photographed the magnificent castle and all of its facets. To be sure, other European travellers had passed by the castle before her, but she thought that she was the first visitor to take serious interest in its many architectural details and to produce a complete record of it. She would remain buoyant about her discovery of Ukhaidir until the very end of her Near Eastern journey in July 1909, by which time she had reached Constantinople and was preparing for her return to England. While dining with officials from various European embassies, Bell spoke with a French diplomat who knew that an individual by the name of Louis Massignon had visited the site of Ukhaidir only the year before and had published his findings in a short French journal article.75 Although this unfortunate news may have come as a shock to Bell, who seemed so desperate to claim the honour of Ukhaidir's discovery for herself, her letters reveal no serious agitation. Her diary entries around this period in July do not even mention the fact that she had effectively been scooped. One might suppose that she contented herself with the fact that she had produced complete, accurate plans of the Ukhaidir complex and intended to write a comprehensive report, something Massignon had not endeavoured. To be sure, on 31 March 1908, Massignon had visited Ukhaidir for just one hour because his group had come under attack by a group of Arab tribesmen. He managed to return again to Ukhaidir on 3 April
with a larger escort, but, probably fearing further attacks, spent only a day taking a few measurements of the palace and photographing its remains. Not surprisingly, Massignon's reports and plans of Ukhaidir contain several inaccuracies and omissions, and his postulated date for the construction of the palace in the sixth century of the Sasanian period was ultimately proven incorrect.76

  Fig. 3.11 Reuther’s reconstruction of the interior vaulting in the ceremonial Room 32, showing the vault to be divided down its length by four transverse arches. In between are three stuccoed barrel vaults, each treated differently and terminating against walls distinguished by semi-domes, squinches, coffered recesses and blind windows.

  Fig. 3.12 Bell’s photograph of the south wall, east end of Room 32. The blind windows are framed by engaged columns and accentuated by stucco mouldings of zigzags or simple fillets. Sunk into the centre of each blind window was the motif of an upright spear, while above was further decoration in the form of sunken rosettes or half-circles.

  Massignon was not the only individual to erode Bell's sole claim on the desert castle. It seems that in her absence from Mesopotamia, between 1909 and her second visit to Ukhaidir in March 1911 to complete her plans and photographs, German members of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft had visited Ukhaidir and were planning their own publication on the castle. Their report appeared shortly thereafter, in 1912, having been principally authored by Oskar Reuther but with the assistance of Friedrich Wetzel and Karl Müller, all members of the Babylon excavation team. Bell learned of the German visit in March 1911, when she met Reuther and Müller at the Babylon Expedition house just after her second visit to Ukhaidir.77 Her letters and diaries make no mention of what again must have been a startling and disappointing revelation. Moreover, unlike Massignon on his brief visit, the Germans had spent several days at Ukhaidir, and with their highly developed architectural skills they had produced impeccable plans of the castle's every inch. Such a report would surely rival, if not surpass in its careful details, Bell's own record of the complex. Nevertheless, Bell remained surprisingly circumspect, at least in print. Her diary entry on 10 March 1911 simply notes that Reuther showed her his plans of Ukhaidir, and in a letter she writes that she found all the German team members ‘as kind as could be’.78 When her final report on Ukhaidir was published in 1914, she gracefully recalled that the Germans showed her their drawings and discussed with her Ukhaidir's details. She was grateful to be allowed to use some of their illustrations for her own publication and expressed her admiration for ‘their masterly production’.79