Britain and the Arab Middle East

by Cooper, Lisa;

  Unlike in German and French academic circles, where many were acquainted with Gertrude Bell and her archaeological research, English-speaking scholars knew little about her, as in the early decades of the twentieth century, Bell's was practically the sole English voice in the study of the architecture of the Sasanian and Early Islamic periods.229 She had few colleagues who possessed the background knowledge or interest in the subject to take an informed critical stance on her work. Of scholars of antiquity who reviewed Palace and Mosque, one was clearly a Romanist, who predictably highlighted her investigations on the influence of Roman imperial architectural forms on Ukhaidir.230 The other notable reviews came from Creswell, who although still a relatively unknown scholar in 1914, recognized Bell's achievement, noting that ‘under each heading Miss Bell, with the whole available material at her finger tips, exhausts her subject, and that the book is a model for all time of the scientific method’.231

  Anyone doubting Creswell's positive regard for Bell's research needs only look through the pages of his Early Islamic Architecture, published a few decades later, to see how extensively he appropriated many of her facts and conclusions. As noted earlier, in Chapter 3, although Creswell himself visited Ukhaidir, his discussion of particular architectural features from the complex, their origins and development and their comparison to those from other pre-Islamic and Islamic-period sites often repeated or expanded upon what Bell had already discussed. But while such borrowing underscored Creswell's tremendous respect for Bell's work, it ultimately drew attention away from the latter. With everything now subsumed in his widely available and comprehensive opus, there was little reason for readers to consult earlier reports. In this way, Bell's monograph faded into relative obscurity while Creswell's came to be regarded as the authoritative report, widely read and extensively cited.

  Fig. 5.19 Interior of Qasr Kharana, an early eighth-century Islamic fort (in present-day Jordan). Bell saw within it many architectural affinities with the palace of Ukhaidir. She took this photograph at the beginning of her Arabian journey in January 1914. Bell actually spent three days at the castle, taking photographs, drawing plans, copying Kufic inscriptions and overall doing ‘much more at it than anyone else’.

  Today, more than a century after the publication of Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir, it is still possible to find praiseworthy aspects of Bell's archaeological research. Even if many of her evolutionary schemes concerning architectural features such as the vault and iwan may be incorrect or overly simplistic, one is still impressed by the vast knowledge of Classical and Near Eastern art and architecture that Bell had amassed, and her ability to bring this vast knowledge to bear persuasively upon her discussions. As has been pointed out, some of her conclusions, such as her interpretation of the Chehar Qapu as a fire temple, have continued to hold considerable sway in the archaeological literature. Her analogies between Ukhaidir and other palatial complexes such as Mshatta and the Palace of Khosrow are remarkably astute and still valid. Bell also must be praised for her perceptiveness and tenacity in the field, even in the most difficult and dangerous of conditions, qualities that helped her to produce detailed, accurate plans of archaeological monuments. Such plans, like those of the Palace of Khosrow and the Chehar Qapu at Qasr-i-Shirin, have yet to be completely corrected and improved and are still consulted.

  Fig. 5.20 The beautifully carved façade of the eighth-century Umayyad castle of Mshatta, photographed by Bell in 1900 shortly before it was subsequently removed and taken to the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, where it is still housed to this day (now the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Pergamonmuseum). Bell proclaimed Mshatta to be ‘the most princely of hirahs, wrapped round by the grass-grown Syrian desert, mild and beneficent in winter; and the flocks of the Sukhur resort to it as kings resorted of old’ (Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 188 n. 1). Mshatta would figure prominently in Bell’s research of the early Islamic castle of Ukhaidir and her efforts to trace earlier buildings from which it derived inspiration.

  Finally, as emphasized many times over the course of this and previous chapters, Bell's continued dedication to photography meant that her Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir includes a wealth of images of that remarkable complex and others sites that figure in her account. Several of the photographed monuments and architectural details no longer exist, and her images are often the only record we possess of these remarkable ancient features. In light of this fact, even if the remainder of her scholarship is ultimately judged to be imperfect, Bell's photographic achievement – lavishly proven by the almost 100 pages of clear, detailed photographs that appear in Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir – is enough to merit her inclusion in the cohort of the early twentieth century's most important and accomplished Near Eastern archaeologists.

  It is regrettable, in light of its quality, that few today take the time to consider the merits of Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir, Bell's final work. Robert Hillenbrand comes close to an explanation when he remarks that although Bell's account of Ukhaidir is ‘magisterial’, her other interests ‘prevented her from following her vocation as an Islamic art historian with the full vigor of which she was capable’.232 Those other interests were significant, and they quickly followed on the heels of Bell's scholarly activities. She had actually just completed the subject index for Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir while on board a ship bound for Cairo in late 1913,233 and her next journey would take her into the heart of Arabia and immerse her in the current affairs of that country, with its bitter rivalry between the powerful tribal houses of Ibn Rashid and Ibn Saud. This was a decidedly different trip, and although some of Bell's interests along the way were archaeological in nature, they would be strongly overshadowed by her courageous, eventful journey to the desert capital of Hayil and her report on the treachery of the house of Ibn Rashid. Bell would henceforth be remembered for the current news she brought back to Britain, and her bold wanderings in Arabia would earn her the Founder's Medal of Britain's Royal Geographical Society.234

  The outbreak of war just shortly after Bell's Arabian journey led her even further away from archaeology. By November 1914, she was working for the Red Cross in Boulogne, locating missing or wounded soldiers.235 This was followed in April 1915 by further work with the Red Cross in London. Bell's grief upon learning, at the end of April, of the death of her much-loved Dick Doughty-Wylie at Gallipoli was crushing, and many months would pass before she recovered from the shock.236 Thus, it must have been some relief when in November, Bell's old friend and colleague David Hogarth summoned her to help with the war effort in the British Office of Military Intelligence in Cairo, soon to be renamed the Arab Bureau. Now, her life found a new and urgent purpose. Because of her first-hand knowledge of the countries of the Middle East and their peoples, she served as a useful set of eyes and ears for the British, helping to analyse the power and politics of local Arab leaders, evaluate their links to the enemy Turks and judge their potential loyalty to the British. Her archaeological investigations, which had been the prime motivations for her earlier travels to Mesopotamia, were no longer of direct relevance or importance, given the more pressing matters of the war. As Bell accepted her post in Cairo, her life's direction was inextricably altered. Now that she had plunged deeply into the affairs of the modern Middle East, her older persona as scholar of the past dropped away almost entirely, replaced by her role as a ‘woman of the hour’ with a remarkable part to play in the shaping of things to come.

  CHAPTER 6

  MESOPOTAMIA AND IRAQ – PAST AND PRESENT ENTWINED

  The final chapter of Gertrude Bell's incredible life, from 1915 up to her death in 1926, has been described and discussed by several biographers and historians. Their published works have chronicled Bell's involvement in Britain's effort in the Middle East during World War I, first with her service in the Arab Bureau in Cairo, and thereafter with her move to Basra and finally Baghdad, where she was appointed Oriental Secretary to the British High Commissioner. They also describe her important role in the creati
on of the new state of Iraq, the drawing up of its borders and the selection of its first king.1 The details of this eventful period in Bell's life need not be repeated here. Rather, this final chapter seeks to articulate the relationship between Bell's scholarly endeavours in the archaeology of Mesopotamia up to 1914 and her political and administrative activities after that point. To be sure, Mesopotamia was the common ground for all of Bell's work: she had invested the greatest energies in understanding its past architecture and history, and with her war-time activities and post-war efforts to build the state of Iraq, Mesopotamia continued to be her principal focus. But whereas her former endeavours strove to shed light on Mesopotamia's remarkable antiquity, her later efforts were largely bound to its present conditions, current inhabitants and the nation's continued success into the future. Given these separate and distinct foci in her life – one strongly connected to the past, the other absorbed with the present – we may ask what relationship existed between the two?

  I will try to show that the experiences and knowledge that Bell acquired during the years in which history and archaeology played a central part in her life and work had a significant impact on her later political activities. Her early engagement with the archaeology of the Near East, particularly with the archaeology and history of Mesopotamia, gave her a unique understanding of this part of the world. It significantly influenced her ideas about how the region should be governed, and her own place within that scheme. Throughout the discussion, I take into consideration Bell's romantic proclivities, which were evident even in her earliest Near Eastern travels and encounters with the past, and which especially encouraged her vision of Mesopotamia's past being played forward to the present.2 Her belief in the possibility of Iraq's self-rule seems to have been particularly influenced by her romantic notions of its past achievements, but it was also guided by her comprehensive knowledge of the history of the Near East and by her unique perspective, which recognized the creative power of the Near East independent of Western influence or intervention.

  As a final topic of discussion, I will consider Bell's work as Iraq's honorary antiquities director and founder of the country's national museum, and the degree to which her decisions and responsibilities in those roles were also deeply affected by her earlier archaeological experiences and achievements. Altogether, what emerges is an accentuation of Gertrude Bell's remarkable yet complex character. Her combination of intelligence, imagination, sense of authority and tirelessness worked together throughout her life, bringing about notable achievements wherever she focused her energies. At the same time, the very qualities of her character that led to her triumphs also made her deeply aware of the transitory nature of power and of her own short-lived place within the world that she had created.

  Romance with the Past

  Before delving into Bell's political activities in her later life, and the particular ways in which her past experiences seemed to inform those activities and decisions, it is important to discuss a few key aspects of Bell's unique character and how they affected and intersected with her attitudes towards the past. One important facet of Bell's personality that must be considered alongside her other character attributes is her romanticism. This sensibility gave her a particularly unique and intense engagement with the past which persisted throughout her travels to the Near East, and which seemed particularly potent during her visits to archaeological sites and monuments in the Near East.3 Her romantic inclinations pervade much of her writings and even her most scholarly inquiries. Thus, it is not possible to discuss the impact of Bell's archaeological past on her later political activities without taking into account this special aspect of her character.

  Despite the outer image which she frequently projected of herself – as a pragmatic realist guided by rational inquiry and scientific analysis rather than emotion – Bell was at heart a person with profound and intense sensibilities. Her step-mother, Florence, who knew her well, wrote:

  In truth the real basis of Gertrude's nature was her capacity for deep emotion. Great joys came into her life, and also great sorrows. How could it be otherwise, with a temperament so avid of experience? Her ardent and magnetic personality drew the lives of others into hers as she passed along.4

  Such sensibilities explain Bell's love of poetry, to which she was drawn at an early age,5 and they find ample reflection in her writings, which often convey, in highly expressive language, her reactions to places and peoples encountered, and experiences enjoyed or deplored. Bell certainly found that travel and exploration awakened such emotions in the most powerful way. Her journeys to unfamiliar lands, with the demands they placed on her physical endurance, bravery, mastery of languages, and skills in map reading, photography and cartography, heightened the sense of adventure and gave her a heady feeling of accomplishment.6 She also revelled in these voyages because they were an escape from the routine and confining existence of daily life and gave her an enlivening sense of liberty. This emancipatory feeling was enjoyed by many Western travellers to Eastern lands, especially women, many of whom sought travel as a means of avoiding the restrictive conventions of European society at home, and Bell was no exception.7 In her travelogue, The Desert and the Sown, Bell lyrically expresses her feeling of liberation at the onset of a journey:

  To those bred under an elaborate social order few such moments of exhilaration can come as that which stands at the threshold of wild travel. The gates of the enclosed garden are thrown open, the chain of the entrance of the sanctuary is lowered, with a wary glance to right and left you step forth, and, behold! The immeasurable world! The world of adventure and of enterprise, dark with hurrying storms, glittering in raw sunlight, an unanswered question and an unanswerable doubt hidden in the fold of every hill.8

  As has been remarked upon earlier, Bell was particularly enamoured with the Near East, and her writings, especially in the years between 1900 and 1914 – when she was travelling in the Levant, Turkey, Mesopotamia, Persia and Arabia – are positively bursting with glowing, emotive assertions of the wonder or fascination of many of the places she visited and the peoples she met. Her descriptions endeavour to evoke the vivid colours, textures, smells and tastes of the places she experienced, amply testifying to the sense of elation brought about by travel in the foreign lands of the East. Travel also seems to have activated Bell's rich Orientalist imagination, frequently leading her to embellish, exalt or exoticize many of the predicaments or places in which she found herself. The romance of travel felt by Bell is reflected well in one of her essays from 1914, titled ‘Romance’, this testifying to her particular captivation with the lands of southern Mesopotamia – or ‘the ‘Iraq’, as it was often referred to before World War I:

  I have written of politics and of commerce, of steamships and of locomotive engines, but I have not pronounced the word which is the keynote of the ‘Iraq. It is romance. Wherever you may look for it, you will find it. The great twin rivers, gloriously named; the huge Babylonian plains, now desert, which were once a garden of the world; the story stretching back into the dark recesses of time – they shout romance. No less insistent on the imagination, and no less brilliantly coloured are the later chapters in the history of the ‘Iraq. The echoing name of Alexander haunts them, the jewelled splendours of the Sasanian King of Kings, the clanging fame of the Mohammedan Khalifate, the tragic dissolution of the Mongol invasion, and last (to English ears not least) the enterprise, the vigour, the courage of our seamen and merchants who forced their path through the gates of the ‘Iraq and brought the Pax Britannica into the torrid seas of the Persian Gulf.9

  Besides underscoring her unbridled admiration for British imperialism, the passage also highlights how the romance of a particular place was particularly enhanced by its rich history. In the case of southern Mesopotamia, the rivers of ‘the ‘Iraq’ were great because they were inexorably associated with an eventful past that stretched back for centuries. For Bell, being aware of or exposed to that glorious past was largely what made travel so thr
illing. Already we have observed this excitement even in her earliest journeys – for example, in Greece in 1899, when the sight of 4,000-year-old pots shown to her by the archaeologist David Hogarth made her ‘mind reel’.10 In her subsequent travels in the Near East, where she encountered ancient monuments and sites at every turn, her sense of wonder for the past seems to have become especially amplified. The Desert and the Sown, in which she recounts her 1905 journey through Palestine and Syria, frequently captures her enchantment with places where the distant past feels acutely accessible, as in the late antique ‘Dead City’ of el Barah, located south of Aleppo:

  It is like a dream city which children create for themselves to dwell in between bedtime and sleep-time, building palace after palace down the shining ways of the imagination, and no words can give the charm of it nor the magic of the Syrian spring. The generations of the dead walk with you down the streets, you see them flitting across their balconies, gazing out of windows wreathed with white clematis, wandering in palisaded gardens that are still planted with olive and with vine and carpeted with iris, hyacinth and anemone.11

  Writing from the Sasanian palace remains of the Taq-i Kisra at Ctesiphon in Mesopotamia in 1909, Bell transports us into the past with her beautiful description of the throne room, no doubt inspired by the present magnificence of its still-standing parabolic vault, but also by her active imagination. She writes of the richly bejeweled carpet that would have hung from floor to ceiling, which, when drawn aside, revealed: