243. Bell, Amurath, Fig. 39= GB photo J_190, Gertrude Bell Archive.
244. Bell's photograph J_185 (note that the photo's caption ‘Mosque – base of minaret’ is incorrect, as this belongs to the mosque arcade), Gertrude Bell Archive; see also Hillenbrand, ‘Eastern Islamic influences’, p. 36.
245. Bell, Amurath, p. 59.
246. Milwright, Introduction to Islamic Archaeology, p. 146.
247. Ibid., p. 148.
248. GB letter to her parents, 21 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.
249. GB diary, 3 March 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive; Bell, Amurath, p. 67.
250. Ball, Rome in the East, p. 165.
251. Ibid., p. 165.
252. GB diary, 3 March 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive; Bell, Amurath, pp. 67–8.
253. GB photos, J_200–3, Gertrude Bell Archive; the image of the Euphrates's course is J_199.
254. Burns, Monuments, p. 123.
255. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabiye_Dam.
256. Bell, Amurath, p. 74.
257. GB diary entries, 6–7 March 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive; Bell, Amurath, pp. 74–5.
258. Ibid., pp. 83–4 and fig. 48; GB photographs, Album J_213–5 are of this tomb, while Album J_216, which Bell calls Erzi East tomb, is known elsewhere as the tower of Erzî. See Clauss, ‘Les tours’, p. 156 and pls. 3 and 5a. It is evident that this latter tower tomb suffered considerable deterioration in the twentieth century. The doorway over the staircase of the first storey has completely vanished.
259. Ibid., p. 171.
260. Bell, Amurath, pp. 85–9.
261. Ibid., pp. 88–9.
262. Ibid., p. 89.
263. Alastair Northedge, ‘The Islamic period in the Haditha dam area’, in C. Kepinski, P. Lecomte and A. Tenu (eds), Studia Euphratica. Le moyen Euphrate iraquien révélé par les fouilles preventives de Haditha (Paris, 2006), p. 402.
264. Bell, Amurath, p. 97; Northedge, ‘Islamic period’, p. 402.
265. Bell, Amurath, p. 96, Figs 51 (J_223 and J_224) and 56 (J_232). See also Bell's photograph, J_230, looking south from the top of the minaret.
266. Christine Kepinski, Olivier Lecomte and Aline Tenu, ‘Studia Euphratica, introduction’, in Kepinski, Lecomte and Tenu (eds), Studia Euphratica, p. 15 and Fig. 2.
267. Northedge, ‘Islamic period’, p. 402.
268. Some of the archaeological sites are simply mentioned by Bell in her diary entries and field notebooks, but in the case of at least 60 tells, she took the time to inspect them on foot, reporting their above-ground architectural remains and artefacts (e.g. pottery) strewn on their surfaces.
Chapter 3 Ukhaidir – Desert Splendour
1. William M. Ramsay and Gertrude L. Bell, Thousand and One Churches (London, 1909). Reprint, with a new foreword by Robert G. Outsterhout and Mark P.C. Jackson (Philadelphia, 2008), pp. 309–11, 437, 440–1.
2. Bruno Schulz and Josef Strzygowski, ‘Mschatta’, Jahrbuch der Königlichen Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 25 (1904), pp. 205–373.
3. Gertrude L. Bell, Review of B. Schulz and J. Strzygowski, ‘Mschatta’, in Revue archéologique 5 (1905), pp. 431–2.
4. The Mshatta façade was brought to Berlin in 1903 as a gift from the Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II to the German emperor Wilhelm II. Today, the Mshatta façade is part of the collection of the Museum für Islamische Kunst and is housed in the Pergamonmuseum, in Berlin. For modern scholarly discussions of the Mshatta façade and the palace, see R. Hillenbrand, ‘Islamic art at the crossroads: East versus West at Mshatta’, in A. Daneshvari (ed.), Essays on Islamic Art and Architecture: In Honor of Katharina Otto-Dorn (Malibu, 1981), pp. 63–86; Oleg Grabar, ‘The date and meaning of Mshatta’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987), pp. 243–7.
5. Schulz and Stryzgowski, ‘Mschatta’, pp. 367–70; Bell, Review of ‘Mschatta’, p. 432; I. Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century. Vol. 1, Part 1: Political and Military History. (Washington, 1995), pp. 32–6.
6. C. Edmund Bosworth, ‘Lakhmids’, Encyclopaedia Iranica (online edition, 2012), available at www.iranicaonline.org/articles/lakhmids (accessed 29 July 2015).
7. Ernst Herzfeld, ‘Die Genesis der islamischen Kunst und das Mschatta-Problem’, Der Islam 1 (1910), pp. 106–8.
8. Moritz subsequently returned to Berlin, where he was appointed Director of the Library of the Seminar for Oriental Languages, a post he held until 1924. See G.J. Bosch, J. Carswell and G. Petherbridge (eds), Islamic Bindings and Bookmaking: A Catalogue of an Exhibition in the Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago, May 18–August 18, 1981 (Chicago, 1981), p. ix.
9. Ibid.
10. While in Cairo, Bell mentions having been told that Moritz had written all of Oppenheim's book. GB diary, 17 January 1905, Gertrude Bell Archive.
11. GB letter to her mother, 8 January 1907, Gertrude Bell Archive.
12. GB diary, 27 January 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.
13. GB diary, 28 January 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.
14. GB letter to her mother, 29 January 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.
15. Gertrude L. Bell, Amurath to Amurath (London, 1911), p. 86.
16. Ibid., pp. 119–37.
17. Ibid., p. 139.
18. GB letter to her family, 24 March 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive. Watts was in the employ of Sir William Willcocks, who at this time was in the midst of preparing for the construction of the Hindiya Barrage on the Euphrates River, a hydraulic system that would bring water to the region around the city of Hilla and restore its irrigation regimes. See R.I. Money, ‘The Hindiya Barrage, Mesopotamia’, The Geographical Journal 50/3 (1917), pp. 217–22.
19. Bell, Amurath, p. 140.
20. K.A.C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture. Vol. 2: Early ‘Abbāsids, Umayyads of Cordova, Aghlabids, Ṭūlūnids, and Samānids, A.D. 751–905 (Oxford, 1940), reprint (New York, 1979), p. 52.
21. Bell, Amurath, p. 140.
22. Ibid., p. 144.
23. GB letter to her family, 26 March 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive; Bell, Amurath, p. 144.
24. Bell, Amurath, p. 145.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. GB diary, 25 March 1909; GB letter to her family, 26 March 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive. In addition, a sketch plan with these measurements, and B.T. Watts's name, are recorded on a page of Bell's field notebooks; GLB 11 (1909), London, Royal Geographic Society.
28. GB letter to her family, 26 March 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.
29. Ibid.
30. GB diary, 27–8 March 1909; GB letter to her family, 29 March 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.
31. Ibid.
32. Gertrude L. Bell, ‘The vaulting system of Ukhaidir’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 30 (1910), pl. X; Bell, Amurath, fig. 79.
33. GB letter to her family, 3 March 1911, Gertrude Bell Archive.
34. GB diary, 2 March 1911; GB letter to her family, 3 March 1911, Gertrude Bell Archive.
35. Ibid.
36. GB diary, 1–3 March 1911, Gertrude Bell Archive.
37. Gertrude L. Bell, Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture (Oxford, 1914).
38. Ibid., pls 1–3; Oskar Reuther, Ocheïdir. Nach Aufnahmen von Mitgliedern der Babylon Expedition der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft (Leipzig, 1912), pls. III–IV.
39. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, fig. 64.
40. A well is located nearby but still at a distance from the castle; no good water was found within the palace or in the area immediately around it. See Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 1.
41. Ibid., p. 3.
42. According to Bell's calculations, the outer enclosure measured 175.80 m x 163.30 m; ibid., p. 4. Creswell's measurements were 175 m x 169 m; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 52. The height of the outer enclosure wall was about 17 m; Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 6; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 54.
43. Bell, Palace and Mosque, pp. 6–7.
44. Ibid., p. 7; Creswell, Early Musli
m Architecture, vol. 2, p. 55.
45. According to Bell's calculations, the palace structure measured about 111.40 m from north to south and 68.50 m from east to west; Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 5. Creswell's measurements differ from Bell's rather considerably, particularly the east–west dimensions: 112.85 m from north to south and 81.83 m from east to west; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 52.
46. H. Kennedy, The Court of the Caliphs: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty (London, 2004), p. 138.
47. Between the northern gate and the ‘Great Hall’ was a square room with a fluted dome (no. 4). To the right and left were long vaulted corridors (nos. 5 and 6); Bell, Palace and Mosque, pp. 9–10; pl. 13.
48. The Great Hall measures 7 m in width and is over 15 m in length; ibid., pp. 12–13; pl. 14.
49. Ibid., p. 24; pl. 26. See also Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 63.
50. Bell, Palace and Mosque, pp. 19–23. See also Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, pp. 77–80.
51. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 26, following Reuther's reconstruction. See Reuther, Ocheïdir, Taf. 24: lower image. Creswell borrowed Reuther's image for his own publication. See Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, fig. 45.
52. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 26; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 67.
53. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 22; Reuther, Ocheïdir, p. 29; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 69.
54. Bell, Palace and Mosque, pp. 26–7; pl. 30, Figs 1–2; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 67 and fig. 48 (originally from Reuther, Ocheïdir, Taf. X, bottom image).
55. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 27; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 68.
56. Bell, Palace and Mosque, pp. 27–8; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 69.
57. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 29; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 70.
58. Bell, Palace and Mosque, pp. 30–3.
59. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 71.
60. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 32.
61. The best reconstruction of this southern arcade is illustrated by Reuther, Ocheïdir, Taf. XXVI.
62. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 17; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 74.
63. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 18; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, pp. 75–6.
64. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 18; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 76.
65. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 15–6; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, pp. 76–7.
66. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 33; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 73.
67. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 33; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 74.
68. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 34.
69. Ibid., pp. 36–7; pl. 43, Figs 1–2 show the Northern Annex from north and south.
70. Ibid., p. 37; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, p. 85, and fig. 69 for plan.
71. Ibid., fig. 68 and pl. 5a.
72. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 4, Map 2.
73. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 85.
74. Ibid., p. 84.
75. GB letter to her father, 10 July 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive. The article was by Louis Massignon, ‘Les chateaux des princes de Hirah’, Gazette des beaux-arts (April 1909), pp. 297–306. See also ‘Note sur le château d'Al Okhaïder’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 53 (1909), pp. 202–12. Massignon followed up these articles with the first volume of Mission en Mesopotamie (Cairo, 1910), which was chiefly concerned with Ukhaidir.
76. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, pp. 51–2.
77. Bell arrived at Babylon on 9 March and stayed until 11 March.
78. GB letter to her family, 11 March 1911, Gertrude Bell Archive.
79. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. xi.
80. GB letter to her family, 2 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.
83. Lady Elsa Richmond, ‘Memories of Gertrude’, Miscellaneous Item #4, Gertrude Bell Archive, University Library, Newcastle University. Lady Richmond's lectures were given at the Aeolian Hall, London, and at Rounton, Halifax and Huddersfield. They added £66 10s 6d to the Fund for the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (Gertrude Bell Memorial), as indicated on p. 4 of the Report and Accounts of the BSAI, 11 November 1931.
84. Reuther, Ocheïdir, Taf. XXVI.
85. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 81.
86. Ibid., pp. 69–81.
87. Ibid., p. 71. Brick was also used in the vault over Rooms 29 and 30, and in the columned Rooms 40 and 33. See Bell, Amurath, p. 153. Bell compared this feature to the earlier Sasanian tradition of brick vault-building, observed, for example, at Sarvistan, a site regarded in Bell's time as having a Sasanian date. See Bell, ‘Vaulting system,’ p. 72. She also noted that in cases where Sasanian builders used stone rather than brick, they cut the stones into narrow slabs to resemble brick tiles, just like in the smaller vaults at Ukhaidir; ibid., p. 73 and fig. 6, which shows a vaulted passageway constructed in stone, not brick.
88. Trudy Kawami, ‘Parthian brick vaults in Mesopotamia, their antecedents and descendants’, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 14 (1982), p. 61.
89. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 72, citing F.A. Choisy, L'Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins (Paris, 1883), p. 31. For a recent discussion of this type of vault construction, used also by the Romans, see Lynne Lancaster, ‘Roman engineering and construction’, in John Oleson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World (Oxford, 2008), p. 274.
90. Bell, Amurath, p. 153 and fig. 109. Bell also pointed out here (p. 153, n. 1) that Dr Herzfeld, in an earlier work (Herzfeld, ‘Genesis’, p. 111), had stated erroneously that such a feature did not exist in Sasanian buildings.
91. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 72.
92. Ibid.
93. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 68, citing V. Place, Ninive et l'Assyrie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1867), pp. 176, 255.
94. Kawami, ‘Parthian brick’, p. 63, citing David Oates, ‘The excavations at Tell al-Rimah, 1964’, Iraq 27 (1965), p. 77 and pl. XXB; and David Oates, ‘The excavations at Tell al-Rimah, 1968’, Iraq 32 (1970), pp. 20–3 and pls. V–VIII.
95. Kawami, ‘Parthian brick’, p. 63, citing E. McCowan and R.C. Haines, NippurI: Temple of Enlil, Scribal Quarter, and Soundings (Chicago, 1967), pp. 61, 77, and pls. 48A–B. See also G. Michell (ed.), Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning (London, 1978), fig. 140 c, which illustrates a pitched brick vault over a pit from the site of Khafajeh.
96. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 74; Amurath, p. 153; Palace and Mosque, p. 29.
97. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 74; Palace and Mosque, p. 35.
98. Bell, Palace and Mosque, pp. 29–30.
99. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, pp. 75–6; Palace and Mosque, pp. 29–30.
100. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 76; Palace and Mosque, p. 30.
101. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 75.
102. Ibid.
103. Ibid., pp. 75–6; Amurath, p. 156; Palace and Mosque, pp. 73, 166.
104. Letter to Gertrude Bell from M. Dieulafoy, 21 May 1910, Paris. Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Miscellaneous, Item 13 (one of two unpublished letters from Dieulafoy to Gertrude Bell). See also Dieulafoy's opinion of the Sasanian date of Ukhaidir, after having learned of Massignon's discovery of the castle: Marcel Dieulafoy, ‘Découverte par M. Massignon d'un palais fortifié près de Kerbela en Mésopotamie’, Comptes-rendus des séances de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 52 (1908), pp. 451–2. Massignon shared Dieulafoy's opinion about Ukhaidir's Sasanian date.
105. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 76.
106. Ibid., p. 76; Palace and Mosque, pp. 111–12.
107. Os
kar Reuther, who also carefully documented the presence of the groined vault at Ukhaidir, did not wholly accept Bell's arguments for a post-Sasanian date for Ukhaidir on the basis of this distinctive feature. See Reuther, Ocheïdir, p. 7. His own opinion appears to have been greatly influenced by his belief in the presence of groined vaulting in the building on the citadel at Amman, which was at that time believed to be a Sasanian period construction. See Schulz and Strzygowski, ‘Mschatta’, pp. 351–2; Reuther, Ocheïdir, p. 7. Creswell later weighed in on this controversial evidence himself, observing only the presence of tunnel vaults in the Amman building and thus rejecting Reuther's earlier assumption. See Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 95, n. 4. Scholars today overwhelmingly place the Amman structure, known variously as the Amman Ceremonial Building or the Domed Entrance Hall, in the Umayyad period. See Alistair Northedge and C-M. Bennett, Studies on Roman and Islamic ‘Amman: History, Site and Architecture (Oxford, 1992); Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture (New York, 1994), pp. 379–81.
108. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 77; Palace and Mosque, pp. 9–10.
109. Reuther, Ocheïdir, pp. 29–30; Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 13.
110. Reuther, Ocheïdir, Taf. VI illustrates a reconstructed domed corner tower. See also Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 73; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 2, p. 55.
111. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 73.
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid., p. 75; see also K.A.C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture. Vol. 1: Umayyads, A.D. 622–750 (Oxford, 1969), reprint (New York, 1979), p. 451, fig. 490.
114. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. 75.
115. Gwendolyn Leick, ‘Dome’, A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Architecture (London, 1988), p. 64.
116. Ramsay and Bell, Thousand and One Churches, pp. 438–46; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 1, p. 470, calls Bell's summary on pendentives from this work ‘short but brilliant’.
117. Bell, ‘Vaulting system’, p. 79; Palace and Mosque, p. 73; Ramsay and Bell, Thousand and One Churches, pp. 438, 441, 443; Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 1, pp. 467–70. In the course of her detailed discussion, Bell makes a distinction between what she refers to as a dome that is continuous with pendentives, i.e., a continuous sphere, and a dome that is not continuous with pendentives but rises, in a smaller radius, above them. The Santa Sophia dome is an example of the latter. See Ramsay and Bell, Thousand and One Churches, pp. 439, 443. See Creswell's objection to the use of these terms, however, and his further, fuller examination of pendentives and domes, in Early Muslim Architecture, vol. 1, pp. 450–71.
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