Britain and the Arab Middle East

by Cooper, Lisa;

  49. GB letter to her father, 22 May 1921, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  50. GB letter to her father, 6 August 1921, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  51. Bell stayed in Baghdad 6–12 April 1909, as evinced from her diary entries and letters.

  52. Bell, Amurath, p. 187.

  53. R. Ettinghausen and O. Grabar, Islamic Art and Architecture, 650–1250 (New Haven, 2001), p. 51.

  54. G. Michell, Architecture of the Islamic World (London, 1978), p. 247.

  55. GB diary, 8 and 9 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive. See also Ettinghausen and Grabar, Islamic Art, pp. 216–17.

  56. Bell, Amurath, p. 191.

  57. GB letter to her mother, 14 April 1909, and GB diary, 15 March 1911, Gertrude Bell Archive. Today, this ‘Abbasid Palace’ is believed to have been a madrasa, built in the thirteenth century. See Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, pp. 223–4.

  58. GB letter to her mother, 14 April 1909, and GB diary, 14 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive; Bell, Amurath, pp. 200, 204.

  59. GB diary, 14 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  60. Bell, Amurath, p. 208.

  61. Alistair Northedge, The Historical Topography of Samarra (London, 2007), p. 473.

  62. Bell, Amurath, p. 208.

  63. Ibid. Bell is recalling a passage from the Gulistan (The Rose Garden), composed by the medieval Persian poet Saadi Shirazi. Saadi witnessed the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the same year that he wrote the Gulistan.

  64. Chase Robinson (ed.), A Medieval Islamic City Reconsidered: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra (Oxford, 2001), p. 9; Hugh Kennedy, The Court of the Caliphs: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty (London, 2004), p. 149.

  65. Lucien de Beylié, Prome et Samarra (Paris, 1907), and ‘L'architecture des Abbassides au IXe siècle. Voyage archéologique à Samarra dans le basin du Tigre’, Revue archéologique 10 (1907), pp. 1–18. Bell mentions having taken notes from de Beylié's publications while staying with the German excavators at Babylon, so it is conceivable that she became aware of his work through them. See GB diary, 3 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  66. Ernst Herzfeld, Samarra. Aufhahmen und Untersuchungen zur islamischen Archaeologie (Berlin, 1907).

  67. Ernst Herzfeld, ‘Die Genesis der islamischen Kunst und das Mschatta-Problem’, Der Islam 1 (1910), pp. 27–63, 104–44.

  68. Suzanne Marchand, ‘The rhetoric of artifacts and the decline of classical humanism: The case of Josef Strzygowski’, History and Theory 33 (1994), pp. 124–5.

  69. Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Creswell and contemporary Central European scholarship’, Muqarnas 8 (1991), p. 26.

  70. The ‘short paper’ referred to here is probably de Beylié's article in Revue archéologique, cited above.

  71. Bell is referring here to Herzfeld's Samarra monograph, cited above.

  72. GB letter to her family, 15 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  73. GB letter to her mother, 18 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  74. Kennedy, Court, p. 145; Northedge, Historical Topography, pp. 135, 140.

  75. Bell crossed over to the western bank on a kelek twice. See GB diary, 16 and 18 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive. Concerning Qasr al-‘Ashiq, scholars have accepted the identification of this castle with the Qasr al-Ma'shuq, mentioned by the Islamic historian al-Yaq‘ubi, as the palace built by the caliph al-Mu‘tamid sometime c. 877–82 CE. See Northedge, Historical Topography, p. 235.

  76. Bell, Amurath, p. 209; GB diary, 15 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  77. Leisten, Excavation, p. 35.

  78. 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. 254.

  79. Ibid., pp. 259–61 and pl. 63.

  80. Northedge, Historical Topography, p. 211.

  81. Kennedy, Court, p. 149; Leisten, Excavation, p. 58.

  82. GB letter to her family, 21 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  83. Leisten, Excavation, p. 60.

  84. Bell, Amurath, pp. 243–6, Figs 123–4, 164–6.

  85. The holy man was Muhammad al-Duri, the eleventh son of Musa al-Kazim, and the builder was Sharaf al-daulah Muslim ibn Quraish, 1061–86 CE.

  86. Michell, Architecture, p. 251; Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, p. 325, Figs 238 and 239.

  87. As noted by Herzfeld in his correspondence with Bell, and by Bell, who references van Berchem's conclusions in Amurath, pp. 214–5, n. 1. See also below, with further mention of van Berchem's contribution to Sarre and Herzfeld's Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris-Gebiet, 4 vols (Berlin, 1911–20).

  88. For a report on the destruction of the Imam al-Dur mausoleum, see Michael D. Danti, Jesse Casana, T. Paulette, K. Franklin and C. Ali, ‘ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiatives (CHI): Planning for safeguarding heritage sites in Syria and Iraq, weekly report 25 – January 26, 2015’, available at www.asor-syrianheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ASOR_CHI_Weekly_Report_25r.pdf (accessed on 30 July 2015).

  89. GB letter to her family, 21 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  90. H. Viollet, ‘Le palais de'al-Moutasim fils d'Haroun al-Rachid à Samara et quelques monuments arabes peu connus de la Mésopotamie’, Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres (1909), pp. 370–5; and ‘Description du palais d'al-Moutasim fils d'Haroun-al-Rachid à Samara et quelques monuments arabes peu connus de la Mésopotamie’, Mémoires presentés à l'Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres 12 (1909), pp. 567–94. That Bell consulted Viollet's reports is indicated by her reference to his reports in her account of Samarra in Amurath, pp. 209, n. 1; 210, n. 1; 235, n. 1; 237, n. 1; 238, n. 1; 240–1; 243, n. 1; 245, n. 1.

  91. To be exact, Viollet published the ‘Small Serdab’ of the Dar al-Khilafa; see H. Viollet, ‘Fouilles à Samara en Mésopotamie: Ruines du palais d’ Al Moutasim’, Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres (1911), pp. 275–86; and ‘Fouilles à Samara en Mésopotamie: Un palais musulman du IXe siècle’, Mémoires presentés à l'Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres 12 (1911), pp. 685–717.

  92. Seven letters addressed by Herzfeld to Bell are housed in the Gertrude Bell Archive in the Newcastle University Library, Miscellaneous, Item 13. The letters are dated 1 and 22 November 1909; 27 August and 1 September 1910; 17 September and 29 November 1911; and 12 September 1912. For a greater discussion of the Herzfeld–Bell correspondence, see Cooper, ‘Archaeology and acrimony’.

  93. Hillenbrand, ‘Creswell,’ p. 26.

  94. In letters to Bell (27 August 1910 and 29 November 1911), Herzfeld makes reference to his participation in the Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum, along with his collection of inscriptions for van Berchem. In a letter sent by van Berchem to Bell (28 October 1911), he mentions Herzfeld's prodigious information gathering. All of these letters are in the Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University Library, Miscellaneous, Item 13.

  95. It was in Archäologische Reise that the subject of the date of the Imam al-Dur mausoleum came up, along with the questionable character of the inscription that Bell claims to have seen there; van Berchem offers his own opinion about this monument and its inscriptions, respectfully including Bell's observed date within a footnote (on p. 34, n. 3), despite his doubts about its presence. For her part, when Bell wrote up her description of the Imam al-Dur in Amurath (pp. 214–15, n.1), she deferred to van Berchem, who had decided that the shape of the letters indicated a ninth-century CE date. The date she had seen may point to the time of a repair of the shrine. Although she does not mention it, this was Herzfeld's suggestion, offered to her in several of his letters (see Herzfeld letters dated 1 and 22 November 1909; 27 August and 1 September 1910, Gertrude Bell Archive in the Newcastle University Library, Miscellaneous, Item 13), prior to her publication of Amurath.

  96. For information about the Bell–van Berchem correspondence, see Asher-Greve, ‘Gertrude L. Bell,’ pp
, 168–9 and notes 195–7.

  97. M. van Berchem and J. Strzygowski, Amida. Matériaux pour l'épigraphie et l'histoire musulmanes du Diyar-bekr, par Max van Berchem. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte des Mittelalters von Nordmesopotamien, Hellas und dem Abendlande, von Josef Strzygowski (Heidelberg, 1910). Bell's contribution was a chapter on the churches and monasteries of the Tur-Abdin, pp. 224–62.

  98. Remarkably, the Fondation Max van Berchem, in Geneva, houses no fewer than 177 photographs by Bell, and in van Berchem's Opera Minora, vol. 1 (Geneva, 1978), acknowledgement is given to Bell's collection of photos of Arab inscriptions from 1910–11. Cited from Asher-Greve, ‘Gertrude L. Bell,’ p. 194, n. 206.

  99. Van Berchem letter to GB, 18 October 1911, in the Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University Library, Miscellaneous, Item 13; translation from French to English by Emmanuelle and Henry Ritson.

  100. Asher-Greve, ‘Gertrude L. Bell,’ p. 170 and n. 206. Letter from feuillets 145–8 in the Max van Berchem Archive, Geneva.

  101. Van Berchem letter to GB, 28 October 1911, in the Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University Library, Miscellaneous, Item 13; translation from French to English by Emmanuelle and Henry Ritson.

  102. Hillenbrand, ‘Creswell,’ p. 32, n. 40.

  103. Van Berchem letter to GB, 18 October 1911, in the Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University Library, Miscellaneous, Item 13; translation from French to English by Emmanuelle and Henry Ritson.

  104. GB letter to her mother, 28 September 1912, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  105. Unpublished letter from Gertrude Bell to Professor Herzfeld, in the Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University Library, Miscellaneous, Item 41; sent to the University of Newcastle from Mr E.F. Bradford of Whitby, into whose possession it came via Professor Herzfeld's late sister.

  106. Bernhardsson, Reclaiming, p. 75.

  107. Ibid. pp. 75–8.

  108. Ibid., p. 78, citing from Bell's memorandum entitled ‘The safeguarding of antiquities in the ‘Iraq’,’ BLIO, L/P&S/10/689, Memorandum #85, 22 October 1918.

  109. Ibid., p. 82.

  110. Ibid., pp. 82–3.

  111. Ibid., p. 83, citing from PRO, Kew FO 371/2883/E2883, letter from CO to FO, 14 March 1922.

  112. Ibid., p. 84.

  113. David Stronach, ‘Ernst Herzfeld and Pasargadae’, in A.C. Gunter and S.R. Hauser (eds), Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900–1950 (Leiden, 2005), pp. 103–36, and Elspeth R.M. Dusinberre, ‘Herzfeld in Persepolis’, in Gunter and Hauser, Ernst Herzfeld, pp. 137–80.

  114. A.C. Gunter and S.R. Hauser, ‘Ernst Herzfeld and Near Eastern studies, 1900–1950’, in Gunter and Hauser, Ernst Herzfeld, p. 20.

  115. GB letters to her family, 28 March, 10 and 24 April 1923, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  116. P.O. Harper, E. Klengel-Brandt, Joan Aruz and K. Benzel (eds), Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Ashur on the Tigris: Antiquities in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin (New York, 1995), p. 15.

  117. Gertrude L. Bell, ‘The first capital of Assyria’, The Times, 23 August 1910.

  118. GB diary, 23 April 1909; GB letter to her family, 26 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive; Bell, Amurath, p. 221.

  119. GB letter to her family, 26 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  120. See especially Ernst Heinrich's heartfelt appreciation for Andrae, in Andrae and Boehmer, Bilder eines Ausgräbers, pp. 149–54.

  121. Ibid., pp. 111–22.

  122. Ibid., p. 118; Finkel and Seymour, Babylon, p. 42.

  123. Andrae and Boehmer, Bilder eubes Ausgräbers, p. 108.

  124. See especially Andrae's reconstructions in W. Andrae, Das wiedererstandene Assur, revised edition with additional notes by B. Hrouda (Munich, 1977).

  125. S.M. Maul, ‘1903–1914: Assur – Das Herz eines Weltreiches’, in Wilhelm, Zwischen Tigris, p. 49.

  126. J. Bär, ‘Walter Andrae – Ein Wegbereiter der modernen Archäologie’, in J. Marzahn and B. Salje (eds), Wiedererstehendes Assur. 100 Jahre deutsche Ausgrabungen in Assyrien (Mainz am Rhein, 2003), p. 47. Andrae returned home only twice, to complete his military service and to marry.

  127. S.R. Hauser, ‘The Arsacid (Parthian) Empire’, in D.T. Potts (ed.), A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Chichester, 2012), p. 1011.

  128. R.W. Lamprichs, ‘Aššur’, in Meyers, Oxford Encyclopaedia, p. 228.

  129. GB letter to her family, 26 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  130. J. Bär, ‘Sumerians, Gutians and Hurrians at Ashur? A re-examination of Ishtar temples G and F’, Iraq 65 (2003), p. 146; Bär, ‘Walter Andrae’, p. 144.

  131. For the reports on excavations in the area of the Ishtar Temple, see especially W. Andrae, Die archaischen Ischtar-Tempel in Assur (Leipzig, 1922); W. Andrae, Die jüngeren Ischtar-Tempel in Assur (Leipzig, 1935); and recent updates, which provide further refinement of the earlier phases, J. Bär, Die älteren Ištar-Tempel in Assur. Stratigraphie, Architektur und Funde eines altorientalischen Heiligtums von der zweiten Hälfte des 3. Jahrtausends bis zur Mittes des 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr. (Saarbrücken, 2003), and Bär, ‘Sumerians’, pp. 143–60.

  132. Andrae and Boehmer, Bilder eines Ausgräbers, p. 139.

  133. GB letter to her family, 26 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  134. Maul, ‘1903–1914: Assur’, p. 47.

  135. GB diary, 25 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive: ‘The long trenches are most fascinating especially one dug very deep, where the Old Assyrian houses and streets are clearly visible. These Old Assyrian houses stand very complete.’ For a full discussion of Assur's houses, see C. Preusser, Die Wohnhäuser in Assur (Berlin, 1954), and more recent discussions, namely P. Miglus, Das Wohngebiet von Assur. Stratigraphie und Architektur (Berlin, 1996).

  136. Bell, Amurath, p. 225. Bell could be talking here of the Old Assyrian house described by Andrae in Das wiedererstandene, pp. 180–1, and by Preusser, Die Wohnhäuser, pp. 7–8, in the area south-east of the ziggurat (and near the Parthian colonnade).

  137. For a full report of Assur's Parthian remains, see W. Andrae and H. Lenzen, Die Partherstadt Assur (Leipzig, 1933).

  138. GB diary, 23–25 April 1909; 5 April 1911 (the presence of the iwan); GB letter to her parents, 26 April 1909; GB photographs, Album L_166, L_174, L_178, L_179, L_186 and Album Q_222, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  139. Bell, Palace and Mosque, pp. 65–8.

  140. GB photographs, Album L_167, L_168, L_169, L_170 and L171, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  141. GB photographs, Album L_184 and L_185, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  142. GB photograph, Album L_180, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  143. GB photograph, Album L_172, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  144. GB photograph, Album L_173, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  145. GB photographs, Album Q_220 and Q_221, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  146. GB photographs, Album Q_223 and Q_224, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  147. For recent studies of how excavation records, especially archaeological photographs, highlight the subtext of power relations between foreign archaeologists and subaltern workers within seemingly benign scientific investigations of sites in the Near East and Asia, see M. Rowlands, ‘The archaeology of colonialism’, in K. Kristiansen and M. Rowlands (eds), Social Transformations in Archaeology: Global and Local Perspectives (London, 1998), pp. 327–33; Ashish Chadha, ‘Visions of discipline: Sir Mortimer Wheeler and the archaeological method in India’, Journal of Social Archaeology 2 (2003), pp. 378–401; Jennifer A. Baird, ‘Photographing Dura-Europos, 1928–1937: An archaeology of the archive’, American Journal of Archaeology 115 (2011), pp. 427–46; E. Cobb, T. Van Loan and V. Fleck, ‘Representing vestiges of the past: Evaluating John Henry Haynes’ contribution to nascent archaeological photography in the nineteenth century Ottoman Empire’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Atlanta, 2010.

  148. GB letter to her mother, 14 April 1911, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  149. GB photogr
aphs, Album L_174, L_187, L_188, L_189 and L_190, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  150. GB photograph, Album Q_225, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  151. Bell, Amurath p. 226.

  152. Bell, Palace and Mosque, p. vi.

  153. Bernhardsson, Reclaiming, pp. 85–6.

  154. Andrae and Boehmer, Bilder eines Ausgräbers, pp. 140–1. Andrae mentions in his memoirs: ‘The Babylonian Galleries of the Berlin Museum are partly due to Miss Bell.’

  155. Ibid., pp. 139–40.

  156. Ibid., p. 140.

  157. GB letter to her family, 26 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  158. GB letter to her mother, 14 April 1911, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  159. For the best descriptions of Nimrud, see M.E.L. Mallowan, Nimrud and Its Remains (London, 1966) and Joan Oates and David Oates, Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed (London, 2001).

  160. Layard's accounts of his discoveries in Mesopotamia were best-sellers in their time. See Austen Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 2 vols (London, 1849) and Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (London, 1953).

  161. Fagan, Return to Babylon, p. 127.

  162. For a fine overview of the British Museum's Assyrian collection, see J.E. Curtis and J.E. Reade (eds), Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum (New York, 1995).

  163. GB diary, 27 April 1909; GB letter to her family, 27 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive.

  164. GB letter to her family, 27 April 1909, Gertrude Bell Archive. This is the same statue that was seen by A.T. Olmstead during his visit to the site around 1907–8 and published in his History of Assyria (New York, 1923), Fig. 81, opposite p. 164. It is one of a pair of colossal statues that had been excavated by H. Rassam back in 1854 and sketched by W. Boucher when fully intact. See C.J. Gadd, The Stones of Assyria (London, 1936), pl. 7, opposite p. 30, and p. 229. For additional notes on the identity and provenance of the statue, see Mallowan, Nimrud, pp. 231–2.