Bell finances diminish during international economic recession
October
Aiming to comply with the terms of the mandate, Cox and the naqib as prime minister sign a Treaty of Alliance between Iraq and Great Britain giving 20 years of British occupation in advisory capacity
Faisal proclaims Treaty of Alliance on the 13th
November
Allies and Turkey sign peace treaty officially ending war with Turkey
Macmillan Company donates books to Baghdad Public Library
Lloyd George’s wartime coalition government collapses; Bonar Law’s Conservatives win election; Churchill is replaced by the Duke of Devonshire with responsibility for Middle East
GLB’s brother-in-law Charles Trevelyan elected member of Parliament for Newcastle upon Tyne
Faisal, with Iraq Cabinet approval, appoints GLB honorary director of antiquities for Iraq
Air Marshal Sir John Salmond takes command of British forces in Iraq; RAF tasked with controlling tribal dissension
December
Sir Henry Dobbs arrives as prospective high commissioner, in charge while Cox visits London
GLB asked to continue as Oriental secretary
Cox signs treaties with Ibn Saud
1923 April
Cox signs treaty reducing British advisory occupation of Iraq to four years
Cox retires, leaves Iraq
May
Transjordan declared independent under Faisal’s elder brother Emir Abdullah by treaty with Britain, later to be the Kingdom of Jordan
July
League of Nations ratifies Turkish Peace Treaty at Conference of Lausanne
Constituent Assembly passes the draft constitution of Iraq (signed as the Organic Law by Faisal in March 1925)
July–August
GLB travels to England via Haifa, stays with Sir Herbert Samuel, high commissioner for Palestine
John Singer Sargent draws a portrait of GLB
GLB corresponds with Lawrence on publication of Seven Pillars of Wisdom
September
GLB amends her will, leaving £6,000 ($478,000 RPI adjusted) to the British Museum for a British School of Archaeology in Iraq
October
GLB founds the Iraq Museum
1924 January
Ramsay MacDonald forms first Labour government in coalition with Liberals; Charles Trevelyan in Cabinet as president of Board of Education
February
First national elections in Iraq
March
King Faisal opens Iraq National Assembly
King Hussein of the Hejaz proclaims himself caliph of Islam following abolition of the title by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, but without pan-Islamic acclamation
Dorman Long wins contract to prepare final design and supply nearly 50,000 tons of steel components for the Sydney Harbour Bridge; Hugh Bell as director
September
Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of Alliance accepted by League of Nations as meeting the League’s covenant
Ibn Saud’s Wahhabis raid the Hashemite summer palace of Taif in the Hejaz; townspeople massacred
October
Mecca falls to Ibn Saud; King Hussein of the Hejaz abdicates in favor of his son Ali
December
Faisal ratifies the Treaty of Alliance following its approval by George V in November
1925 January
GLB prepares briefs and translates for the League of Nations Commission of Inquiry investigating the unresolved Iraq-Turkey frontier
February
Hugh Bell visits Sydney to inspect the construction site of the bridge
July–October
GLB’s last visit to England; returns to Baghdad via Beirut with Sylvia Henley
Autumn
Sir Hugh, Dame Florence, and Maurice move to Mount Grace Priory to economize; Rounton Grange closed
December
Ibn Saud ousts Faisal’s brother Ali as king of the Hejaz; annexes the territory
1926 February
GLB’s half-brother Hugo dies of pneumonia
March
Vita Sackville-West stays with GLB in Iraq
May
British General Strike; seven-month miners’ strike cripples steel industry
June
First room of lraq Museum opened on the 14th
July
GLB dies on the 12th; funeral with military honors; buried in British cemetery, Baghdad; Memorial service at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster
Ministers pay tribute to GLB in British parliament
Treaty between Britain, Iraq, and Turkey defines borders of Mosul district
1927
Dame Florence holds pageant at Mount Grace Priory in presence of Queen Mary, partly financed by sales of signed editions of Dickens’s works and his letters to the family
April
Tributes paid to GLB at Royal Geographical Society, London
August
Publication of The Letters of Gertrude Bell by Dame Florence, who gives celebratory dinner inviting King Faisal, Iraq prime minister Jafar, the Dobbses, the Coxes, and the Richmonds
October
Turkish Petroleum Company, a consortium of international oil companies, strikes oil near Kirkuk
1928
Window dedicated to GLB in St. Lawrence’s Church, East Rounton
1929
Turkish Petroleum Company changes its name to the Iraq Petroleum Company, developing what had been identified as the largest discovered oil field in the world
1930
Commemorative bronze plaque unveiled by King Faisal; bust of GLB identifies the Gertrude Bell Principal Wing of the Iraq Museum
May
Dame Florence Bell dies on the 16th
1931 June
Sir Hugh Bell dies; Maurice succeeds to baronetcy on the 29th
1932
British School of Archaeology in Iraq founded in London; £4,000 ($388,000 RPI adjusted) donation from Sir Hugh
Iraq joins League of Nations as independent state
1933
King Faisal dies; succeeded by son, Ghazi
1939
King Ghazi dies in motoring accident, succeeded by son Faisal II
1940
Rounton Grange used as a home for Second World War evacuees and for Italian prisoners of war
1947
British Treasury grant enables formation of the British Archaeological Expedition to Iraq under auspices of the School of Archaeology; permanent base in Baghdad established
1953
Rounton Grange demolished
1958
Faisal II of Iraq assassinated in coup; Iraq declared a republic
1991 January
Iraq Museum closed during the Gulf War
2000 April
Iraq Museum reopened
2003
Immediately before and during the invasion of Iraq by Americans and British, the museum was looted of some 15,000 items, many of which have been recovered; later reopened to archaeologists and school visits
2015
February Iraq Museum again opened to the public
THE LINGUIST
Florence, Gertrude’s stepmother, had been brought up in Paris and spoke English with a charming French accent. Most of the family’s holidays abroad were taken in Italy and Germany, and Gertrude was not the kind of traveler who would visit a country without mastering at least the basics of the language. As soon as she arrived at Weimar she arranged to have German lessons, and as soon as she arrived in Venice, she arranged to have Italian lessons. Gradually she acquired, besides her English and French, fluent Italian, German, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The latter she learned very quickly, but it was the only language she found difficult to remember. Her around-the-world trips gave her enough Hindustani to dispense with an interpreter, and a smattering of Japanese and Urdu. She described her progress in each language, somewhat boastfully, in her letters home to her family.
Of all the languages, Arabic proved the most difficult for her to learn. Staying in Jerusalem in 1900 with family friends Nina and Freidrich Rosen—he was the German consul—she took six lessons in Arabic a week, which did not prevent her from reading Genesis in Hebrew before dinner, for light relief.
Persia, from Gula Hek, the Summer Resort of the British Legation, June 18, 1892, Letter to Her Cousin Horace Marshall
. . . Is it not rather refreshing to the spirit to lie in a hammock strung between the plane trees of a Persian garden and read the poems of Hafiz—in the original mark you!—out of a book curiously bound in stamped leather which you have bought in the bazaars. That is how I spend my mornings here; a stream murmurs past me which Zoroastrian gardeners guide with long handled spades into tiny sluices leading into the flower beds all around. The dictionary which is also in my hammock is not perhaps so poetic as the other attributes—let us hide it under our muslin petticoats!
I learn Persian, not with great energy, one does nothing with energy here. My teacher is a delightful old person with bright eyes and a white turban who knows so little French (French is our medium) that he can neither translate the poets to me nor explain any grammatical difficulties. But we get on admirably nevertheless and spend much of our time in long philosophic discussions carried on by me in French and him in Persian. His point of view is very much that of an oriental Gibbon. . . .
London, February 14, 1896
My Pundit was extremely pleased with me, he kept congratulating me on my proficiency in the Arabic tongue! I think his other pupils must be awful duffers. It is quite extraordinarily interesting to read the Koran with him—and it is such a magnificent book!
London, February 24, 1896
My Pundit brought back my poems yesterday—he is really pleased with them. . . . Arabic flies along—I shall soon be able to read the Arabian Nights for fun.
Jerusalem, December 1899
I’d rather do this than be in London, it’s more worthwhile on the whole. I’m very sorry but one can’t do everything and I would rather well get hold of Arabic than anything in the world.
. . . I don’t think I shall ever talk Arabic, but I go on struggling with it in the hope of mortifying Providence by my persistence . . .
My teacher’s name is Khalil Dughan and . . . I learnt more about pronunciation this morning than I have ever known. . . . I either have a lesson or work alone every morning for 4 hours—the lesson only lasts 1 ½ hours. I have 3 morning and 3 afternoon lessons a week. I am just beginning to understand a little of what I hear and to say simple things to the servants, but I find it awfully difficult. The pronunciation is past words, no western throat being constructed to form these extraordinary gutturals. . . .
Comes my housemaid, “The hot water is ready for the Presence” says he. “Enter and light the candle” say I. “On my head” he has replied. . . . That means it’s dressing time.
Jerusalem, January 11, 1900
. . . Language is very difficult [and] there are at least three sounds almost impossible to the European throat. The worst I think is a very much aspirated H. I can only say it by holding down my tongue with one finger, but then you can’t carry on a conversation with your finger down your throat, can you? . . .
I took Ferideh* for a drive . . . and talked Arabic extremely badly and felt desponding about it. However there is nothing to be done but struggle on with it. I should like to mention that there are five words for a wall and 36 ways of forming the plural.
Jerusalem, February 18, 1900
Do you know these wet afternoons I have been reading the story of Aladdin to myself for pleasure, without a dictionary! . . . I really think that these months here [in Jerusalem] will permanently add to the pleasure and interest of the rest of my days! Honest Injun. Still there is a lot and a lot more to be done first—so to work!
Ain Tulma, Palestine, February 28, 1900
I hurried on . . . with 5 little beggar boys in my train. They were great fun. We had long conversations all the way home. It’s such an amusement to be able to understand. The differences of pronunciation are a little puzzling at first to the foreigner. There are two k’s in Arabic—the town people drop the hard k altogether and replace it by a guttural for which we have no equivalent; the country people pronounce the hard k soft and the soft k ch, but they say their gutturals beautifully and use a lot of words which belong to the more classical Arabic. The Bedouins speak the best; they pronounce all their letters and get all the subtlest shades of meaning out of the words.
From Her Tent Pitched at Ayan Musa, March 20, 1900
We were soon surrounded by Arabs who sold us a hen and some excellent sour milk, “laban” it is called. While we bargained the women and children wandered round and ate grass, just like goats. The women are unveiled. They wear a blue cotton gown 6 yards long which is gathered up and bound round their heads and their waists and falls to their feet. Their faces, from the mouth downwards, are tattooed with indigo and their hair hangs down in two long plaits on either side. . . . Our horses and mules were hobbled and groomed. Hanna brought me an excellent cup of tea and at 6 a good dinner consisting of soup made of rice and olive oil (very good!) an Irish stew and raisins from Salt, an offering from Tarif. My camp lies just under Pisgah. Isn’t it a joke being able to talk Arabic!
March 25, 1900
I . . . came back to my tent where I was presently fetched by a little Turkish girl, the daughter of an Effendi, who told me her mother was sitting down in the shadow of the wall a little below my camp and invited me to come and drink coffee. We went down hand in hand and I found a lot of Turkish women sitting on the ground under a fig tree, so I sat down too and was given coffee and as they all but one talked Arabic, we had a cheerful conversation.
Of Her Druze Muleteers, April 2, 1900
They both talk with the pretty, soft, sing-song accent of the Lebanon. I have a good variety of accents with me, for Tarif has the Bedouin and Hanna the real cockne
y of Jerusalem. They appeal to me sometimes to know which is right.
Gertrude traveled to Malta and Italy with her family, then went on alone to several countries farther east.
Haifa, Palestine, April 7, 1902
This is my day: I get up at 7, at 8 Abu Nimrud comes and teaches me Arabic till 10. I go on working till 12, when I lunch. Then I write for my Persian till 1.30, or so, when I ride or walk out. Come in at 5, and work till 7, when I dine. At 7.30 my Persian comes and stays until 10, and at 10.30 I go to bed. You see I have not much leisure time! And the whole day long I talk Arabic.
Haifa, April 2, 1902
It’s perfectly delightful getting hold of Persian again, the delicious language! But as for Arabic I am soaked and saddened by it and how anyone can wish to have anything to do with a tongue so difficult when they might be living at ease, I can’t imagine. . . . The birds fly into my room and nest in the chandelier!
A Woman in Arabia Page 5