A Woman in Arabia

by Gertrude Bell

  None of the country through which I went is ground virgin to the traveller, though parts of it have been visited but seldom, and described only in works that are costly and often difficult to obtain. Of such places I have given a brief account, and as many photographs as seemed to be of value. I have also noted in the northern cities of Syria those vestiges of antiquity that catch the eye of a casual observer. There is still much exploration to be done in Syria and on the edge of the desert, and there are many difficult problems yet to be solved. The work has been well begun by de Vogüé, Wetzstein, Brünnow, Sachau, Dussaud, Puchstein and his colleagues, the members of the Princeton Expedition and others. To their books I refer those who would learn how immeasurably rich is the land in architectural monuments and in the epigraphic records of a far-reaching history.

  My journey did not end at Alexandretta as this account ends. In Asia Minor I was, however, concerned mainly with archaeology; the results of what work I did there have been published in a series of papers in the “Revue Archéologique,” where, through the kindness of the editor, Monsieur Salomon Reinach, they have found a more suitable place than the pages of such a book as this could have offered them.

  I do not know either the people or the language of Asia Minor well enough to come into anything like a close touch with the country, but I am prepared, even on a meagre acquaintance, to lay tokens of esteem at the feet of the Turkish peasant. He is gifted with many virtues, with the virtue of hospitality beyond all others.

  I have been at some pains to relate the actual political conditions of unimportant persons. They do not appear so unimportant to one who is in their midst, and for my part I have always been grateful to those who have provided me with a clue to their relations with one another. But I am not concerned to justify or condemn the government of the Turk. I have lived long enough in Syria to realise that his rule is far from being the ideal of administration, and seen enough of the turbulent elements which he keeps more or less in order to know that his post is a difficult one. I do not believe that any government would give universal satisfaction; indeed, there are few which attain that desired end even in more united countries. Being English, I am persuaded that we are the people who could best have taken Syria in hand with the prospect of a success greater than that which might be attained by a moderately reasonable Sultan. We have long recognised that the task will not fall to us. We have unfortunately done more than this. Throughout the dominions of Turkey we have allowed a very great reputation to weaken and decline; reluctant to accept the responsibility of official interference, we have yet permitted the irresponsible protests, vehemently expressed, of a sentimentality that I make bold to qualify as ignorant, and our dealings with the Turk have thus presented an air of vacillation which he may be pardoned for considering perfidious and for regarding with animosity. These feelings, combined with the deep-seated dread of a great Asiatic Empire which is also mistress of Egypt and of the sea, have, I think, led the Porte to seize the first opportunity for open resistance to British demands, whether out of simple miscalculation of the spirit that would be aroused, or with the hope of foreign backing, it is immaterial to decide. The result is equally deplorable, and if I have gauged the matter at all correctly, the root of it lies in the disappearance of English influence at Constantinople. The position of authority that we occupied has been taken by another, yet it is and must be of far deeper importance to us than to any other that we should be able to guide when necessary the tortuous politics of Yildiz Kiosk. The greatest of all Mohammedan powers cannot afford to let her relations with the Khalif of be regulated with so little consistency or firmness, and if the Sultan’s obstinacy in the Tabah quarrel can prove to us how far the reins have slipped from our hands, it will have served its turn. Seated as we are upon the Mediterranean and having at our command, as I believe, a considerable amount of goodwill within the Turkish empire and the memories of an ancient friendship, it should not be impossible to recapture the place we have lost.

  But these are matters outside the scope of the present book, and my apologia had best end where every Oriental writer would have begun: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!”

  Early in The Desert and the Sown, Gertrude describes to her parents the advantages of an Arab tent, where she would so often go at night to eat mutton and curds, drink coffee, and exchange information with the sheikhs.

  We did not go straight back to my tents. I had been invited out to dine that evening by Sheikh of the Beni , he who had spent the previous night in Namrüd’s cave; and after consultation it had been decided that the invitation was one which a person of my exalted dignity would not be compromised by accepting.

  “But in general,” added Namrüd, “you should go nowhere but to a great sheikh’s tent, or you will fall into the hands of those who invite you only for the sake of the present you will give. —well, he is an honest man, though he be ,” a word that covers all forms of mild contempt, from that which is extended to honest poverty, through imbecility to the first stages of feeble vice.

  The received me with the dignity of a prince, and motioned me to the place of honour on the ragged carpet between the square hole in the ground that serves as hearth and the partition that separates the women’s quarters from the men’s. We had tethered our horses to the long tent ropes that give such wonderful solidity to the frail dwelling, and our eyes wandered out from where we sat over the eastward sweep of the landscape—swell and fall, fall and swell, as though the desert breathed quietly under the gathering night.

  The lee side of an Arab tent is always open to the air; if the wind shifts the women take down the tent wall and set it up against another quarter, and in a moment your house has changed its outlook and faces gaily to the most favourable prospect. It is so small and so light and yet so strongly anchored that the storms can do little to it; the coarse meshes of the goat’s hair cloth swell and close together in the wet so that it needs continuous rain carried on a high wind before a cold stream leaks into the dwelling-place.

  Amurath to Amurath* is the account of Gertrude’s extensive journey along the banks of the Euphrates, surveying and photographing innumerable archaeological sites along the way. She wrote in 1910, “The five months of journeying which are recounted in this book were months of suspense and even of terror. . . . The banks of the Euphrates echo with ghostly alarums.” Here she tells of two near escapes in this dangerous territory and of one comical encounter with unpleasant insects.

  On the leg of the journey from Hit to Karbala, Gertrude and her crew set out for Shetateh.

  We were jogging along between hummocks of thorn and scrub, as usual singing, when suddenly he broke off at the end of a couplet and said: “I see a horseman riding in haste.”

  I looked up and saw a man galloping towards us along the top of a ridge; he was followed closely by another and yet another, and all three disappeared as they dipped down from the high ground. In the desert every newcomer is an enemy till you know him to be a friend. slipped a cartridge into his rifle, extracted his riding-stick from the barrel, where it commonly travelled, and I took a revolver out of my holster. This done, galloped forward to the top of a mound; I followed, and we watched together the advance of the three who were rapidly diminishing the space that lay between us. jumped to the ground and threw me his bridle.

  “Dismount,” said he, “and hold my mare.”

  I took the two mares in one hand and the revolver in the other. had lined up beside me, and we two stood perfectly still while advanced, rifle in hand, his body bent forward in an attitude of strained watchfulness. He walked slowly, alert and cautious, like a prowling animal. The three were armed and our thoughts ran out to a possible encounter with the Benî Hassan, who were the blood enemies of our companion. If, when they reached the top of the ridge in front of us, they lifted their rifles, and I would have time to shoot first while they steadied their mares. The three riders topped the ridge, and as soon
as we could see their faces gave the salaam; they returned it, and with one accord we all stood at ease. For if men give and take the salaam when they are near enough to see each other’s faces, there cannot, according to the custom of the desert, be any danger of attack. The authors of this picturesque episode turned out to be the three men from . One of them had lent a rifle to the boy who had guided us and, repenting of his confidence, had come after him to make sure that he did not make off with it. We pointed out the direction in which he had gone and turned our horses’ heads once more in the direction of Shetâteh.

  Beyond Shetateh, they came upon the palace of Ukhaidir, the finest example of Sassanian architecture and the little-known archaeological site that Gertrude had come so far to find. She immediately occupied her time with photographing and measuring, and stayed several days and nights despite the warnings of her crew.

  One night I was provided with a different entertainment. I had worked from sunrise till dark and was too tired to sleep. The desert was as still as death; infinitely mysterious, it stretched away from my camp and I lay watching the empty sands as one who watches for a pageant. Suddenly a bullet whizzed over the tent and the crack of a rifle broke the silence. All my men jumped up; a couple more shots rang out, and hastily disposed the muleteers round the tents and hurried off to join a band of Arabs who had streamed from the castle gate. I picked up a revolver and went out to see them go. In a minute or two they had vanished under the uncertain light of the moon, which seems so clear and yet discloses so little. A zaptieh* joined me and we stood still listening. Far out in the desert the red flash of rifles cut through the white moonlight; again the quick flare and then again silence. At last through the night drifted the sound of a wild song, faint and far away, rhythmic, elemental as the night and the desert. I waited in complete uncertainty as to what was approaching, and it was not until they were close upon us that we recognized our own Arabs and in their midst. They came on, still singing, with their rifles over their shoulders; their white garments gleamed under the moon; they wore no kerchiefs upon their heads, and their black hair fell in curls about their faces.

  “Ma’ashî,” I cried, “what happened?”

  Ma’ashî shook his hair out of his eyes.

  “There is nothing, my lady Khân. ’Alî saw some men lurking in the desert at the ’asr” (the hour of afternoon prayer), “and we watched after dark from the walls.”

  “They were raiders of the Benî Dafî’ah,” said Ghânim, mentioning a particular lawless tribe.

  “,” said I, “did you shoot?”

  “We shot,” replied ; “did not your Excellency hear?—and one man is wounded.”

  Near the end of the expedition, on the west bank of the Tigris in the Tur Abdin, they came to the village of Ba Sebrina and Gertrude encountered a meeting of aghas, Kurdish aristocrats and leaders.

  The âghâ of Sâreh belongs to one of the leading Kurdish families of these parts. I found him in an open space near the church, entertaining friends who had ridden over from a neighbouring village. They too were âghâs of the noble house, and they were tricked out in all the finery which their birth warranted. Their short jackets were covered with embroidery, silver-mounted daggers were stuck into their girdles, and upon their heads they wore immense erections of white felt, wrapped round with a silken handkerchief of which the ends stuck out like wings over their foreheads. They pressed me to accept several tame partridges which they kept to lure the wild birds, and while we waited for the priest to bring the key of the church, they exhibited the very curious stela which stands upside down in the courtyard. Meantime the village priest had arrived, and I followed him unsuspiciously into the church. But I had not stood for more than a minute inside the building than I happened to look down on to the floor and perceived it to be black with fleas. I made a hasty exit, tore off my stockings and plunged them into a tank of water, which offered the safest remedy in this emergency.

  “There are,” said the priest apologetically, “a great many, but they are all swept out on Sunday morning. On Sunday there are none.”

  I confess to a deep scepticism on this head.

  From Visits of Gertrude Bell to Tur Abdin,* describing her adventures of 1909 and 1911, she tells of one archaeological find of an unexpected nature.

  The Babylonians, and after them the Nestorians and the Moslems, held that the Ark of Noah, when the waters subsided, grounded not upon the mountain of Ararat, but upon Jûdî Dâgh. To that school of thought I also belong, for I have made the pilgrimage and seen what I have seen. . . .

  In the high oak woods I forgot for a few hours the stifling heat which had weighed upon us ever since we had left Môsul. Each morning we had promised one another a cooler air as we neared the mountains; each evening the thermometer placed in the shade of my tent registered from 88° to 93° Fahrenheit [31–34°C]. The heavy air was like an enveloping garment which it was impossible to cast off, and as I walked through the woods I was overmastered by a desire for the snow patches that lay upon the peaks—for one day of sharp mountain air and of freedom from the lowland plague of flies. Sefinet Nebî Nûh, the ship of the Prophet Noah, was there to serve as an excuse.

  Accordingly we set out from camp at four o’clock on the following morning. Kas Mattai and Shim’ûn in their felt sandals, raishîkî, a proper footgear for the mountaineer, Selîm, whom Providence had marked out for the expedition, ’Abdu’l Mejîd, a zaptieh from Zâkhô, who had been ordained as pointedly to walk upon flat ground, and the donkey. “As for that donkey,” said Fattûh, “if he stays two days in the camp eating grass, Selîm will not be able to remain upon his back.” He was Selîm’s mount, and Selîm, who knew his mind better than any other among us, was persuaded that he would enjoy the trip. The donkey therefore carried the lunch. We climbed for two hours and a half through oak woods and along the upper slopes of the hills under a precipitous crest. But this was not what I had come out to see, and as soon as I perceived a couloir in the rocks, I made straight for it and in a few moments stepped out upon an alp. There lay the snow wreaths; globularia nudicaulis carpeted the ground with blue, yellow ranunculus gilded the damp hollows, and pale-blue squills pushed up their heads between the stones and shivered in the keen wind. Selîm had followed me up the couloir.

  “The hills are good,” said he, gathering up a handful of snow, “but I do not think that the donkey will come up here, nor yet ’Abdu’l Mejîd.”

  We returned reluctantly to the path and walked on for another half-hour till Kas Mattai announced that the Ark of Noah was immediately above us. Among asphodel and forget-me-nots we left the zaptieh and the donkey; Selîm shouldered the lunch-bags, and we climbed the steep slopes for another half-hour. And so we came to Noah’s Ark, which had run aground in a bed of scarlet tulips.

  Gertrude’s research in Tur Abdin led to her re-evaluation of the architecture of that little-known area.

  Into this country I came, entirely ignorant of its architectural wealth, because it was entirely unrecorded. None of the inscriptions collected by Pognon go back earlier than the ninth century; the plans which had been published were lamentably insufficient and were unaccompanied by any photographs. When I entered Mâr Yâ’kûb at Salâh and saw upon its walls mouldings and carved string courses which bore the sign manual of the Græco-Asiatic civilization I scarcely dared to trust to the conclusions to which they pointed. But church after church confirmed and strengthened them. The chancel arches, covered with an exquisite lacework of ornament, the delicate grace of the acanthus capitals, hung with garlands and enriched with woven entrelac, the repetition of ancient plans and the mastery of constructive problems which revealed an old architectural tradition, all these assure to the churches of the Tûr ’Abdîn the recognition of their honourable place in the history of the arts.

  THE LOVER

  In 1907, when she was thirty-eight, and happily occupied with a life of travel and study, Gertrude met the love of
her life. Unfortunately, he was a married man.

  Gertrude was in her prime, a supremely civilized and able woman with a rare grasp of world history and contemporary political debate, combined with a love of beautiful clothes. The center of attention at embassies and consulates throughout the Middle East, she had become a brilliant conversationalist and a confident storyteller. A famous traveler with her latest book just published, she was working hard with Sir William Ramsay in Binbirkilise in Turkey. Their ensuing book, The Thousand and One Churches, would become the standard work on early Byzantine architecture in Anatolia.

  With less time to write letters, she kept a diary that she sent to her parents at regular intervals.

  Making Her Way to Binbirkilise

  From Her Diary, May 10, 1907

  . . . We dropped down into the Konia plain. Got in about 12.30. . . . I washed and changed and went off to see the Doughty-Wylies.