Letters From Baghdad

by Bell, Gertrude

  Saturday, 22nd. I shall not soon forget the Cilician plain. The heat of it is surprising and as I told you 'passim' it is most of it under water. We plunged today for ten hours through mud and swamp and sluggish waters, and at last we have come out onto a rather higher bit of country on which the barley is standing in the ear. In a month everything will be burnt up and all the people will have fled to the hills. I don't wonder Anavarza had such a fine necropolis — all the inhabitants must have died off regularly every summer from marsh fever, mosquitoes and snakes. In the blazing middle of the day we came to two very small trees outside a village and I sat down in the shade of them to lunch. No sooner was my coming observed than one of the inhabitants appeared with a large tray of fried eggs, curds and bread for me and my servants. It was pure hospitality-I might give no tips. I could only thank my host sincerely and eat heartily. But though they are the most delightful of acquaintances they are the worst of servants. They will take any amount of trouble for you for nothing, but once you hire them to work, not a hand's turn will they do. At the hands of Turkish muleteers I suffer tortures. They get into camp and when they have unloaded the mules they sit down on one of the packs and light a cigarette with an air of impartial and wholly unconcerned benevolence. I've gone to the length of dislodging them with the lash of my crop, freely applied. It makes no difference; they stroll on to the next pack and take up a position there smiling cheerfully the while.

  ADANA, Sunday 23rd.

  I rode in here early this morning leaving camp at 3 a.m. to avoid the heat. There was a moon and a high-road and the going was far pleasanter than by day. I got into Adana about 10 — there is absolutely nothing of any interest in the town. I went to the house of the Vice-Consul, a very able Greek, and he directed me to the best hotel... .The other inhabitants of the hotel are strange Greeks and Turks and parties in turbans and Circassians with rows of cartridges set in their brown frock coats — Oh, the oddest crowd! It doesn't surprise me when I am in tents and part of it, but when I come into an hotel and put on civilised clothes, my surroundings astonish me at times. In the afternoon I called on the Vali, an obliging Kurd who promised me all facilities for my journey and gave me a little bronze lion, Greek I think. I have sent on my camp and tomorrow I am actually going to Tarsus by train! Mr. Lloyd comes too and we spend the day together.

  Monday, 24th. We carried out our programme with immense enjoyment. The railway journey which took an hour and a half was quite an excitement to both of us — I haven't been by train since Marseilles. We had a delightful conversation with the station master before we started. He talked English and told us among other things that there were no works of art on the line, only one bridge. We were so busy talking on the journey that we forgot to notice even that work of art. Tarsus is nothing of a place, beautifully situated at the gates of the hills. Mr. Lloyd and I rather enjoyed ourselves however and we finished the day by a dinner-party together in my tent at which Mikhail distinguished himself in the matter of cooking. I have taken on from Mr. Lloyd one of his servants whom he does not want any longer. His name is Fattuh and he is to be general director of the transport and spare hand all round. I think I am wise in taking him for he seems very capable and has an excellent character from Mr. Lloyd, and my transport arrangements have not been going well for the last fortnight.

  KARAMAN, May 7th.

  I daresay it does not often occur to you to think what a wonderful invention is the railway, but it is very forcibly borne in upon me at this moment for I am going to Konia in 3 hours instead of having a weary two day's march across a plain of mud. Yesterday I rode in here some 35 miles. The mountains have no other side, if you can understand me. The road I have come by rose some 6,000 ft. from the sea and did not descend more than 600 on the north side. Inside, the country is exactly what I have often pictured it to myself-a great barren upland with abrupt hills rising out of it. One of my soldiers and I rode on ahead and did the journey in 7 hours. We arrived in a thunderstorm and I went to the hotel and slept for 3 hours till my mules came in. I don't remember having been so tired for a long time. The hotel of Karaman is in the first stage of development from the primitive Khan. Your host provides the roof and every man is his own cook and housemaid... I wonder what the Kaimmakam thinks of the hats of English travellers of distinction. I have worn mine for 4 months in all weathers-you can scarcely tell which is the crown of it and which the brim... .

  To H. B.

  BUSTBIRKLISSE, May 13th, 1905.

  If you had read (and who knows? Perhaps you have the very latest German archaeology books you would be wild with excitement at seeing where I am. I must begin at the beginning and tell you about Konia. I stayed 4 days. My friend the German Consul (name of Loytved) is extremely intelligent and his wife very agreeable. The day after I arrived he took me out to see a Greek village in the hills about an hour from Konia, where he said there was a church. It was exceedingly interesting, with a tradition that it had been founded by the Empress Helena. There was a rock cut church in the same village as old if not older, but as it was Sunday and prayers were going on I could not map them, so I came back next day. It was a carpet making village. Loytved and I Went and had jam and water with a delightful Greek family and inspected their carpets on the looms. The old priest told me of another church in a second Greek village and I spent another morning mapping it, it was just as interesting as the first. These villagers have, I should think, been Christian since the days of St. Paul and the Greek population in them is no doubt descended from Greek settlements before the Christian era.

  [Then follow descriptions of splendid Seljouk Mosques in ruins.]

  Konia contains the mother house of the Dervishes and the founder of the order, Jelal ed Din Zumi the great Persian, is buried there. My visit to his tomb was a real pilgrimage for I know some of his poems and there are things in them that are not to be surpassed. He lies under a dome tiled with blue, bluer than heaven or the sea, and adorned inside with rich and Sombre Persian enamel and lacquer and on either side of him are rows and rows of the graves of the Chelebis, the Dervish high priests and his direct descendants — all the Chelebis who have been ministers and over each is the high felt hat of the order with a white turban wrapped round it. Beyond the tomb are two great dancing halls with polished floors and the whole is enclosed in a peaceful garden, fountains And flowers set round with the monastic cells of the order, so he lies, Jelal ed din Zumi, and to my mind the whole quiet air was full of the music of his verses: "Ah listen to the reed as it tells its tale: Listen, ah, listen, to the plaint of the reed." "They left me from the rushes of my home, my voice is sad with longing, sad and low." (But the Persian is the very Pipe, the plaintive pipe of the reed, put into words and there is nothing so invades the soul.) I dined or lunched with the Loyeds daily, and he invited selections of banished Pashas daily to meet me. The result was some most interesting talks, for the best intelligence of Turkey is in exile and being in exile speaks out. Some day I will tell you some curious tales. So I have now an enormous circle of acquaintances in Konia and I spent my last afternoon there sitting in the Ottoman Bank and receiving the town. It was almost like Damascus over again. And my clothes arrived from Smyrna! If you had roughed it for 4 months with 2 tiny mule trunks you would realize what that meant. All things are by comparison and one evening when I put on a skirt that originally came from Paris I felt almost too smart to move. I sent my horses On 3 stations down the line and next day took train myself with my camp furniture and some food and Fattuh. We joined the horses on a blazing hot morning and packed our single load onto a hired beast and set off across the plain to Binbirklisse. The name means The Thousand and one Churches and the learned have tried to identify it with the classic Barala, but as then the learned knew nothing of Barala but the name, it doesn't seem to me to matter much whether the identification is correct or no. It lies at the foot of the Kara Dagh, a great isolated mountain arising abruptly out of the plain and whatever it was in classic times, it must have been a ve
ry important early Christian city for it is full of churches dating back Strzygowski thinks to pre-Constantine times. There is a lower town down at the foot of the hills and an upper town about an hour from it on a shoulder of mountain, and fate and my zaptieh ordered by good luck that our road should lead us to the upper town first. I fell in love with it at once, a mass of beautiful ruins gathered together in a little rocky cup high up in the hills — with Asia Minor at its feet. We arrived at mid-day and I established myself in a ruined church to lunch and then the brilliant idea seized me that I could make my headquarters up in the hills and not at Maden Sheher, which is the real Binbirklisse down in the plain. I had no tents with me and it was necessary to find out whether there was a possible place to sleep. The village consists of some 15 Turkish families who have built themselves shanties out of the ruins, but it is Turkish custom that any village however small shall contain a guest room for travellers and we went off to inspect. Yes, of course, said the sheikh of the village, there was an'oda' in his own house and I was most welcome to it. As soon as I saw it I knew that my best dreams were fulfilled. It was a little bare mud built room, with the name of God scratched up on the walls and before the door a platform looking out over the great plain and the slopes of Kara Dagh. I turned out the felts and mats in it put in my own furniture and it has proved ideal. It has had the further advantage that while the lower town has been thoroughly mapped, the upper was almost untouched and I have had the pleasure of doing it myself. The first day I rode down to Maden Sheher and spent the day there, photographing and learning from Strzygovski's book what was the nature of the architecture here. The churches were most interesting, but the place horrid, intolerably hot and with execrable water, so that it was a real delight to come back to my mountain and my beautiful spring in the evening. This was a fortress city of churches and monasteries. It has been most fascinating to work through a whole town and find the same architectural features occurring or being slightly modified by the originality of the builder. And then it has been very amusing to be for 4 days a Turkish Villager. It gives me great pleasure when I come in to tea to find my friend and host, the sheikh, saying his afternoon Prayers on a felt mat spread out at his door (he has got his orientation wrong; he prays looking west which can't Possibly be the direction of Mecca, but I daresay it's all one), and the women weaving coarse cloth in the shadow of the wall and the men driving their wooden ploughs through the stones that are the arable land of the village. Everyone takes me as a matter of course but the dogs who still bark furiously whenever I pass. And then my house is so nice with its mud walls and the name of God written up on them: Allah Allah. And my servants are so charming. And then Fattuh, bless him! the best servant I have ever had, ready to cook my dinner or push a mule or dig out an inscription with equal alacrity — the dinner is what he does least well — and to tell me endless tales of travel as we ride, for he began life as a muleteer at the age of ten and knows every inch of ground from Aleppo to Van and Bagdad. This morning I ascended Kara Dagh, and on horse back! It's a huge volcano the crater of which is about half a mile across, a ring of rocky peaks round the lip of it and the great plain stretching away to snow ranges behind. There were patches of snow still on Kara Dagh with crocuses on the edges of them and there were snowdrops in the oak scrub of the higher slopes, and a whole hillside of orange red tulips lower down and the most beautiful frittillary in the world, a bright deep yellow with brown spots. So you see it has made a delightful end to my travels, Binbirklisse. I do regret that I must go down to-morrow, but my work is finished and we have eaten up all our food. To-day we succeeded in buying a hen from the Sheikh — there are only 4 in the whole village and I thought it rather greedy of me to eat one of them, but Fattuh said stoutly that they would have 3 left and that was enough. The hen thought otherwise. It took sanctuary in every ruined church in turn and was finally run to earth in a tomb where Fattuh shot it with my gun!

  May 15th. To-day I came down from my mountain top. I left at the first streak of dawn and rode for an hour before the sun rose... .

  May 16th. I was up at 4 to-day and at 5 I rode off to the hills to see one of the great sights of Asia Minor, the Hittite sculptures at Loriz. It was delicious riding at dawn up towards the snow of Taurus and more delicious still when after a couple of hours we entered a wonderful valley with a rushing stream flowing that I did not know, until we came to the village of Loriz at the mouth of a splendid rocky gorge. Above the village the river rushes out from under the rocks, a great stream as clear as crystal and just below its source there is the famous rock on which the sculptures are. Two figures, a god with curly hair and beard and pointed shoes and Phrygian cap adorned with a crown of horns, in his hands the fruits of the earth,corn and bunches of grapes, which he offers to a smaller figure, a king standing before him with hands uplifted in prayer. Behind the two run several lines of that strange script which no one can read, and beneath the rock rushes the clear water of the river. So I sat down under the walnut trees and considered that fine piece of symbolism of 5000 years ago: the river bursting from the mountain side and bearing fruitfulness to all the plain below and the god standing at its source with his trails of grapes and his swathe of corn. And then one came from the village and brought me eggs and milk and honey and the biggest nuts in the world and I feasted by the edge of the river. And if I had known the Hittite language I would have offered up a short thanksgiving in that tongue to the god with the curly hair and the tiara of horns who had brought such good things out of the naked earth. And then I rode back to Eryli — blazing hot it was — and took the train and came back to Konia. The Consul and his wife met me at the station and dined with me at the hotel and I found there besides Professor Ramsay, who knows more about this country than any other man, and we fell into each other's arms and made great friends. .

  [This was Gertrude's first meeting with Sir William Ramsay, and it led to their interesting partnership in Asia Minor two years later.]

  (Extract from Sir William Ramsay's Preface to "The Thousand and One Churches."

  "In 1905 Miss Gertrude Bell was impelled by Strzygowski's book to visit Bin Bir Kilisse; and, when I met her at Konia on her return, she asked me to copy an inscription on one of the churches, in letters so worn that she could not decipher it, which she believed to contain a date for the building. Her belief proved well founded and the chronology of the Thousand and One Churches centres round this text. I sent her a copy of the text, the imperfect — result of four hours' work, but giving the date with certainty; longer study was prevented by a great storm; and I printed in the Athenaeum the impression made on me by a hurried inspection of the ruins, mainly in order to reiterate in more precise form my old hope that an important architectural and historical investigation might be performed by an architect and an epigraphist, combining their work for a month or two on the site. This letter attracted her attention; she wrote suggesting that we should undertake the task; and as no one else seemed likely to do so, my wife and I arranged to join her in 1907... ."

  Sir William Ramsay, once more home from Asia Minor in 1927, writes me this further letter of appreciation of her work with him.

  13 Greenhill Terrace, Edinburgh.

  24 June, 1927.

  DEAR LADY BELL,

  ... I should be glad if you would add an expression of my admiration for the thoroughness and alertness of Miss Gertrude Bell's examination of Bin Bir Kilisse on her first short visit. The important inscription was almost totally concealed in a little cave. During our work in 1907 I spent about a fortnight on that inscription and finally succeeded in deciphering it completely, and it appears in our joint work with the help of her eyes.