Gertrude Bell
Gertrude Bell | |
---|---|
Born | Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell 14 July 1868 Washington New Hall, County Durham, England |
Died | 12 July 1926 | (aged 57)
Education | Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford |
Occupation(s) | Traveller, political officer |
Known for | writer, traveller, political officer, administrator and archaeologist |
Parents |
|
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell .
Bell was raised in a privileged environment that allowed her an education at
She spent much of the rest of her life in
Bell wrote extensively. She translated a book of Persian poetry; published multiple books describing her travels, adventures, and excavations; and sent a steady stream of letters back to England during World War I that influenced government thinking in an era when few English people were familiar with the contemporary Middle East.
Early life
Gertrude Bell was born on 14 July 1868 in Washington New Hall—now known as Dame Margaret Hall—in Washington, County Durham, England. Her family was wealthy, which enabled both her higher education and her travels. Her grandfather was the ironmaster Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, an industrialist and a Liberal Member of Parliament between 1875 and 1880.[1] Mary (née Shield) Bell, the daughter of John Shield of Newcastle-on-Tyne and Gertrude's mother, died in 1871 while giving birth to a son, Maurice Bell (later the 3rd Baronet).[1] Gertrude Bell was just three at the time, and the death led to a lifelong close relationship with her father, Sir Hugh Bell, 2nd Baronet, a progressive capitalist and mill owner who made sure his workers were well paid.[2] Throughout her life, Gertrude consulted on matters great and small with her father, her personal role model.[3] In particular, Hugh shared his knowledge of government and access to highly placed officials with Gertrude.
When Gertrude was seven years old, her father remarried, providing her a stepmother,
From 1883 to 1886, Gertrude Bell attended
Personal life
Bell never married or had children. After graduating from Oxford, she spent two and a half years, from 1890 to 1892, attending the London social rounds of balls and banquets where eligible young men and women paired off, but failed to find a match.
Travels and writings
Bell's uncle, Sir
In 1899, Bell again went to the Middle East. She visited Palestine and Syria that year and in 1900, on a trip from Jerusalem to Damascus, she became acquainted with the Druze living in Jabal al-Druze.[18]
Between 1899 and 1904, she climbed a number of mountains, including the La Meije and Mont Blanc, and recorded 10 new paths or first ascents in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. One Alpine peak in the Bernese Oberland, the 2,632 m (8,635 ft) Gertrudspitze, was named after her after she and her guides Ulrich and Heinrich Fuhrer first traversed it in 1901. However, she failed in an attempt of the Finsteraarhorn in August 1902, when inclement weather including snow, hail and lightning forced her to spend "forty eight hours on the rope" with her guides, clinging to the rock face in terrifying conditions that nearly cost her her life.[19][20] She did some further climbing in the Rocky Mountains during a trip through North America in 1903, but eased up on her mountaineering in later years.[21]
In 1905, she returned to
In March 1907, Bell journeyed back to
In January 1909, Bell left for
In 1913, she completed her last and most arduous Arabian journey, travelling about 1800 miles from Damascus to the politically volatile
Throughout her travels Bell established close relations with local inhabitants and tribes across the Middle East. While she could meet with the wives and daughters of local notables without it being a breach of propriety, a possibility denied male travellers, she did not take advantage of this much; she was only mildly curious about the lives of Arab women. Her main focus was on meeting and knowing the influential in Arab society, the male shaikhs and leaders.[42]
War and political career
Outbreak of war
The British entered World War I in August 1914, and the Ottoman Empire entered the war in late October to early November. At the suggestion of Wyndham Deedes, the British War Office asked Bell for her assessment of the situation in Ottoman Syria, Mesopotamia, and Arabia. In response she wrote a letter detailing her thoughts on the degree of British sympathies in the region.[43][44]
Bell volunteered with the
Coincidentally, Judith Doughty-Wylie, the wife of the man Bell was having an unconsumated affair with, was also stationed in Boulogne in this period. The two met and exchanged pleasantries. Bell asked Charles Doughty-Wylie in a letter to discourage his wife from any further meetings.[45][46]
Cairo, Delhi, and Basra
In November 1915, Bell was summoned to Cairo in the British protectorate of Egypt; she arrived on 30 November. The Cairo detachment of British officials, headed by Colonel (later Brigadier General) Gilbert Clayton and renowned archaeologist and historian Lt. Cmdr. David Hogarth, was called the Arab Bureau. She also again met T. E. Lawrence, who had joined the Arab Bureau in December 1914.[48][23] The Bureau set about organising and processing Bell's own, Lawrence's, and Capt. W. H. I. Shakespear's data about the location and disposition of Arab tribes of the Sinai and Gulf region. They also mapped the region, including its sources of water.[49] This information would later be of use to Lawrence during the Arab Revolt as to which tribes could be encouraged to join the British against the Ottoman Empire.[40][50][51][52]
Bell's stay in Cairo was short; she was soon sent to British India, arriving in February 1916, likely at the suggestion of journalist-turned-diplomat Valentine Chirol.[40] Her task in Delhi was to better coordinate the Arab Bureau with the Government of India and mediate their differences; according to Bell, "there was no kind of touch between us except rather bad tempered written telegrams!"[40] Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India and family friend of the Bells, was skeptical of the Arab Bureau's recent moves and promises of an independent Arab state, fearing that directly challenging the Ottoman Sultan's religious role as caliph could stir up unrest among India's substantial minority of Muslims. Bell's knowledge of the issues impressed Lord Hardinge, and she was soon sent on to Basra (captured by the British at the start of the war in November 1914) in March 1916 to act as a liaison between India and Cairo.[53] At the time, the British were still recovering from recent setbacks in the Mesopotamian campaign.[54] She joined the staff of Chief Political Officer Percy Cox as one of the few Westerners who knew the area.[55]
Cox found her an office in his headquarters, and she split her time between there and the Military GHQ Basra.
Bell met Ibn Saud in Basra in late November–December 1916, as Cox and India were courting his support against the Ottoman-supporting Ibn Rashid. She was impressed with him and wrote an article in the Arab Bulletin extolling his abilities as a "politician, ruler, and raider."[60] Ibn Saud was apparently less impressed with her; according to a later account by Philby, he mimicked her feminine and higher-pitched style of speech as an impression and joke to later Nejd audiences.[60][61] She would later, in 1920, presciently warn Lawrence that he was overestimating Sharif Hussein's position after war between him and Ibn Saud broke out, and that Ibn Saud was likely to defeat the Hejaz if the struggle continued.[62]
Armenian genocide
While in the Middle East, Gertrude Bell reported on the Armenian genocide. Contrasting the killings with previous massacres, she wrote that earlier killings "were not comparable to the massacres carried out in 1915 and the succeeding years."[63] Bell also reported that in Damascus, "Ottomans sold Armenian women openly in the public market."[64] In an intelligence report, Bell quoted a statement by a Turkish prisoner-of-war:
The battalion left Aleppo on 3 February and reached Ras al-Ain in twelve hours....some 12,000 Armenians were concentrated under the guardianship of some hundred Kurds...These Kurds were called gendarmes, but in reality mere butchers; bands of them were publicly ordered to take parties of Armenians, of both sexes, to various destinations, but had secret instructions to destroy the males, children and old women...One of these gendarmes confessed to killing 100 Armenian men himself...the empty desert cisterns and caves were also filled with corpses...No man can ever think of a woman's body except as a matter of horror, instead of attraction, after Ras al-Ain."[65][59]
Creation of Iraq
After British troops took Baghdad, on 11 March 1917, Bell was summoned by Cox to the city.[66] She was also given the honour of Commander of the Order of the British Empire.[67][68] After Cox left Mesopotamia in 1918 for England and then Persia, control fell to Arnold Wilson, the Acting British Civil Commissioner in Mesopotamia. Initially, Bell and Wilson got along; a memorandum Bell wrote in February 1919, "Self-Determination in Mesopotamia", did not show major differences with Wilson.[69] Cox and Wilson's wartime provisional government drew on British India for inspiration, replicating its legal code and bureaucratic structure, and Bell's assessment was that this was keeping the Iraqi people content.[70] Bell visited France and England in 1919, attending the Paris Peace Conference for a short time in Wilson's stead.[71] At Paris, plans for the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire came into shape, as negotiations over which territories should be distributed to who took place. Famously, the Sykes–Picot Agreement, negotiated by the same Mark Sykes whom Bell had met 15 years earlier, allocated northern Syria to French influence, although the French were persuaded to withdraw their claims on Mosul vilayet to Syria's east. This left the British and Arabs with southern Syria, Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra to divide.
Bell spent September–October 1919 visiting Egypt, Palestine, and Hashemite-ruled Syria before returning to Baghdad in November 1919. In 1919, Mesopotamia was still under a provisional military government that largely reported to the government of British India. Over the course of 1919, Bell became convinced that an independent Arab government in Mesopotamia backed by British advisors was the correct path to follow. She saw the provisional Hashemite government in Syria, while corrupt, seemingly return life to a peaceful normal state; meanwhile, affairs in Egypt saw the
On 11 October 1920, Percy Cox returned to Baghdad, replacing the discredited Wilson. Cox asked Bell to continue as his Oriental Secretary and to act as liaison with the forthcoming Arab government. Cox promptly restored much of the earlier Ottoman government structure and began to appoint more Iraqis to lead in the local provincial governments, albeit backed by powerful British advisors.
1921 Cairo Conference
Bell, Cox and Lawrence were among a select group of "Orientalists" convened by Churchill to attend the conference in Cairo to determine the internal boundaries of the British mandates from within the territory Britain had claimed during the
Various possibilities existed for these lands, including a continued direct mandate (the British
The Ottomans had divided the region into the strategically important for the British Basra vilayet in the south, the central Baghdad vilayet, and the northern Kurdish-dominated Mosul vilayet. The three had little cultural or economic interdependency under Ottoman rule. The territory of the new Iraq was an undecided matter before the conference. The question of what to do with oil-rich Mosul in particular became known as the Mosul question. Bell advocated for expansive Iraqi borders that would include all three of the Ottoman territories including Mosul.[81] In this, she was defeated at the conference; Churchill, Hubert Young, Lawrence, and others feared that putting Kurds under an Arab ruler might make them sympathetic to Turkey and disloyal to Iraq, while establishing an independent buffer state of Southern Kurdistan or Upper Mesopotamia would ensure the Kurds would see any Turkish incursion as unwelcome rather than a liberation. They insisted that the Southern Kurds only be included in Iraq if they directly asked to be. Bell would eventually get her way after the conference, though. In the process of the largely performative nationwide referendum to endorse Faisal of 1921, the referendum takers were able to find enough pro-Faisal members of Kurdish elite to satisfy the new British government of late 1922 to allow the inclusion of Mosul as part of Iraq after all. The Kurdish elite had extracted certain promises for autonomy, but these promises would be largely ignored. Bell wrote a letter in 1924 responding to an article likely from Arnold Wilson that argued Mosul would be happier under Turkish rule; Bell argued that based on the elite representatives to the Constituent Assembly, Mosul still wished to be part of Iraq.[82] Negotiations and occasional warfare with Kemalist Turkey would continue until 1926, when the Treaty of Ankara recognized Mosul as part of Iraq.[82][83] Lawrence would later write that he often feared and sometimes hoped that the over-large state Bell had built would collapse.[75]
Against the wishes of the Arab-sympathetic Bell, the British would eventually decide to keep the
Advisor to Faisal
The Sharifan solution prevailed, and Faisal was presented to Iraq as the new king. The main local candidate for leadership who had opposed the selection of Faisal, Sayyid Talib, was arrested and exiled in April 1921 after being invited to tea with Percy Cox's wife, at Bell's suggestion and with Cox's assent; Bell viewed Talib as a potential rebel if left unchecked.[86][87]
Bell served in the Iraq British High Commission advisory group throughout the 1920s and was an integral part of the administration of Iraq in Faisal's first years. Upon Faisal's arrival in 1921, Bell advised him on local questions, including matters involving tribal geography, tribal leadership, and local business. Faisal was crowned king of Iraq on 23 August 1921. Referred to in
The new Iraqi government had to mediate between the various groups of Iraq: Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Jews, and Assyrian Christians. Keeping these groups content was essential for political balance in Iraq and for British imperial interests. An important project for both the British and the new Iraqi government was creating a new identity for these people so that they would identify themselves as one nation. One of the main issues that faced Faisal was establishing his legitimacy among the Shia population. There was little enthusiasm for Faisal when he landed at the Shia port of Basra.[90] Faisal's administration, while reserving certain positions for Shiites as a token, was pan-Arabist and Sunni-dominated, a position that Bell endorsed. Sunni elites made it clear that they would consider any reduction of their traditional privileges during Ottoman rule, as compared to the Shiites or Kurds, a betrayal.[75] Bell thought that a Shia-dominated government would likely devolve into a theocracy.[72] Bell had difficulty making close relationships with the most important Shia leaders; she wrote that she was "cut off from them because their tenets forbid them to look upon an unveiled woman and my tenets don't permit me to veil."[58]
Bell did not find working with the new king to be easy; she wrote in one 1921 letter that "You may rely upon one thing — I'll never engage in creating kings again; it's too great a strain."[91]
National Library of Iraq
Director of Antiquities
In October 1922, King Faisal appointed Bell as Honorary Director of Antiquities, a task suited to her experience and love of archaeology.
1924 Antiquities legislation
The state of approvals for archaeological digs during Ottoman Empire rule had been loose and unorganized; digs happened without being registered to any authority; and there was no governing body with the authority to oversee or enforce the few regulations that did exist. Bell's chief role as Director of Antiquities was to draw up proposed legislation that would clarify the status of existing digs, regulate the granting of new permits, adjudicate ownership of discovered artefacts, and allow for the creation of a Department of Antiquities to enforce the law. Bell's initial proposals were considered overly friendly to British interests by Sati' al-Husri, Faisal's Director of Education and an Arab nationalist. Al-Husri slowed passage of the law, but Bell's law passed in 1924 after revisions; it largely followed the standard model elsewhere in the world, but notably reserved extensive power to the Director (that is, herself) to judge whether discovered antiquities would go in the national museum and stay as property of the state, or be allowed for export. It also placed the Department of Antiquities under the Ministry of Public Works, away from al-Husri.[94]
Bell's law was a hybrid that bridged the gap between the chaos of Ottoman-era archaeology and later laws that would more directly enforce Iraqi sovereignty on the matter. Foreign archaeologists continued legally exporting antiquities from Iraq, but in a more restricted manner. Simply organizing, tracking, and regulating archaeological digs seems to have hurt the black market trade in looted antiquities.[94]
Baghdad Archaeological Museum
As Director of Antiquities, Bell was responsible for storing excavated antiquities for personal review and examination. Her initial storeroom, called the Babylonian Stone Room, was soon filling up, however. She requested a dedicated building to act as a museum in March 1923, but was initially rejected. After sustained lobbying effort over the next years, carefully ensuring that the elites of Iraqi government and society saw the latest excavations from Ur and were invested in the project at parties and events, she finally secured a location for her museum plan on the ground floor of a stationery and printing building in March 1926. This became the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, later renamed the Iraq Museum; it opened in June 1926, shortly before Bell's death.[98]
As part of her role as Director, Bell helped establish procedures that were becoming standard around the world: carefully keeping a ledger of excavations and finds, as well as detailed descriptions of material, dimensions, and other comments; applying a formal numbering system to track them; and sending photographs of unusual finds off to the British Museum for further analysis. She did this with only a small but hard-working staff; the Department of Antiquities only consisted of her, Abdulqadir Pachachi, and Salim Lawi from 1924–26.[98] Bell and the department helped preserve Iraqi culture and history which included the important relics of Mesopotamian civilizations, and the museum kept them in their country of origin.[99] Bell's will bequeathed £50,000 to the Iraq Museum and £6,000 to the British Museum to establish the "British School of Archaeology in Iraq" in London (later renamed to "The British Institute for the Study of Iraq"), which continued to fund and aid excavation projects (adjusted for inflation, around £2.1 million and £250,000 in 2021, respectively).[100][101][102][103]
Final years
The stress of authoring a prodigious output of books, correspondence, intelligence reports, reference works, and white papers; of recurring
Many of Bell's dear friends left Iraq in the early 1920s, most notably Percy Cox, who retired in 1923.[108] In late 1922, she struck up a lasting friendship with Kinahan Cornwallis, a fellow British advisor in Iraq. She signaled an openness to a romantic involvement to the much younger Cornwallis, but was rejected, and their relationship stayed a professional friendship.[5][109]
Bell suffered psychologically from 1923 to 1926, and may have been depressed.[5] The new High Commissioner of the mandate installed in 1923, Henry Dobbs, kept Bell as his Oriental Secretary but consulted her less frequently than Percy Cox had.[106] Bell was no longer consulted by Faisal as much after his first year in office either,[110] and he had not lived up to her impossibly high expectations.[104] While she had thrown herself into her new position as Director of Antiquities with gusto, she still disliked being sidelined from the high affairs of state.[72] Over the course of two days in 1925, her beloved pet dog as well as Kinahan Cornwallis's dog, whom she had looked after and cared for as well, both died.[106]
On 12 July 1926, Bell was discovered dead of an overdose of
Views and positions
Bell's upper-class background and training in history led her to hold views which were considered old-fashioned for the time, seeming to pine for an older, nobler aristocratic age. Her historical training did aid in understanding the Middle East; many Britons of the time were essentially ignorant and uninterested in the history of the region after the era of early Christianity and the late Roman Empire. It did mean that she phrased her appeals toward Arab nationalists in the style of recreating a lost Golden Age of the early Caliphates, rather than using more modern arguments. She was simultaneously an Iraqi nationalist and a British imperialist; Bell saw no contradiction in this, although fissures between the interests of the Iraqi state and the interests of the British Empire developed almost immediately.[102][118]
From an early age, Bell was outspoken and independent despite being raised in a deferential society; she was willing to verbally contest respected professors and experts during her schooling.[119] This sometimes manifested as arrogance, especially to British people she perceived as non-experts.[104][52] She was willing to back down when sparring with fellow Arabists; T. E. Lawrence writes of one incident in 1911 where she criticized the methods used at the dig at Carchemish before being reprimanded and convinced otherwise by Lawrence and Thompson.[36] She occasionally had a contrarian bent, seemingly enjoying supporting tough causes. Bell had a rationalist perspective, and espoused atheist views.[1][120][16] She unsuccessfully attempted to convince her half-brother Hugo not to enter the Church as a clergyman.[1][121] Another contrarian position she adopted was taking an anti-suffragist position when momentum was building toward women's suffrage among women of higher education such as herself. She was a founding member of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League in 1908 and was president of its northern branch.[119] It seems that her stance may have arisen from both her parents being anti-suffragists, as well as a belief that women could already be successful under the existing system without the vote.[122] She appears to have softened on this stance later in her life after Parliament granted suffrage to women in 1918; Vita Sackville-West wrote that after visiting her in 1925, she had welcomed the move for women's rights, and had shifted from the Liberal views of her father to considering being a Labour voter.[122]
Bell's voluminous letters document her changing and at times contradictory beliefs on the plausibility of an Arab state, the best degree of British involvement, and the challenges involved. T. E. Lawrence once remarked that she "changed her direction every time like a weathercock" (although, in the same statement, wrote she was a "wonderful person").[123] At different times, she wrote both in favour and against an independent Arab state, direct British rule, and the Sharifan solution. Later, she wished for Faisal to be both an independent ruler with legitimacy to Iraqis and great personal authority, yet also a ruler who simultaneously agreed with British requests and priorities: an impossible position.[99] Still, she grasped the dangers of British involvement better than many of her contemporaries.[124] Bell's 1920 report on the region showed striking ambivalence on the wisdom and capacity of the imperial project, depicting the tribal culture of the countryside as a centuries-long tradition that had outlasted Turkish rule and would not easily bend to outside intervention.[102] According to a report she wrote in the Arab Bulletin:
Men who have the tradition of a personal independence which was limited only by their own customs, entirely ignorant of a world which lay outside their swamps and pasturages, and as entirely indifferent to its interests as to the opportunities it offers, will not in a day fall into step with European ambitions, nor welcome European methods. Nor can they be hastened. (...) In our own [English] history, from the Moot Court through Magna Charter to the Imperial Parliament was the work of centuries, yet the first contained the grain of all that would come after.
Legacy
Later influence
The boundary lines of Iraq that emerged during the partition of the Ottoman Empire, the 1921 Cairo Conference, and the 1922 addition of Southern Kurdistan still hold today for the modern state of Iraq. The inclusion of the Kurdish-dominated Mosul vilayet in Iraq is still considered a mistake by many historians and commentators.[73][127] Bell supported this inclusion of traditionally Kurdish lands in a state dominated by Arabs, however, against the advice of some of her contemporaries including T. E. Lawrence, Edward Noel, and E. B. Soane.[75] More generally, Bell had extensive contact and personal friendships with many Arabs, but comparatively limited contact with Kurds, perhaps leading to her unfounded optimism on the wisdom of including Kurdish lands in Iraq.[75] As part of her role in the Iraqi government, she supported suppression of Kurdish revolts of the 1920s, and did not particularly advocate for any privileges or autonomy for the region.[75] The division of the Kurds between Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran led to their oppression in all four countries.[128][114] Saad Eskander wrote that Bell is more fondly remembered by Iraqi Arabs than Iraqi Kurds as a result.[75]
Bell proposed that many aspects of government be decentralized, both because it was the only feasible way to maintain a heterogeneous multi-ethnic and multi-religion state, as well as a certain degree of parochial romanticisation of classical Arab culture. Under her Tribal Criminal and Civil Disputes Regulation, local shaikhs in the countryside had wide authority to manage tax collection and the judiciary on their own; the national government only had such authority in the major cities. Later rulers would favor a strong, centralized government and find this decentralization intrusive; Bell's law was later repealed by the new
Bell's work in archaeology and her tenure as Director of Antiquities is generally well-regarded. Her photographs, notes, and detailed plans of sites she visited from 1909–1914 is "priceless documentation" that preserved knowledge of many monuments and buildings since damaged or destroyed.[36][31] A memorial plaque dedicated to Bell was installed at the Archaeological Museum in 1930, after King Faisal requested her memory be honored in the project she had devoted so much effort. However, the reputation of non-Iraqi archaeologists later suffered due to her corrupt successor as Director of Antiquities, Richard Cooke. Cooke was forced to resign in a scandal after he was caught using his position to take and smuggle antiquities for his own personal fortune. After several short-lived successors to Cooke, Sati' al-Husri, Bell's political rival, took over as Director of Antiquities in 1934. He succeeded in advocating for a new law that revised Bell's 1924 law on Antiquities. The revised 1936 legislation gave the Iraqi government additional power in the division of antiquities between archaeologists and the government.[98]
Bell's work with the future National Library of Iraq and the library of the National Museum of Iraq was praised as helping establish the basis for libraries that would go on to be among the best in the Middle East by the 1980s. Ian Johnson praised it as a step toward bringing back a tradition of scholarship from the Abbasid Caliphate; the region had become an intellectual backwater under Ottoman rule.[92]
Posthumous commentary
Many of Bell's compatriots wrote admiring articles, reports, and lectures upon receiving news of her death, including Vita Sackville-West,
No woman in recent time has combined her qualities – her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archaeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and condition of men, her political insight and appreciation of human values, her masculine vigour, hard common sense and practical efficiency – all tempered by feminine charm and a most romantic spirit.[130]
Bell's 1920 white paper, "Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia", possibly the first white paper composed by a woman, is considered important and influential; H. V. F. Winstone called it her "finest political work".[114][79] Winstone also wrote that despite the later fall of the Kingdom of Iraq, Bell's "real work" had been her earlier role as an archaeologist, scholar, author, translator, and adventurer, a legacy that would last long after the Iraqi monarchy was forgotten.[131]
Elie Kedourie, an Iraqi Jew who left the country to become a conservative British historian, denounced Faisal as a "pathetic incompetent", Lawrence as a "fanatic", and Bell for her "sentimental enthusiasm" and "fond foolishness" in her advocacy of an Arab state.[132] He blamed them for unleashing Arab nationalism in a region where it had been previously unknown.[124] Kedourie admired large multi-ethnic empires and favoured, in retrospect, Arnold Wilson's solution of direct British rule that he believed would better protect minority rights; the Iraqi Jewish community would greatly shrink in the 1940s and 50s in the face of oppression from the hostile government.[132]
Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac described Bell as "one of the few representatives of His Majesty's Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection" in an overview of British policy-making following World War I.[133]
Posthumous tributes
King Faisal dedicated a section of the Baghdad Archaeological Museum as a memorial to Bell in January 1930.[134]
A stained-glass window dedicated to her memory, made by Douglas Strachan, was erected in St Lawrence's Church, East Rounton, North Yorkshire. It depicts Magdalen College, Oxford, and Khadimain, Baghdad.[135] The inscription commemorates her as "Versed in the learning of the east and of the west, Servant of the State, Scholar, Poet, Historian, Antiquary, Gardener, Mountaineer, Explorer, Lover of Nature of Flowers and of Animals, Incomparable Friend Sister Daughter".[136]
In the 2010s, a team from Newcastle University released a comic version of Bell's life, with John Miers the cartoonist.[137][138]
In 2016, a campaign was launched to transform the Bell family's former estate, Red Barns, into a memorial and museum. The family were patrons of the
The Gertrude Bell archive, an extensive record of Bell's writings held by
In 2019, entomologists studying wild bees in Saudi Arabia described a new genus which they named to honour Bell, as genus Belliturgula, known from the species Belliturgula najdica from central Saudi Arabia.[142]
Film and television
- In the 1992 ITV television film A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia, Bell is portrayed by Gillian Barge. The film covers negotiations at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference on the future of the Middle East.[143]
- A 1993 episode of George Lucas's The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (later compiled in the 1996 movie-length "Winds of Change") has Bell portrayed by Anna Massey. The episode features the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, and covers her friendship with T. E. Lawrence.[144]
- In the 2015 film Queen of the Desert by Werner Herzog, Bell is portrayed by Nicole Kidman. The film chronicles much of Bell's life.[145]
- In the 2016 documentary Letters from Baghdad, quotations from Bell's letters were read by Tilda Swinton. The documentary quotes Bell's and her contemporaries' writings to tell the story of Bell's life and the events she was a part of.[146][147]
Writings
Bell wrote voluminously during her life. After her death in 1926, her stepmother Florence Bell took the first attempt to curate a selection of her writing from over 2,400 pages of letters. In 1927, Florence published two volumes of Gertrude's collected correspondence, albeit leaving out her more romantic letters out of propriety as well as omitting material she thought might be embarrassing to the Iraqi government.[148] Since then, various collections of Bell's letters, journal articles, reports, and wartime Arab Bulletin articles have been published.
Selected works
- Bell, Gertrude (1896). Persian Pictures. London.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Hafez (1897). Poems from the Divan of Hafiz. Translated by Bell, Gertrude. London.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Bell, Gertrude (1907). Syria: The Desert and the Sown. New York: E. P. Dutton.
- Bell, Gertrude; Ramsay, William Mitchell (1907). The Thousand and One Churches. London: Hodder and Stroughton.
- Bell, Gertrude (1911). Amurath to Amurath. London: William Heinemann Ltd. (1924 reprinting)
- Bell, Gertrude (1914). The Palace and Mosque of Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Bell, Lady Florence, ed. (1927). The Letters of Gertrude Bell. London: Ernest Benn Ltd. 2 volumes. (Project Gutenberg Australia version)
- Cornwallis, Kinahan, ed. (1940). The Arab war; confidential information for General headquarters from Gertrude Bell, being despatches from the secret "Arab bulletin". Golden Cockerel Press.
- Burgoyne, Elizabeth, ed. (1961). Gertrude Bell: From Her Personal Papers. London: Ernest Benn Ltd. 2 volumes: Volume 1, 1889-1914; Volume 2, 1914-1926.
- Mango, Marlia Mundell, ed. (1989). The Churches and Monasteries of Tur'Abdin. Pindar Press.
- Howell, Georgina, ed. (2015). A Woman in Arabia: The Writings of the Queen of the Desert. London: Penguin.
See also
References
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30686. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Howell 2008, pp. 33–34
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 12, 188
- ^ Bell 2000, pp. 5–6
- ^ S2CID 164903820.
- ^ Lukitz 2013, p. 14
- ^ Howell 2007, p. 41
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/59037. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b Meyer & Brysac 2008, pp. 164–166
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 30–32
- ^ a b Wallach 2005, pp. 32–36
- ^ Wallach 2005, p. 37
- ^ Barlow, Henry S. (1995). Swettenham. Kuala Lumpur: Southdene. pp. 654–5.
- .
- ^ Lukitz 2013, pp. 75–100
- ^ a b Wallach 2005, p. 45
- S2CID 162364993.
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 43–54
- ^ Berry, Helen (September 2013). "Gertrude Bell: adventurer, diplomat, mountaineer and anti-suffragette". BBC History Magazine. BBC. Retrieved 16 May 2017 – via cloudfront.net.
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 62–65
- ^ Wallach 2005, p. 67
- ^ Freeman, Colin (21 February 2014). "How Gertrude Bell caused a desert storm". The Telegraph. Retrieved 10 June 2016.
- ^ a b Winstone 1993, pp. 163
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 259–260
- ^ Wallach 2005, p. 77
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 98–101
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 78–80
- ^ Winstone 1993, p. 99
- ^ Howell 2006, Front matter
- ISBN 978-0-472-03174-0.
- ^ S2CID 164903820.
- ^ Lukitz 2013, pp. 60–62
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 94, 105
- ^ "Gertrude Bell on the 1910 Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art Exhibition in Munich". 6 June 2012.
- JSTOR 1777340.
- ^ S2CID 164903820.
- ^ Howell 2007, pp. 218–219
- ^ a b Wallach 2005, pp. 121–125
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 127, 196, 219–222
- ^ a b c d Meyer & Brysac 2008, pp. 166–169
- ^ Winstone 1993, p. 205
- ^ Wallach 2005, p. 165
- ^ a b Howell 2006, pp. 233–256
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 134–135
- ^ Wallach 2005, p. 140
- ^ Bell, Gertrude (10 March 1915). "Letter from Gertrude Bell to Charles Doughty-Wylie". Gertrude Bell Archive. Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University. Retrieved 22 June 2023.
Today Judith appeared in my office. I asked her to lunch. We talked of nothing save the hospital, but I hated it. Don't make me have that to bear.
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 241–243
- ^ Howell 2008, pp. 160–161
- ^ Bell 2000, p. xi
- ^ Lukitz 2013, pp. 107–111
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 262–256
- ^ a b c Wallach 2005, pp. xxi–xxii
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 170–175
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 275–278
- ^ a b Lukitz 2013, pp. 112–114
- ^ Bell, Gertrude (25 June 1916). "Letters, 25 June 1916". Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
He is going to give me a room in his office where I shall go two or three mornings a week... the other days I shall go on working at GHQ....Sir Percy's office is a quarter of an hour away.
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 180–181
- ^ a b Meyer & Brysac 2008, pp. 171–175
- ^ a b Winstone 1993, pp. 185–189
- ^ a b Winstone 1993, pp. 190–191
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 287–290
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 227–228
- ISBN 978-0674061347.
- ISBN 978-1461633662.
- ISBN 1-84115-007-X.
- ^ Howell 2008, pp. 274–276
- ^ 24 August 1917. The London Gazette. Supplement 30250, p. 8795
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 193–199
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 208–209
- ^ ISBN 0-333-59377-4.
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 210–212
- ^ S2CID 164903820.
- ^ a b Stewart, Rory (25 October 2007). "The Queen of the Quagmire". New York Review of Books. pp. 1–2. Retrieved 21 April 2013.
- ^ Lukitz 2013, p. 137
- ^ S2CID 164903820.
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 342–360
- ^ ISBN 978-0-521-87823-4.
- ^ Wallach 2005, p. 277
- ^ a b Winstone 1993, pp. 232–235
- ^ a b Howell 2008, pp. 365–369
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 297–299
- ^ a b Lukitz 2013, pp. 192–201
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 432–433
- ^ Howell 2008, p. 353
- ^ Bell, Gertrude (25 January 1918). "Letter from Gertrude Bell to her stepmother, Dame Florence Bell". Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University. Retrieved 10 December 2023.
- ^ Meyer & Brysac 2008, pp. 182–183
- ^ Lukitz 2013, p. 148
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 184, 246–247
- ^ Lukitz 2013, p. 149
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 308–309
- ^ Bell, Gertrude (20 May 2009). "Friday July 8. [8 July 1921]". Letters. Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University. Archived from the original on 20 May 2009. Retrieved 8 September 2015.
- ^ S2CID 164903820.
- ^ Hafford, Brad (4 September 2013). "Reconstructing Excavation Processes, Spotlight on Division of Finds: Penn's acquisition of its Ur material". Penn Museum Blog. Penn Museum. Retrieved 30 July 2022.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-726607-6.
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 355–356
- ^ "Gertrude Bell: Archaeologist". Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University. 2016. Retrieved 30 July 2022.
- ^ Edward Chiera, Joint Expedition with the Iraq Museum at Nuzi (5 vols., Paris and Philadelphia, 1927-1934)
- ^ S2CID 164903820.
- ^ a b Wallach 2005, p. 382
- ^ Howell 2008, p. 430
- ^ "BISI: our past, present and future". The British Institute for the Study of Iraq (Gertrude Bell Memorial). Retrieved 15 June 2022.
- ^ S2CID 164903820.
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 374–375
- ^ a b c "Letters from Baghdad" documentary (2016) Directors: Sabine Krayenbühl, Zeva Oelbaum.
- ^ a b Winstone 1993, pp. 249–252
- ^ a b c Howell 2006, pp. 438–440
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 442–443
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 437, 447
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 433–436
- ^ Howell 2006, p. 430
- ^ Howell 2006, pp. 447–448
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 369–373
- ^ Bell, Gertrude (16 June 1926). "Letter from Gertrude Bell to her stepmother, Dame Florence Bell". Gertrude Bell Archive. Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University. Retrieved 22 June 2023.
But it is too lonely, my existence here; one can't go on forever living alone. At least I don't feel I can.
- ^ a b c Buchan, James (12 March 2003). "Miss Bell's lines in the sand". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 August 2009.
- ^ Filkins, Dexter (9 July 2006). "Among the Ghosts: Heroes and Grand Plans". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 July 2022. n.b. "Tehran Square" is surely a spellchecker mangling "Tahrir Square".
- ^ Lukitz 2013, p. 235
- ^ Winstone 1993, pp. 267–268
- ^ Lukitz 2013, p. 134
- ^ S2CID 164903820.
- ^ Lukitz 2013, pp. 222–223
- ^ Wallach 2005, pp. 66–67
- ^ a b Fitzgerald, Kitty (November 2009). "Suffrage, but not for me". Prospect. Retrieved 28 October 2021.
- ^ Winstone 1993, p. 252
- ^ a b Meyer & Brysac 2008, pp. 188–192
- OCLC 2935643.
- ^ Winstone 1993, p. 196
- ^ Simons 1994, p. 182
- ^ Howell 2008, pp. 413–419
- ^ Lukitz 2013, p. 236
- JSTOR 1783440.
- ^ Winstone 1993, p. 263
- ^ ISBN 1-56663-561-6.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ Meyer & Brysac 2008, p. 162
- ^ "Meeting of Arab Kings". The Times. No. 45415. Baghdad. 20 January 1930. Retrieved 11 August 2023.
- ^ Pevsner, Nikolaus (1966). The Buildings of England: Yorkshire: The North Riding. Vol. 30. Penguin.
- ^ "Pictures of the memorial in East Rounton Church". Flickr.com. 26 March 2009. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
- ^ "Gertrude Bell Comics: Archeologist, Writer, Explorer". Newcastle University. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
- S2CID 203046421. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
- ^ Yale, Pat (9 August 2016). "Gertrude of Arabia: the great adventurer may finally get her museum". The Guardian.
- ^ "UNESCO celebrates archive of a remarkable woman". Newcastle University. 9 October 2018. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
- ^ "The Gertrude Bell Archive". UNESCO. Retrieved 30 July 2022.
- hdl:1808/31633.
- ^ Scott, Tony (6 May 1992). "Great Performances a Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia". Variety. Retrieved 16 July 2022.
- ^ "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: The Winds of Change - Rotten Tomatoes". www.rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
- ^ "About "Queen of the Desert"". Retrieved 23 July 2022.
- ^ "Letters from Baghdad". Between the Rivers Productions. 2016. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
- ^ Weissberg, Jay (3 June 2017). "'Letters from Baghdad' Review: Documentary Gives Gertrude Bell Her Due". Variety. Retrieved 5 June 2017.
- ^ Lukitz 2013, pp. 238–239
Bibliography
- Bell, Gertrude (2000). O'Brien, Rosemary (ed.). Gertrude Bell: The Arabian Diaries, 1913–1914. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-0672-7.
- Collins, Paul; S2CID 164903820.
- ISBN 978-0-374-53135-5.
- Also issued as ISBN 1-4050-4587-6.
- ISBN 978-1-4472-8626-4.
- Also issued as
- Lukitz, Liora (2013) [2006]. A Quest in the Middle East: Gertrude Bell and the Making of Modern Iraq. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-78076-6812.
- ISBN 978-0-393-33770-9.
- Wallach, Janet (2005) [1996]. Desert Queen. Anchor Books. ISBN 1-4000-9619-7.
- ISBN 978-0-9547728-0-2.
External links
- The Gertrude Bell Project based at Newcastle University Library
- The Gertrude Bell Archive
- "Archival material relating to Gertrude Bell". UK National Archives.
- Works by Gertrude Bell at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Gertrude Bell at Internet Archive
- Works by Gertrude Bell at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- The Rountons: The Bell Family (photographs)
- Lifestory of Gertrude Bell, from "Lives of the First World War"
- Newspaper clippings about Gertrude Bell in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW