Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (July 14, 1868 – July 12, 1926) was a British writer, traveler, political analyst, and administrator in Arabia. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire. Bell and T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) are recognized as almost wholly responsible for creating the Hashimite dynasty and the modern state of Iraq. During her life, she was an unrecognised force behind the Arab revolt in World War I and, at the conclusion of the war, drew up borders within Mesopotamia to include the three vilayets which later became Iraq.

Bell was born in Washington Hall, County Durham, England to a family of great affluence. She was a granddaughter of industrialist Isaac Lowthian Bell. At the age of 16, she went to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she gained a first class honours degree in history in only two years.

Traveler and author

Bell's uncle Sir Frank Lascelles was British minister in the city of Tehran. In May 1892, after leaving Oxford, Bell travelled to Iran to visit him. She described this journey in her book Persian Pictures. She spent much of the next decade traveling around the world, mountaineering in Switzerland, and learning archaeology and languages — Arabic, French, German, Italian, Persian and Turkish.

In 1899, Bell again embarked to the Middle East. She visited Palestine and Syria in that year and in 1900 traveled to Jerusalem dressed as a male Bedouin to look for the Druzes. She reached Jebel Druze and befriended the Druze king Yahya Beg. In 1905, Bell was again in the Middle East and traveled widely, studying local ruins and staying with both the Druzes and Beni Sakhr and meeting many Arab chieftains, emirs and sheiks. She published her observations in the book The Desert and the Sown. Bell's vivid descriptions opened up the Arabian deserts to the western world. In March 1907, Bell journeyed to Turkey and began to work with the archaeologist and New Testament scholar Sir William M. Ramsey. Their excavations were chronicled in A Thousand and One Churches.

In January 1909, she left for Mesopotamia. She visited the Hittite city of Carchemish, found the undiscovered ruin of Ukhaidir and finally went to Babylon and Najac. Back in Carchemish, she worked closely with the two archaeologists on site. One of them was T. E. Lawrence. Her 1913 Arabian journey was generally difficult. She was the second woman after Lady Anne Blunt to visit Ha'il. Although she was not favourably received by the Ibn Rashid dynasty, she later favoured them in the struggle against the Ibn Sa'ud dynasty.

Anti-Suffrage League

Bell also became honorary secretary of the British Women's Anti-Suffrage League. Her stated reason for her anti-suffrage stand was that as long as women felt that the kitchen and the bedroom were their domain and that they were not worthy of being included in political debate, they were truly unfit to take part in deciding how the nation should be ruled.

War and political career

At the outbreak of World War I, Bell's request for a Middle East posting was initially denied. She instead volunteered with the Red Cross in France.

Work in the Middle East

However, in November 1915, she was summoned to Cairo to the Arab Bureau under General Gilbert Clayton. She also met Lawrence again. At first she did not receive an official position but set out to organize Lawrence's knowledge about the location and disposition of Arabic forces that could be encouraged to join the British against the Turks. Lawrence and the British used the information in their dealings with the Arabs.

In March 3 1916 Bell arrived in Basra, which British forces had captured in November 1914, to advise Chief Political Officer Percy Cox. She drew maps to help the British army reach Baghdad safely. She became the only female political officer in the British forces and received the title Liaison Officer, Correspondent to Cairo. She was Jack Philby's field controller at this time and taught him the finer arts of espionage. When British troops took Baghdad on March 10 1917, Cox summoned Bell to Baghdad and presented her with the title of Oriental Secretary. She later departed for Persia. Her work was specially mentioned for credit in the British Parliament, and was awarded the Order of the British Empire.

Creation of Iraq

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in late January 1919, Bell was assigned to conduct an analysis of the current situation in Mesopotamia and the options for future leadership in Iraq. She spent the next ten months writing what was later considered a masterful official report. When her conclusion was largely favorable to Arabic leadership, her superior, A. T. Wilson, turned against her. On October 11, 1920, Percy Cox returned to Baghdad and asked her to continue as Oriental Secretary, acting as liaison with the new forthcoming Arab government.

Her influence led to the creation of a nation inhabited by a Shi'ite majority in the southern part of the country and Sunni and Kurdish minorities in the center and the north. By denying the Kurds a separate state, the British tried to keep control of the oilfields in their territory. The British thought that Sunnis should lead the Iraqi nation, because the Shi'ite majority was regarded to be religiously fanatic. "I don't for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a ... theocratic state, which is the very devil," Bell once said. The rivalries and the different religious attitudes still cause frictions which might break Iraq apart.

Bell persuaded Winston Churchill to endorse Faisal, the recently deposed King of Syria, as the first King of Iraq. When Faisal arrived in Iraq in June 1921, Bell advised him in local matters, including issues involving tribal geography and local business. Bell also supervised the selection of appointees for other posts in the new government. Faisal was crowned king of Iraq on August 23 1921. Due to her influence with the new king, she earned a nickname "The Uncrowned Queen of Iraq". Working with the new king, however, was not easy: "You may rely upon one thing -- I'll never engage in creating kings again; it's too great a strain."

Baghdad Archaeological Museum

After the situation stabilized, Bell begun to form what would later become the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, located at first inside the confines of the royal palace. She supervised excavations and examined finds and artifacts. Against European opposition, she insisted that excavated antiquities should stay in their country of origin, thereby ensuring that her museum could retain a collection of Iraq's antiquities. The museum was officially opened in June 1926.

Death

Bell briefly returned to Britain in 1925 and, in following years, found herself facing family problems and ill health. Her family fortune had begun to decrease. She returned to Iraq, but soon after developed pleurisy. When she recovered she heard that her brother had died of typhoid. Bell committed suicide on July 12 1926 in Baghdad by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. She had never married or had children. She was buried at the British cemetery in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharji district.

After her death, in 1927, her stepmother edited and published two volumes of Bell's collected correspondence during the 20 years preceding World War I.

Publications

Persian Pictures (1892)
Safar Nameh (1894)
Poems from the Divan of Hafiz (1897),
The Desert and the Sown (1907, republished 1987)
The Thousand and One Churches (1909, with Sir Wiliam Ramsey)
Amurath to Amurath (1911)

External links

The Gertrude Bell Project
Gertrude Bell Biography also Gertrude Bell on her translations of Hafiz
Liora Lukitz - A Quest in the Middle East: Gertrude Bell and the Making of Modern Iraq (2006)
British "Queen of Iraq" rests in Baghdad cemetery
Gertrude Bell, a Masterful Spy and Diplomat

References

Susan Goodman - Gertrude Bell (1985)
Janet Wallach - Desert Queen (1999)
H.V.F. Winstone - Gertrude Bell (2004)

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