Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (14 July 1868 – 12 July 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became influential in British imperial policy-making as an Arabist due to her knowledge of the region and the contacts built up during her extensive travels there. During her lifetime, she was highly esteemed and trusted by British officials such as High Commissioner for Mesopotamia Percy Cox, giving her great influence. She participated in both the 1919 Paris Peace Conference (briefly) and the 1921 Cairo Conference, which helped decide the territorial boundaries and governments of the post-War Middle East as part of the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Bell believed that the momentum of Arab nationalism was unstoppable, and that the British government should ally with nationalists rather than stand against them. Along with T. E. Lawrence, she advocated for independent Arab states in the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and supported the installation of Hashemite monarchies in what is today Jordan and Iraq.

Bell was raised in a privileged environment that allowed her an education at Oxford University, to travel the world, and to make the acquaintance of people who would become influential policy-makers later. In her travels, she became an accomplished mountain climber and equestrian. She expressed great affection for the Middle East, visiting Qajar Iran, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia. She participated in archaeological digs during a time period of great ferment and new discoveries, and personally funded a dig at Binbirkilise in Asia Minor. She travelled through the Ha'il region in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula during an extensive trip in 1913–1914, and was one of very few Westerners to have seen the area at the time. The outbreak of World War I in August 1914, and the Ottoman Empire's entry into the war a few months later on the side of Germany, upended the status quo in the Middle East. She briefly joined the Arab Bureau in Cairo, where she worked with T. E. Lawrence. At the request of family friend Lord Hardinge, Viceroy of India, she joined the British administration in Ottoman Mesopotamia in 1917, where she served as a political officer and as the Oriental Secretary to three High Commissioners: the only woman in such high-ranking civil roles in the British Empire. Bell also supported the cause of the largely urban Sunni population in their attempts to modernise Iraq.

She spent much of the rest of her life in Baghdad and was a key player in the nation-building of what would eventually become the Kingdom of Iraq. She met and befriended a large number of Iraqis in both the cities and the countryside, and was a confidante and ally of Iraq's new King Faisal. Toward the end of her life, she was sidelined from Iraqi politics. Perhaps seeing that she still needed something to occupy her, Faisal appointed her the Honorary Director of Antiquities of Iraq, where she returned to her original love of archaeology. In that role, she helped modernize procedures and catalogue findings, all of which helped prevent unauthorized looting of artifacts. She supported education for Iraqi women, served as president of the Baghdad library (the future Iraq National Library), and founded the Iraq Museum as a place to display the country's archaeological treasures. She died in 1926 of an overdose of sleeping pills in what was possibly a suicide, although she was in ill health regardless.

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

thumb|right|upright=1.2|1876 portrait of [[Sir Hugh Bell, 2nd Baronet|Sir Hugh Bell and his 8-year-old daughter Gertrude. Portrait by Edward Poynter.]]

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. Mary Bell ( Shield), 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). Throughout her life, Gertrude consulted on matters great and small with her father, her personal role model. 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, Florence Bell (née Olliffe), and eventually, three half-siblings. Florence Bell was a playwright and author of children's stories, as well as the author of a study of Bell factory workers. She instilled concepts of duty and decorum in Gertrude. She also recognized her intelligence and contributed to her intellectual development by ensuring she received an excellent schooling. Florence Bell's activities with the wives of Bolckow Vaughan ironworkers in Eston, near Middlesbrough, may have helped influence her step-daughter's later promotion of education for Iraqi women. Some biographies suggest the loss of her mother Mary caused underlying childhood trauma, revealed through periods of depression and risky behaviour. While this loss surely marked her, Gertrude and Florence had a positive and lifelong relationship.

From 1883 to 1886, Gertrude Bell attended Queen's College in London, a prestigious school for girls. At the age of 17, she then studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. History was one of the few subjects women were allowed to study, due to the many restrictions imposed on them at the time. She specialised in modern history, and she was the first woman to graduate in Modern History at Oxford with a first class honours degree, a feat she achieved in only two years. Eleven people graduated that year. Nine were recorded because they were men, and the other two were Bell and Alice Greenwood. However, the two women were not awarded degrees. It was not until decades later that Oxford treated women equally with men in this respect, retroactively awarding degrees to Bell and others in 1920. After arriving in Persia in 1892, she courted Henry Cadogan, a mid-ranking British diplomat in Tehran, but was refused permission to marry him after her father discovered that Cadogan was deeply in debt and not her social equal. Cadogan died in 1893; Bell received the news via telegram. She befriended British colonial administrator Sir Frank Swettenham on a visit to Singapore with her brother Hugo in 1903 and maintained a correspondence with him until 1909. She had a "brief but passionate affair" with Swettenham following his retirement to England in 1904. She had an unconsummated affair with Major Charles Doughty-Wylie, a married man, with whom she exchanged love letters from 1913 to 1915. Doughty-Wylie died in April 1915 during the Gallipoli Campaign, a loss which devastated Bell.

Travels and writings

Bell's uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, was British minister (similar to ambassador) at Tehran, Persia. Bell travelled to Persia to visit him, arriving in May 1892. She stayed for around six months and loved the experience; she called Persia "paradise" in a letter home. In 1897, she published a well-regarded translation from Persian into English of the poems of The Divān of Hafez; her work was later praised by Edward Denison Ross, E. Granville Browne, and others. Her horse riding skills, practised from a young age, would aid her in her travels.

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 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. 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.

thumb|upright=1.3|1907 photograph of Bell and Fattuh, an Arab guide who accompanied her on many of her trips

thumb|upright=1.3|Bell's workers at the [[Binbirkilise excavations in 1907]]

In 1905, she returned to the region of Syria. She met Mark Sykes, then a British traveller. The two quarrelled and shared a mutual dislike of each other that would last until 1912, when they made up. She concluded her trip visiting archaeological sites in Asia Minor and visiting Constantinople. She published her observations of the Middle East in the 1907 book Syria: The Desert and the Sown. In it she vividly described, photographed, and detailed her trip to Greater Syria including Damascus, Jerusalem, Beirut, Antioch, Alexandretta, and the lands of the Druze and of the Bedouin. The Desert and the Sown was well received in the western world; the book received positive reviews and was a success. A notable epithet of Bell's came from her trip to Syria, where one particular compliment from a Bani Sakher tribesman she recorded became part of her later public image: "Mashallah! Bint aarab." Literally, it meant "As God wills it, a daughter of the Arabs," but she translated it as being called a "daughter of the desert."

In March 1907, Bell journeyed back to Asia Minor (Anatolia) and began to work with Sir William M. Ramsay, an archaeologist and New Testament scholar. The pair and their staff performed excavations of destroyed buildings and churches that dated from the Byzantine era in Binbirkilise, which she funded and planned. The results were chronicled in the book A Thousand and One Churches.

In January 1909, Bell left for Mesopotamia. She visited the Hittite city of Carchemish, photographed the relief carvings in Halamata Cave, mapped and described the ruin of Ukhaidir, and travelled on to Babylon and Najaf. In Carchemish, she consulted with the two archaeologists on site, T. E. Lawrence and Reginald Campbell Thompson. She struck up a friendship with Lawrence, and the two would trade letters in the following years. Both Bell and Lawrence had attended Oxford and earned a First Class Honours in Modern History, both spoke fluent Arabic, and both travelled extensively in the Arabian desert and established ties with the local tribes. In 1910, Bell visited the Munich exhibition Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art. In a letter to her stepmother, she recounts how she had the research room to herself and spoke to some Syrians from Damascus who were part of the ethnographic section of the exhibition. She wrote a book on her journey and the archaeological work, Amurath to Amurath, as well as a journal article. She wrote afterward that "In Hayil, murder is like the spilling of milk." Bell's travels resulted in her being elected a Fellow of the Geographical Society in 1913; she was awarded a medal from them in 1914, then another in 1918.

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.

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.

Bell volunteered with the Red Cross, serving from November 1914–November 1915; first in Boulogne, France, and then later back in London. She was part of the Wounded & Missing Enquiry Department (W&MED) that attempted to coordinate information between the British Army, French hospitals, and worried families about the status of soldiers and casualties of the war.

Coincidentally, Judith Doughty-Wylie, the wife of the man with whom Bell was having an unconsummated affair, 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.

Cairo, Delhi, and Basra

thumb|upright=0.95|[[St John Philby. Philby would later fall out with Bell and Faisal in 1921; he supported a republic for Iraq, and later served Ibn Saud in what would become Saudi Arabia.]]

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. Here she met T. E. Lawrence again, who had joined the Arab Bureau in December 1914. 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. At the time, the British were still recovering from recent setbacks in the Mesopotamian campaign. She joined the staff of Chief Political Officer Percy Cox as one of the few Westerners who knew the area. She travelled in the region between Basra and Baghdad, assessed the stance and opinions of the local inhabitants, and wrote reports and drew maps that would aid the British Army in their eventual advance on Baghdad. Bell was unpaid at first, but Lord Chelmsford arranged for her to be given a formal paid position in June 1916. She became the only female political officer in the British forces and received the title of Percy Cox's Oriental Secretary. During her Basra work, she struck up close working relationships with fellow political officers Reader Bullard and the young St. John Philby.

thumb|right|upright=1.1|Gertrude Bell, Percy Cox, and Ibn Saud during the meeting at Basra, 1916

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." Ibn Saud was apparently less impressed with her; according to a later account by Philby, he mimicked her feminine and higher-pitched speech as an impression and joke to later Nejd audiences. She would later, in 1920, presciently warn Lawrence that he was overestimating Sharif Hussein's position after war with Ibn Saud broke out, and that Ibn Saud was likely to defeat the Hejaz if the struggle continued.

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." Bell also reported that in Damascus, "Ottomans sold Armenian women openly in the public market." In an intelligence report, Bell quoted a statement by a Turkish prisoner-of-war:

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. 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.

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, and due to 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 Iraqi Republic government after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.

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 are "priceless documentation" that preserved knowledge of many monuments and buildings since damaged or destroyed. An obituary written by her peer D. G. Hogarth expressed the respect British officials held for her. Hogarth wrote:

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". 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.

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. He blamed them for unleashing Arab nationalism in a region where it had been previously unknown.

Posthumous tributes

thumb|right|A [[blue plaque on a house in Sloane Street in Chelsea where Bell lived for a time]]

King Faisal dedicated a section of the Baghdad Archaeological Museum as a memorial to Bell in January 1930.

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. 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".

In the 2010s, a team from Newcastle University released a comic version of Bell's life, with John Miers the cartoonist.

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 Arts and Crafts movement in England, and the home, located in Redcar, features wallpaper by William Morris. Although the building is Grade II* listed, it had not been maintained. A 2015 exhibition about her at the Great North Museum in Newcastle helped raise interest. The exhibition moved to the Kirkleatham Museum in Redcar after its run in Newcastle.

The Gertrude Bell archive, an extensive record of Bell's writings held by Newcastle University, was added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme in 2017.

In 2019, entomologists studying wild bees in Saudi Arabia described a new genus that they named to honour Bell, as genus Belliturgula, known from the species Belliturgula najdica from central Saudi Arabia.

Literature

Olivier Guez's novel Mesopotamia, published in 2024, is a novel in French, based on the life of Gertrude Bell.

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.
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.
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.
In the 2016 documentary Letters from Baghdad, directed by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum, quotations from Bell's letters were read by Tilda Swinton. The documentary quotes Bell's and her contemporaries' writings to tell the story of her life and the events she was a part of.

Writings

Bell wrote voluminously during her life. After her death in 1926, her stepmother Florence Bell made 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 not including her more romantic letters out of propriety, as well as omitting material she thought might be embarrassing to the Iraqi government. Since then, various collections of Bell's letters, journal articles, reports, and wartime Arab Bulletin articles have been published.