Gertrude Bell

July 14,1868-july12,1926

Was an English writer and archaeologist, she spent much of her life in the Middle East..

During her lifetime she was highly trusted by British officials, Percy Cox giving her great influence, she participated in both the 1919 Cairo conference, Paris peace conference in 1921, which helped decide the territorial boundaries and the governments of the Middle East as part of the partition of the Ottoman Empire, Bell believed that the momentum of the Arab nationalism was unstoppable, and that the British government should ally with the nationalists, rather than stand against them … along with TE Lawrence, she advocated for independent Arab States in the Middle East, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and supported the installation of the Hashemite Monarchies in what is today Jordan and Iraq …

Bell was born in County Durham England, into a privileged environment that allowed her to attend Oxford University, and to travel the world.. she was an accomplished mountain climber and equestrian… she loved the Middle East, she participated in archaeological digs during a time period of great discoveries and personally funded some of those digs…

Bell briefly join the Arab bureau in Cairo, where she worked with TE Lawrence. She spent most of her life in Baghdad and her time building of the kingdom of Iraq and was an ally of Iraq’s King Faisal, Faisal appointed her honorary director of antiquities of Iraq where she was able to spend her time with her original love of archaeology and founded the Iraq museum… she died in 1926 of an overdose of sleeping pills, a possible suicide, but was in ill health regardless…

Bell wrote extensively, she translated books of Persian poetry plus published books on her travels…

Bell never married or had children, after arriving in Persia which she thought was a paradise, in 1892, she courted Henry Cadogan, a British diplomat in Tehran but was refused permission to marry him by her father, who discovered Cadogan was deeply in debt and not her social equal … Cadogan died in 1893, she had a brief but passionate affair with Sir Frank Swettechan following his retirement to England in 1904 .. she had an unconsummated affair with Major Charles Doughty-Wylee a married man with whom she exchanged love letters with from 1913 to 1915, llhe died in April of 1915 during the Gallipoli campaign, a loss which devastated her …

Bell was fluent in Arabic, Persian ( Farsi ), French, German, Italian and Turkish, her published works where many, Persian Pictures, she translated a Book of Persian Poems to English of The Devan Of Hafez … she wrote a lot of her travels and published many books about the Middle East - she published, in 1907 a book she called Syria: The Dessert and The Sown, it is vividly described, photographed and detailed about her trip to Greater Syria including Damascus, Jerusalem, Beirut, Antioch, Alexandretta, and the lands of the Druze and of the Bedouin…. She was called “ A Daughter Of The Dessert” by tribesmen, in 1916 she became the only female political officer in the British forces ..

When in the Middle East, Bell reported on the Armenian genocide, she wrote that earlier killings where not comparable to the massacres carried out in 1915 and succeeding years.. Bell also reported that in Damascus, Ottomans sold Armenian women openly in the public market place.. Gertrude Bell was an archaeologist, a traveler and a diplomat..

On July 12,1926 Bell was found dead of an overdose of sleeping pills, it is believed she suffered from depression for three years prior to her death among other ailments …

There is so much information on Gertrude Bell I couldn’t fit it all in a blog .. this woman accomplished so much in her lifetime …

Versed in the learning of the east and of the west, a servant of the state, a scholar, poet, historian, antiquary, Gardner, mountaineer, explorer, lover of nature, of flowers and of animals, incomparable friend, sister and daughter ..

There are many documentaries and movies made about Gertrude Bell -the one I watched was with Nicole Kidman from 2015 called Queen Of The Dessert .. the film chronicles much of Bell’s life …