Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE (14 July 1868 -- 12 July 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, archaeologist and spy who explored, mapped, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making due to her skill and contacts, built up through extensive travels in Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia. Along with T. E. Lawrence, Bell helped establish the Hashemite dynasties in what is today Jordan as well as in Iraq. She played a major role in establishing and helping administer the modern state of Iraq, utilising her unique perspective from her travels and relations with tribal leaders throughout the Middle East. During her lifetime she was highly esteemed and trusted by British officials and given an immense amount of power for a woman at the time. She has been described as "one of the few representatives of His Majesty's Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection". Bell's uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, was British minister (similar to ambassador) at Tehran, Persia. In May 1892, after leaving Oxford, Bell travelled to Persia to visit him. She described this journey in her book, Persian Pictures, which was published in 1894. She spent much of the next decade travelling around the world, mountaineering in Switzerland, and developing a passion for archaeology and languages. She had become fluent in Arabic, Persian, French and German as well as also speaking Italian and Turkish. 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.[7] She travelled across Arabia six times over the next 12 years.[7] Between 1899 and 1904, she conquered a number of mountains including the La Meije and Mont Blanc as she recorded 10 new paths or first ascents in the Bernese Alps. One Alpine peak in the Bernese Oberland, the 2632m Gertrudspitze, was named after her after it was first traversed by her and her guides Ulrich and Heinrich Fuhrer in 1901. However. she did fail 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 which nearly cost her her life.[8] She published her observations in the book Syria: The Desert and the Sown published in 1907 (William Heinemann Ltd, London). In this book she described, photographed and detailed her trip to Greater Syria's towns and cities like Damascus, Jerusalem, Beirut, Antioch and Alexandretta. Bell's vivid descriptions opened up the Arabian deserts to the western world. In March 1907, Bell journeyed to the Ottoman Empire and began to work with the archaeologist and New Testament scholar Sir William M. Ramsey. Their excavations in Binbirkilise were chronicled in A Thousand and One Churches.[9]In 1907, they discovered a field of ruins in northern Syria on the east bank of the upper course of the Euphrates to the steep slope of the former river valley. From the ruins, they created a plan and described the ramparts: " Munbayah, where my tents were pitched -- the Arabic name means only a high-altitude course -- was probably the Bersiba in Ptolemy's list of city names. It consists of a double ramparts, situated on the river bank "[10] In January 1909, she left for Mesopotamia. She visited the Hittite city of Carchemish, mapped and described the ruin of Ukhaidir and finally went to Babylon and Najaf. Back in Carchemish, she consulted with the two archaeologists on site. One of them was T. E. Lawrence. Her 1913 Arabian journey was generally difficult. She was the second foreign woman after Lady Anne Blunt to visit Ha'il. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Bell

• published: 21 Feb 2014
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