Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was an English author and adventurer who influenced the formation of the country, Iraq, when that state gained independence from [[Britain] in 19XX] after World War I. "The best known traveler in the Middle East and Arabia in the years before World War I, the British intelligence bureau in Cairo hired her as an advisor on Arabia." (reference for quote: "Gertrude Bell." Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Vol. 22. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007).

Bell's life was an unconventional one, particularly for a British woman living during the reign of Queen Victoria. Bright, athletic, and talented at languages, she learned both Arabic and Persian and spent years leading her own personal expiditions across the sands of Middle Eastern deserts - on either horse or camel. Reputedly a person of a forthright charm, she managed to be taken seriously as an equal by British men, including T.E. Lawrence, British women, including Vita Sackville-West, Iraqi and Bedouin men, including Faisal, and women.

She initially travelled to the Middle East to visit an uncle, who was then the British Ambassador to Persia, stationed in Tehran. "In 1899 Bell studied Arabic in Jerusalem. During the spring of 1900 she went to visit the Druse in the mountains of southern Lebanon. Bell also visited Palmyra, the ruins of a Roman city in Jordan. She described it as "a white skeleton of a town, standing knee-deep in the blown sand." She then went mountain climbing in the Alps and took two trips around the world with her brother." ((reference for quote: "Gertrude Bell." Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, Vol. 22. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. )

She spent months crossing uncharted portions of the desert in XXX and XXX during the years 19XX-19XX, mostly on camelback. Unlike most English travelers of her day, she was fluent in both Persian and Arabic and had a propensity to make maps.

Further reading

Gertrude Bell. The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914. Rosemary O'Brien, ed. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000. xvi + 258 pp; ill. ISBN 0-8156-0672-9 (hb).