Amurath to Amurath

Traveller, archaeologist, mountaineer and diplomat, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) poured her extraordinary talents into a series of adventures through Europe and the Middle East. Addressing her experiences in Persia and Syria respectively, Safar Nameh (1894) and The Desert and the Sown (1907) are both reissued in this series. The present work, first published in 1911 and among Bell’s most acclaimed, describes her recent expedition to Mesopotamia. She recounts her outward journey to the Abbasid palace of Ukhaidir and her return via Baghdad and Asia Minor. Notably discussing changes in the region after the rise of the Young Turks, including their easing of restrictions throughout the declining Ottoman Empire, Bell also saw this book as ‘the attempt to record the daily life, the speech of those who had inherited the empty ground where empires had risen and expired’. Replete with photographs, it vividly opens up Middle Eastern history and archaeology.