Damascus to Ha’il and Baghdad

Gertrude Bell · 1913 CE – 1914 CE · Earth

Reach Ha’il, the capital of Ibn Rashid in Najd, and if possible go further, mapping the road and its wells.

Historical context

In 1913 central Arabia was divided between the Rashid emirs of Ha’il, whose house had been emptied by murders and whose emir was a boy, and Ibn Saud of Riyadh, who had lately taken the Hasa coast from its Ottoman garrisons; the Ottoman government, rumour said in the desert, was sending camel loads of arms to Ha’il to use against him. Gertrude Bell went to see Ha’il for herself, as a private traveller with her own money, her Arabic, and a Damascene camel merchant for guide, and at every tribal boundary she depended on a rafiq, a man of the tribe whose grazing she crossed. She came back with a map of the wells of the road and her photographs, after a stay at the Rashid court that David Hogarth later called “fruitful of political information”.

The voyage, step by step

1. Damascus, 16 December 1913

   16 December 1913

   Bell buys her camels in Damascus, takes a camel merchant of the Najd trade as her guide and rides out into the desert on 16 December.

2. Stopped near Ziza, January 1914

   January 1914

   After three weeks among the lava fields and desert castles, Ottoman soldiers stop her near Ziza; she crosses the Hejaz railway on 16 January.

3. Among the Howeitat, under the Tubaiq

   January 1914

   In the tents of the Howeitat she is warned off the road to Tayma, agrees to go by al-Jawf, and turns south-east for Najd instead.

4. Across the Nafud, February 1914

   February 1914

   Robbed by a sheikh of the Wadi Sulaiman, she enters the sands on 11 February and comes out on 19 February under the black crags of Jebel Misma.

5. Ha’il, 25 February 1914

   25 February 1914

   She rides into Ha’il in state; the emir’s deputy receives her kindly and forbids her to leave the house. She stays eleven days.

6. Out through Shammar country

   8 March 1914

   Sent off by the western road with a rafiq of the ‘Abdeh, she rides north-east across the Shammar grazing towards the Euphrates.

7. Najaf, 23 March 1914

   23 March 1914

   Past the tribes of the Iraq border, under the protection of a Ghazalat sheikh, she comes out of the desert at the shrine city of Najaf.

8. Baghdad, 24 March 1914

   24 March 1914

   She reaches Baghdad, tells the Naqib about Ha’il, and rides home across the Syrian desert by Palmyra to Damascus.

Outcome

Rode from Damascus by the Harra, Ziza and the Howeitat country across the Nafud to Ha’il, which she entered on 25 February 1914; she stayed eleven days, most of them forbidden to leave her lodging, then went on through Shammar country to Najaf and Baghdad, and back across the Syrian desert by Palmyra to Damascus on 1 May 1914. In 1927 David Hogarth said the journey had put on the map a line of wells before unplaced or unknown.

Gertrude Bell

Archaeologist, mountaineer and Arabist who rode from Damascus across the Nafud to Ha’il in 1914, was held eleven days by the Rashid court, and later helped draw the borders of Iraq.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• The Letters of Gertrude Bell, volume 1, selected and edited by Lady Bell (chapter XIII, “Journey to Hayil”, pp. 306–353)Gertrude Bell; edited by Florence Bell · Ernest Benn, London · 1927
• The Gertrude Bell Archive: letters and diaries, 1913–1914Gertrude Bell · Newcastle University Special Collections · 1914
• Gertrude Bell — Wikipedia

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