Damascus to Ha’il and Baghdad

Gertrude Bell · 1913 CE – 1914 CE · Earth

Reach Ha’il across the Nafud, map the wells of the road and judge the strength of the Rashid emirate.

Historical context

By 1913 Ibn Saud was rising in Najd and the Rashid emirate of Ha’il was tearing itself apart in assassinations, while Constantinople, Cairo and London all wondered which way central Arabia would fall. Bell went to see for herself, without official backing and against consular advice, because she had the Arabic, the money and the standing to be received as a person of rank. She came out with route maps, photographs and an assessment of the Rashid house that the Arab Bureau would be using within two years.

The voyage, step by step

1. Damascus, December 1913

   December 1913

   Bell buys camels and hires cameleers for a journey the consulate has told her not to make.

2. Leaving the railhead at Ziza

   1913 CE

   Past the last station of the Hejaz railway the caravan turns into open desert.

3. Al-Jawf

   1914 CE

   The first Rashid town, a walled oasis of palms at the northern edge of the sands.

4. Across the Nafud in winter

   1914 CE

   Twelve days of red dune horseshoes with water at three wells and nothing between them.

5. Ha’il, 27 February 1914

   27 February 1914

   Lodged in a garden house, refused her camels and her money, she is held for eleven days.

6. Out through Shammar country

   1914 CE

   Released without explanation, she rides north-east across the grazing of the Shammar.

7. Najaf

   1914 CE

   The desert ends at the shrine city on the edge of the Euphrates cultivation.

8. Baghdad, spring 1914

   1914 CE

   She reaches the city that will become her home and her life’s work.

Outcome

Entered Ha’il on 27 February 1914, was held eleven days, then rode on to Najaf and Baghdad and home by Aleppo; the Royal Geographical Society gave her its Founder’s Medal.

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

• Gertrude Bell — Wikipedia
• The Gertrude Bell Archive: letters and diaries, 1913–1914Gertrude Bell · Newcastle University Special Collections · 1914

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