Syria Reviews

‘Bell bestowed her attention upon persons rather than places, her chief concern being to study the character and customs of the people. This fact sharply differentiates her work from most books on travel.’

1. New York Times

Very little about Gertrude Bell could be considered ordinary. Known as the ‘female Lawrence of Arabia’, she was not only an explorer but an expert linguist, mountaineer, archaeologist, spy and nation-builder, who helped draw the borders of modern Iraq and establish the Hashemite dynasty. Syria: The Desert and the Sown is her celebrated account of a 1905 journey through Ottoman Syria, an area that now includes parts of modern Palestine and Israel, Syria and Lebanon. She describes the heavy Ottoman presence in Arab towns and cities (the ‘sown’ areas) but their absence from the desert, where Bedouin tribes remained effective rulers, and her portraits of Syria’s people leap from the page, from haughty sheikh to lowly servant. This edition includes more than 160 of Bell’s own photographs newly sourced from her archive, from abandoned forts and camel caravans to daily life in the bazaar. A vast fold-out map of her route, in its own cloth-bound case, traces her journey from Jerusalem to Antioch via Palmyra, Baalbek and the Krak des Chevaliers. With a new introduction by Oxford anthropologist Dawn Chatty, The Desert and the Sown is a timely read about a now-troubled region, made by one who influenced its destiny.