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Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became influential in British imperial policy-making as an Arabist due to her knowledge of the region and the contacts built up during her extensive travels there. During her lifetime, she was highly esteemed an…
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politics · English traveller and writer · explorer · archaeologist · writer · mountaineer · diplomat · photographer · spy · assyriologist · politician · arabist · also Mass bal, Gertrude Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, Gertrude Lowthian Bell, Gertrude (Margaret Lowthian) Bell, La Khatun
Born 14 July 1868 · Died 12 July 1926 · Q231360
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2026· 1 entry
2024· 1 entry
Is a novel in French, based on the life of Gertrude Bell
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2019· 1 entry
Entomologists studying wild bees in Saudi Arabia described a new genus that they named to honour Bell, as genus Belliturgula, known from the species Belliturgula najdica from central Saudi Arabia
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2016· 1 entry
A campaign was launched to transform the Bell family's former estate, Red Barns, into a memorial and museum
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1999· 1 entry
“ath is facing extinction. Any US civil and military administration in its place will have the precedent of Bell”
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1930· 1 entry
After King Faisal requested her memory be honored in the project to which she had devoted so much effort
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1929· 1 entry
And was renamed in 1961 to the National Library of Iraq
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1927· 1 entry
Florence published two volumes of Gertrude's collected correspondence, albeit not including her more romantic letters out of propriety, as well as omitting material she thought might be embarrassing to the Iraqi governme
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1926· 4 entries
Died 1926-07-12.
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It was one of only two public libraries in the country
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Her stepmother Florence Bell made the first attempt to curate a selection of her writing from over 2,400 pages of letters
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Of an overdose of sleeping pills in what was possibly a suicide, although she was in ill health regardless
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1925· 2 entries
Her beloved pet dog as well as Kinahan Cornwallis's dog, whom she had looked after and cared for as well, both died
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Had welcomed the move for women's rights, and had shifted from the Liberal views of her father to considering being a Labour voter
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1924· 3 entries
After revisions; it largely followed the standard model elsewhere in the world, but notably reserved extensive power to the Director (that is, herself) to judge whether discovered antiquities would go in the national mus
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Bell personally invited Assyriologist Edward Chiera to conduct archaeological excavations in ancient Nuzi, near Kirkuk, Iraq, where hundreds of inscribed clay tablets had been discovered and deciphered, now known as the
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Responding to an article likely from Arnold Wilson that argued Mosul would be happier under Turkish rule; Bell argued that based on the elite representatives to the Constituent Assembly, Mosul still wished to be part of
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1923· 1 entry
Henry Dobbs, kept Bell as his Oriental Secretary but consulted her less frequently than Percy Cox had
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1921· 1 entry
Bell advised him on local questions, including matters involving tribal geography, tribal leadership, and local business
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1920· 1 entry
Presciently warn Lawrence that he was overestimating Sharif Hussein's position after war with Ibn Saud broke out, and that Ibn Saud was likely to defeat the Hejaz if the struggle continued
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1919· 2 entries
Attending the Paris Peace Conference for a short time in Wilson's stead
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Mesopotamia was still under a provisional military government that largely reported to the government of British India
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1918· 2 entries
Won Founder’s Medal (1918).
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For England and then Persia, control fell to Arnold Wilson, the Acting British Civil Commissioner in Mesopotamia
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1917· 1 entry
Where she served as a political officer and as the Oriental Secretary to three High Commissioners: the only woman in such high-ranking civil roles in the British Empire
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1913· 1 entry
Completed her last and most arduous Arabian journey, travelling about 1800 miles from Damascus to the politically volatile Ha'il, back up across the Arabian peninsula to Baghdad and from there back to Damascus
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1911· 1 entry
Where she criticized the methods used at the dig at Carchemish before being reprimanded and convinced otherwise by Lawrence and Thompson
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1910· 1 entry
Bell visited the Munich exhibition Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art
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1908· 1 entry
And was president of its northern branch
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1903· 2 entries
But eased up on her mountaineering in later years
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And maintained a correspondence with him until 1909
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1900· 1 entry
On a trip from Jerusalem to Damascus, she became acquainted with the Druze living in Jabal al-Druze
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1897· 1 entry
Published a well-regarded translation from Persian into English of the poems of The Divān of Hafez; her work was later praised by Edward Denison Ross, E
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1893· 1 entry
Cadogan died in 1893; Bell received the news via telegram.
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1892· 1 entry
Courted Henry Cadogan, a mid-ranking British diplomat in Tehran, but was refused permission to marry him after her father discovered that Cadogan was deeply in debt and not her social equal
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1871· 1 entry
While giving birth to a son, Maurice Bell (later the 3rd Baronet)
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1868· 1 entry
Born 1868-07-14.
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