Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian (redirected from Gertrude Bell)

Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian (lō`thēən), 1868–1926, British traveler, author, and government official, one of the builders of the modern state of Iraq, grad. Oxford, 1887. From 1899 she journeyed extensively in Persia, Anatolia, and Syria and early in 1914 reached Haïl in the Arabian Desert. In World War I she placed her unmatched knowledge of Middle Eastern conditions at the disposal of the British government and in 1915 was appointed to the intelligence service. As liaison officer of the Arab Bureau in Iraq and assistant political officer, her aid was invaluable. She knew and worked with T. E. Lawrence and was largely responsible for the selection of Faisal I as king of Iraq. She founded and directed the National Museum in Baghdad. Her writings include Poems from the Divan of Hafiz (1897), The Desert and the Sown (1907), Amurath to Amurath (1911), Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidar (1914), The Arab of Mesopotamia (1917), and Persian Pictures (1928; pub. anonymously as Safar Nameh, 1894).

Bibliography

See her Earlier Letters (ed. by E. Richmond, 1937) and Letters (new ed. 1947); biographies by J. Kamm (1956) and A. Northgrave (1958).