Gertrude Bell, who is known as the "daughter of the desert" and "the lady" in the Arab land; could not find a cure for her loneliness and mental depression and committed suicide on 12 June 1926 by taking an overdose of tranquilizers.
Gertrude Bell's extraordinary story: Bell packed dozens of adventures in her 58-year life that will affect the next few centuries of the world. The geography that she made her destiny and left behind continues to die before the eyes of billions of people.
England, which lived in the Victorian Age, continued its development in industry, and under the leadership of William Gladstone, important reforms were being made in the country. The world, whose heat has been rising since the French Revolution, was starting to boil, and it was felt by almost everyone that it was going to war. Like every country that wants to shape the "new world order" that will emerge after a possible war, England also invests in people; diplomats and agents were trained and deployed in critical areas.
Gertrude Bell was born in Dunham County, England, which was experiencing the "Victorian Age" in July 1868. Having lost her mother at the age of three, Gertrude grew up with her stepmother, Florence, who would have a great impact on the rest of her life.
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, (14 July 1868 – 12 July 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making as an Arabist due to her knowledge and contacts built up through extensive travels. Along with T. E. Lawrence, she advocated for independent Arab states in the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and supported the installation of Hashemite monarchies in what is today Jordan and Iraq.
In the oppressive atmosphere of the reign of Queen Victoria on the territory of the United Kingdom, young girls were not welcome to go to university. Gertrude, who graduated from high school, wanted to continue her education and have a profession. Despite the opposition of her father, Sir Hugh Bell, she went to Oxford with the support of her stepmother Florence.
She became the first woman to graduate from Oxford, where she studied history, linguistics, and archeology, with an "honor" and made the history of the school. At the age of 24, Bell, who was on his way to the Middle East for the first time, went to his uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, who was working in Tehran as the British ambassador. This trip sparked his interest in the region, for which she would spend most of his energy for the rest of her life.
Learning French, German, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Chinese, and Japanese, Bell turned his route back to Islamic geography after going on a world tour twice. She went to Jerusalem in 1899 and published a map of Arab archaeological sites there. His work, a first in history, made Bell an important archaeologist and increased his value as an intelligence officer. She was also quite experienced in this regard, as she did not hesitate to share her observations with the British authorities during her travels around the world.
Joining the Arab Bureau in Cairo during the First World War, she had an important task: to spread the revolts against the Ottoman Empire to wider geographies. Bell, who also worked with the famous British agent Lawrence here, acted as Lawrence's mentor and boss.
With the entry of British forces into Iraq in 1917, the road to Baghdad appeared to her. At the same time, she worked as the Middle East secretary of the British High Commission in Iraq, where she came from. Thanks to the strong connections she established in the region, she was able to convene a "Middle East Conference" in Cairo and personally drew the borders of today's Iraq during the conference. She would describe this situation in a letter to her father as follows: I spent all day in the office delineating the desert border in southern Iraq.
Undoubtedly, it was also her duty to determine the person who would administer this newly established state. Known as the initiator of the Arab Revolt, Faisal, the son of Mecca Sharif Hussein and Gertrude's "picnic friend", came to the throne as the first king of Iraq in 1921, and she preferred to turn to archeology, thinking that she had completed her political duty.
He worked day and night as Iraq's General Director of Antiquities and established Mesopotamia's most important antiquities museum, the Baghdad Museum.
Gertrude Bell; could not find a cure for her loneliness and mental depression and committed suicide on 12 June 1926 by taking an overdose of tranquilizers.
Thinking that they had a state thanks to her, Iraqis organized a flamboyant funeral for Gertrude. Gertrude Bell, who packed dozens of adventures that will affect the next few centuries of the world in her 58-year life, was buried in the British Cemetery in Baghdad with a funeral attended by tens of thousands of Iraqis.