Syria

Syria: The Desert and the Sown is a masterpiece of travel writing by Gertrude Bell, a pioneering Victorian explorer of Arabia. 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.