Safar Nameh
Persian Pictures: A Book of Travel

This 1894 book of essays is the first published work of Gertrude Bell, the celebrated traveller, archaeologist, and Orientalist.

Gertrude Bell (Author)

9781108042031, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 December 2011

306 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.7 cm, 0.39 kg

This book of 'Persian Pictures' is the first published work of Gertrude Bell (1868–1926), the celebrated traveller, archaeologist, Orientalist and supporter of Arab independence. She first visited Persia in 1892, when a relative by marriage was British minister there, and published her impressions in a series of essays in 1894. Her subjects range from Roman ruins to Ottoman graves to shopping in the bazaars, and from the bustling life of cities to the isolation of the desert. Having studied the Persian language in preparation for her journey, she was able to enter into the life of the country, and especially of its women, more deeply than a casual visitor, and indeed her second publication was a free-verse translation of the fourteenth-century poet Hafiz. Bell captures a sense of delight at a mysterious land still marked by the traces of many of the great civilisations of the past.

1. An eastern city
2. The tower of silence
3. In praise of gardens
4. The king of merchants
5. The Imam Hussein
6. The shadow of death
7. Dwellers in tents
8. Three noble ladies
9. The treasure of the king
10. Sheikh Hassan
11. A Persian host
12. A stage and a half
13. A bridle-path
14. Two palaces
15. The month of fasting
16. Requiescant in pace
17. The city of King Prusias
18. Shops and shopkeepers
19. A Murray of the first century
20. Travelling companions.

Subject Areas: Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]