Amurath to Amurath
- ISBN-10
- 1465612831
- ISBN-13
- 9781465612830
- Series
- Amurath to Amurath
- Category
- Iraq
- Pages
- 369
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-09-28
- Publisher
- Library of Alexandria
- Author
- Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell
Description
When I was pursuing along the banks of the Euphrates the leisurely course of oriental travel, I would sometimes wonder, sitting at night before my tent door, whether it would be possible to cast into shape the experiences that assailed me. And in that spacious hour, when the silence of the embracing wilderness was enhanced rather than broken by the murmur of the river, and by the sounds, scarcely less primeval, that wavered round the camp fire of my nomad hosts, the task broadened out into a shape which was in keeping with the surroundings. Not only would I set myself to trace the story that was scored upon the face of the earth by mouldering wall or half-choked dyke, by the thousand vestiges of former culture which were scattered about my path, but I would attempt to record the daily life and speech of those who had inherited the empty ground whereon empires had risen and expired. Even there, where the mind ranged out unhindered over the whole wide desert, and thought flowed as smoothly as the flowing stream—even there I would realize the difficulty of such an undertaking, and it was there that I conceived the desire to invoke your aid by setting your name upon the first page of my book. To you, so I promised myself, I could make clear the intention when accomplishment lagged far behind it. To you the very landscape would be familiar, though you had never set eyes upon it: the river and the waste which determined, as in your country of the Nile, the direction of mortal energies. And you, with your profound experience of the East, have learnt to reckon with the unbroken continuity of its history. Conqueror follows upon the heels of conqueror, nations are overthrown and cities topple down into the dust, but the conditions of existence are unaltered and irresistibly they fashion the new age in the likeness of the old. “Amurath an Amurath succeeds” and the tale is told again. Where past and present are woven so closely together, the habitual appreciation of the divisions of time slips insensibly away. Yesterday’s raid and an expedition of Shalmaneser fall into the same plane; and indeed what essential difference lies between them? But the reverberation of ancient fame sounds more richly in the ears than the voice of modern achievement. The banks of the Euphrates echo with ghostly alarums; the Mesopotamian deserts are full of the rumour of phantom armies; you will not blame me if I passed among them “trattando l’ombre come cosa salda.”
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Amurath to Amurath
By Gertrude Margaret Lowthian BellAmurath to Amurath
-
Amurath to Amurath: Large Print
By Gertrude BellNotably discussing changes in the region after the rise of the Young Turks, including their easing of restrictions throughout the declining Ottoman Empire, Bell also saw this book as 'the attempt to record the daily life, the speech of ...
-
Poems from the Divan of Hafiz: Easy to Read Layout
By Gertrude Lowthian Bell"He fears nothing.
-
Albanian Identity in History and Traditional Performance
By Eno Koço'The Albanian Struggle', In the Old World and New, Boston, The Writer, Inc., Publishers, 1939 Baerlein, Henry. Southern Albania under the Acroceraunian Mountains, Argonaut, Inc., Publishers, Chicago, Illinois 60611, First Edition 1922, ...
-
Gertrude Bell and Iraq: A Life and Legacy
By Paul Thomas Collins, Charles TrippThis is a major re-evaluation of the life and legacy of Gertrude Lowthian Bell (1868-1926), the renowned scholar, explorer, writer, archaeologist, and British civil servant.
-
The Archaeology of Syria: From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies (c.16,000-300 BC)
By Peter M. M. G. Akkermans, Glenn M. SchwartzParker Pearson , M. 1999 The Archaeology of Death and Burial , Phoenix Mill : Sutton Publishing . Parr , P. 1997 " Tell Nebi Mend , " in E. Meyers , ed . , The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the ...
-
A Woman in Arabia: The Writings of the Queen of the Desert
By Gertrude BellAs she wrote in one of her letters, “It’s a bore being a woman when you are in Arabia.” Forthright and spirited, opinionated and playful, and deeply instructive about the Arab world, this volume brings together Bell’s letters, ...
-
Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden
By Brook Wilensky-LanfordInspired by an Eden seeker in her own family, “Wilensky-Lanford approaches her subjects with respect, enthusiasm and conscientious research” (San Francisco Chronicle) as she traverses a century-spanning history provoking surprising ...