Archaeology and Acrimony: Gertrude Bell, Ernst Herzfeld and the Study of Pre-Modern Mesopotamia,...

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Iraq LXXV (2013)

ARCHAEOLOGY AND ACRIMONY: GERTRUDE BELL, ERNST HERZFELD AND THE STUDY OF PRE-MODERN MESOPOTAMIA

By lisa cooper1

Letters sent from the German scholar Ernst Herzfeld to Gertrude Bell between 1909 and 1912 provide valuable information about the scholarship of these remarkable characters as they explored issues pertaining to the development of early Islamic art and architecture in Mesopotamia. Through a spirited and often fractious exchange of ideas about a range of artistic and architectural topics that included vaulting techniques, the design of early mosques and palace forms, one can track the impact each had upon the other’s scholarship, and the degree to which their respective views shaped one another’s conclusions about important Islamic period sites such as Samarra and Ukhaidir.

On the evening of April 23rd, 1909, after Gertrude Bell had arrived at the site of Assur on the Tigris River, pitched her camp, and met the German members of the archaeological expedition who were working there, she wrote the following paragraph in her travel diary, summing up her day:

Friday Ap 23. We left camp at 6.30 and rode along the foot of the hills. At 8.50 we mounted the first range by a little stream and rode along its ridge crossing at 10 the Wadi Jehannum. On the other side there were grass and pools of water. I left Jusef to direct the caravan and rode straight down by ridges and dry valleys filled with grass, getting to Assur at 12. Met Mr Hinrichs at work on the ruins who directed me to the Expeditionshause. Mr Jordan greeted me and presently there appeared Mr Bachmann and Mr Andrae. We all lunched very cheerfully together and they agreed with me that Herzfeld was a charlatan. He worked here for 2 years and cd learn nothing because he knew everything before. Then Andrae and I and Hinrichs went out and saw the Parthian colonnade, the big zigurrat and the Anu Adad temple.2

The entry is interesting not only because of its mention of several notable German scholars who figure prominently in Mesopotamian archaeology in the early twentieth century and their work at one of Assyria’s great ancient cities, but also for its negative appraisal of Ernst Herzfeld. It seems surprising to describe Herzfeld as an imposter when he would go on to be linked with ground-breaking achievements in the study of the ancient Near East, especially his work on the sites of Mshatta, Samarra and Persepolis, and for his valuable contributions to ancient Iranian epigraphy, history, religion and philology in the twentieth century.3 And yet this was what Gertrude Bell thought about this man at the time of her first journey through Mesopotamia in 1909, and it marks the beginning of what would become a fractious, spirited, but nonetheless valuable association between two remarkable individuals who shared a deep interest in the study of Near Eastern art and architecture, especially that of the early Islamic period.

1 All of the letters from Ernst Herzfeld to Gertrude Bell cited in this article are housed in the Gertrude Bell Archive of the Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle University. These letters, as well as Gertrude Bell’s diary entries, her letters, and the letter from Max van Berchem to Gertrude Bell (dated October 28th, 1911) have been used with the permission of the Library, Robinson Library, New-castle University. The photographs belonging to Gertrude Bell have been used with the permission of Mark Jackson, curator of the Gertrude Bell photographic archive, School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University. The author grate-fully acknowledges grants from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq and the Hampton Research Fund from the University of British Columbia for supporting her research on Gertrude Bell’s archaeological achievements. Thanks also go to staff members of the Gertrude Bell Archives of the Robinson Library Special Collections at Newcastle University Library for giving access to Herzfeld’s letters, and to Mark Jackson of the School of Historical Studies at

Newcastle University, keeper of the Bell photographic archive for providing copies of Bell’s photographs. Tran-scriptions and translations of Herzfeld’s letters #3–#7 (in German) were capably provided by Lydia Jones and Steph-anie Revell of the Germanic Studies Program in the Depart-ment of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia. Henry and Emmanuelle Ritson provided a transcription and translation of Max van Berchem’s letter (in French) to Bell. Thomas Schneider assisted with the translation of excerpted passages from review articles (in German) by Strzygowski and Herzfeld. Finally, I wish to thank my UBC student, Alexandra Harvey, for her digitization of Bell’s and Herzfeld’s plans of the Great Mosque at Samarra. 2 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle

University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Diary entry, April 23, 1909. 3 Gunter and Hauser 2005: 9.

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For a discussion of Gertrude Bell’s relationship with Ernst Herzfeld one must go back to the period before the outbreak of the First World War, before Bell’s entry into the political arena of the Middle East and her efforts at shaping and managing the affairs of the new state of Iraq.4 This early part of Bell’s life was, on the whole, happy, stimulating, and very productive. As a daughter of one of northern England’s wealthiest industrialists, Bell enjoyed many privileges and opportunities in her young life. After receiving an education at Oxford University, she travelled to many places around the world and became an accomplished mountain climber. By 1909, at the age of 40, when Bell was not at home in England campaigning against women’s suffrage5 or entertaining a long stream of guests at her family estate in North Yorkshire, she was still travelling extensively and pursuing her archaeological interests. Already she had made several trips to the Near East. Her first book, The Desert and the Sown, recounts her 1905 journey through parts of Palestine, Syria and Turkey, during which she travelled as an Englishwoman alone, and took special note not only of the modern cultures she encountered, but of ancient monuments and sites.6 The book was a popular success, and established her reputation as accomplished travel writer as well as a gifted and prolific photographer. She also completed her contribution to the book The Thousand and One Churches, which she had written together with William Ramsay, and which outlined in considerable detail the architectural program of several churches at the site of Binbirkilise in Turkey.7 This effort established her credentials in the field of Byzantine art and architecture. It also gained her entry into the world of Oriental scholarship in which German scholars of art, architecture, history and philology played a major role, and with whom Bell was beginning to feel a certain scholarly affinity.

But while The Desert and the Sown and The Thousand and One Churches were clear achievements, they did not represent anything that could be considered truly original or ground-breaking in their scope. Bell’s travels in the Levant had been intrepid in that she had journeyed without European companions; nonetheless she had covered routes well-worn by travellers before her, and her descriptions offered no startling new conclusions or insights about the people or places visited. Furthermore, her contribution to The Thousand and One Churches consisted of careful descriptions of ecclesiastical architecture, but she did not attempt to interpret the greater significance of these works beyond their structural and decorative chronologies. In comparison, Bell’s next major journey, undertaken in the early months of 1909, was an effort to explore parts of the Near East where few European travellers had ventured, and to visit and describe ancient monuments and sites that only a handful of earlier archaeologists had ever seen or reported. Bell herself would be entirely responsible for the investigation of such sites, and it would be her thorough documentation and conclusions, arrived at through further study and reflection, which would win her scholarly respect and admiration.

Bell’s destination in 1909 was Mesopotamia. Specifically, she aimed to explore the lesser-known eastern bank of the Euphrates River as it flowed from present-day Syria into southern Iraq, and then to follow the course of the Tigris River upstream through northern Iraq into the mountainous regions of eastern Anatolia. Her conscious effort to record ancient sites and monuments during the course of this first Mesopotamian trip is evidenced by the dozens of notebooks she filled with plans and measurements of buildings, as well as notes on inscriptions, decorative fragments and small artifacts collected along the way. She also carried at least two cameras, one for taking conventional black and white photographs, the other for panoramic images. The more than 1300 photographs resulting from this trip are notable for their emphasis on details of distinctive architectural forms and decorative features, as well as for the wider views of the ancient structures and the landscapes in which they were situated. Included among them is one of the very few photographs that she allowed to be taken of herself (Fig. 1).

In addition to her notebooks and photographs, Bell kept a travel diary, in which she faithfully recorded the events of each day in her journey. She also maintained an ongoing correspondence with members of her family at home in England. These letters frequently expose the bravado of someone who enjoys sharing her bold and unique adventures with a willing and eager audience. They

4 Biographies which chronicle Bell’s political career in detail include Winstone 1978, Wallach 1996, Howell 2006 and Lukitz 2006.

5 Lukitz 2006: 49.6 Bell 1907.7 Ramsay and Bell 1909.

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sometimes also contain almost lyrical reflections on striking landscapes and entertaining descriptions of colourful personalities. On the other hand, the letters contain only limited descriptions of archaeological matters, probably to spare family members who had neither the interest nor patience to be told yet again of the structural complexities of one more ruined mosque, church or caravanserai.

Upon her return from Mesopotamia, Bell began the effort to publish her travels. Her written work took the form of several academic articles and a ‘popular’ travel book. Through these endeavours another interesting source of material was generated: letters sent to and received from other scholars with information and opinions about many of the ancient Near Eastern sites that Bell had visited. From these responses she hoped to enhance the learned and professional quality of her publications. Although many of the letters sent by Bell are now missing or are scattered among the archives of other scholars,8 the Gertrude Bell Archive at the University of Newcastle possesses

Fig. 1 Gertrude Bell, standing outside her tent at Babylon, which she visited in early April, 1909 (Album K_218, Courtesy Mark Jackson, School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University).

8 Letters written by Bell to the Swiss scholar Max van Berchem, for example, are housed in the Max van Berchem

Archives in Geneva; Asher-Greve 2006: 193, n. 195.

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several of the responses sent to her from such individuals; they comprise a veritable “who’s who” of archaeologists, art historians and philologists of the Near East, not to mention several notable classical archaeologists. Among others, there are letters from Max van Berchem, the eminent Swiss philologist and Arab historian; Walter Andrae, the famed director of the German excavations at Assur on the Tigris; Marcel Dieulafoy, the French archaeologist who travelled extensively throughout Persia with his wife and excavated at Susa; and Esther Van Deman, an American archaeologist best known for her pioneering work in the field of Roman construction techniques and Roman aqueducts in the early twentieth century.9

Of all the letters, those from the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld are perhaps the richest, not only because of their quantity (seven extant letters in total), but because of their length and detailed content. They are particularly interesting in that they reflect the stages of thinking of both Bell and Herzfeld as they strove to comprehend several notable ancient monuments, while at the same time revealing aspects of their idiosyncratic and unique personalities. The letters also provide us with a glimpse into the turbulent environment of European academia of the period, and of the rivalries, jealousies and back-stabbing from which neither Bell nor Herzfeld seemed to have been entirely removed or blameless. Moreover, and this is particularly the case with Bell, the letters suggest the source of inspiration for several of the theories and conclusions which eventually appeared in print. Thus, despite all of her misgivings and objections to various aspects of Herzfeld’s fieldwork and scholarship, a surprising amount of his research finds its way into Bell’s important work The Palace and Mosque of Ukhaidir. The publication of this work, in 1914, came only shortly after the end of her pre-war correspondence and subsequent visit with Herzfeld, and it reflects the influence Herzfeld had in shaping some of her most important ideas and final conclusions.

Herzfeld, at the time of his correspondence with Gertrude Bell, had not yet reached the peak of his distinguished academic career, which subsequently came to be marked by astounding achievements in the fields of Iranian archaeology, history and religion.10 In 1909 he was thirty years old (to Bell’s forty-one) (Fig. 2), and had not yet acquired for himself a real academic position, a circumstance that appears to have weighed heavily on him. Nonetheless he was bright, precocious and energetic, and had already made some important contributions to archaeology. In addition to his schooling in architecture in Munich and Berlin, he had also studied art history and Assyriology in Berlin and had developed a taste for the ancient Near East at an early stage in his career.11 In terms of fieldwork, besides working as a member of the excavations at Assur (during which time he had also visited and made preliminary observations of the ruins of Samarra12), he had explored Cilicia with Samuel Guyer, a specialist in Byzantine archaeology.13 He had also established a very productive relationship with another Near Eastern art historian, Friedrich Sarre, with whom he jointly published a book, Iranische Felsreliefs (Sarre and Herzfeld 1910). This work contained Achaemenid Persian material from Pasargadae and Persepolis which Herzfeld had collected during his travels in Persia in 1905–1906, together with Sasanian rock reliefs that Sarre had studied during his own travels.14 Herzfeld’s next collaboration with Sarre entailed a journey from Constaninople to Basra in 1907 and 1908 to survey and chart Islamic monuments, the outcome of which was the celebrated four volume work, Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris-Gebiet (Sarre and Herzfeld 1911–1920). This remains today a much-valued publication. Sarre and Herzfeld’s trip also led them to select Samarra as a suitable Islamic site for excavation, and their expedition to that site began shortly after, in 1911.15

Not content to dwell on topics for which there was already a well-established consensus, Herzfeld revelled in pursuing new avenues of study in Near Eastern material culture and unlocking difficult puzzles regarding the origins, inspiration and date of various artistic motifs and architectural forms. Much of his interest by 1909 had turned towards defining the art and architecture of the Early Islamic period and correctly dating its monuments. His research into this question would lead to the

9 Welch 2006: 68. The unpublished letters to Bell from the above-named scholars are housed in the Newcastle Univer-sity Library’s Gertrude Bell Archive, Miscellaneous, Item 13.10 For a good overview of Herzfeld’s life and career, see

Gunter and Hauser 2005.

11 Kröger 2005: 46.12 Kröger 2005: 46.13 Renger 2005: 572.14 Kröger 2005: 48.15 Bloom 2002: xv.


Fig. 2 Ernst Herzfeld as a young man (Courtesy Staatliche Museenzu Berlin – PreussischerKulturbesitz, Museum für Islamische Kunst).

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publication, in 1910, of his brilliant work on the desert palace of Mshatta located south of Amman in present-day Jordan, and his controversial—but correct—opinion that this was an Umayyad Islamic construction of the eighth century A.D.16 Even today, this article is considered a masterpiece among studies of Umayyad art because of its clear methodology, persuasive argument and broad frame of reference.17 His preoccupation at the time with the Early Islamic period and its material manifestations is readily apparent in his letters to Bell, as are his forceful and perceptive observations and conclusions.

All seven of the letters sent by Herzfeld to Bell were addressed to “Rounton Grange”, Bell’s family estate in North Yorkshire. This is the house where she resided while conducting follow-up research to her 1909 trip to Mesopotamia, as well as after her second journey to Mesopotamia in 1911. Bell continued to use Rounton Grange as her primary work place up to the point of the completion of her report on Ukhaidir in late 1913. For his part, Herzfeld was writing from his apartment in Berlin (5 Nürnberger Platz), except for the two letters of 1911, which were sent from the field during his first season of excavations at Samarra. The following list provides the dates and sources of each of the Herzfeld letters:

1. November 1, 1909 Berlin (in English)2. November 22, 1909 Berlin (in English)3. August 27, 1910 Berlin (in German)4. September 1, 1910 Berlin (in German)5. September 17, 1911 Ktesiphon (Mesopotamia) (in German)6. November 29, 1911 Samarra (Mesopotamia) (in German)7. September 11, 1912 Berlin18 (in German)

It appears that Bell was the one who initiated the correspondence with Herzfeld, not long after her return from the Middle East in 1909. She knew him by name and was familiar with his scholarship, particularly the small booklet on the early Islamic site of Samarra which he had published in 1907 and which consisted of his survey of the vast ruin fields of the ancient site, as well as an overview of the works of Islamic historians and geographers who had written about the city.19 Bell seems to have taken the publication, or at least parts of it, with her on her journey and consulted it upon her visit to Samarra. She does not appear, however, to have been particularly impressed with Herzfeld’s efforts, particularly his architectural plans. This dissatisfaction is expressed in her diary entries and letters written from Samarra. Her diary entry from April 15th, 1909, reads:

Then went to the big mosque and found that Herzfeld’s plan is woefully bad.20

In a letter written on the same day, she also writes to her father:

Now Samarra is the most important place in the world for early Mohammadan buildings. Two people have worked here, a Frenchman and a German. The good old Frenchman (he’s a general with a taste for archaeology) published a short paper after a still shorter visit and gave some very interesting information.21 The plans were not so good because he confessed he had lost his notes before drawing them out—rather an innocent admission! The German published a monograph22 with a great flourish of trumpets and was particularly pleased because he said his labours proved Strzygowski to be all wrong. I confidently expected to find all the things he had done could not be improved on; I have only seen one of them as yet (one of the originals) and Herzfeld’s plan, except as to the general outlines, is the creature of his fancy. I shall therefore have to do this one over again and I rather fear that the same will apply to the rest of

16 Herzfeld 1910: 143; Leisten 2005: 375.17 Hillenbrand 1991: 26; Bloom 2002: xvi.18 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle

University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Miscellaneous, Item 13, Herzfeld’s unpublished letters to Gertrude Bell. Letters #1 and #2 in English. Letters #3–#7 translated from German into English. All of the Herzfeld letters cited and excerpted are by permission of the Librarian, Robinson Library, Newcastle University. 19 Herzfeld 1907; Leisten 2003, 4; Kröger 2005: 46.20 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle

University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Diary entry April 15th, 1909. 21 Bell is making reference here to the French General

Lucien de Beylié, who had visited Samarra in 1907 and had published his results in the same year. See de Beylié 1907a, 1907b. The “short paper” referred to by Bell must be the second of these two works.22 Bell is referring here to Herzfeld’s book, Samarra. Auf-

nahmen und Untersuchungen zur islamischen Archaeologie (Herzfeld 1907).


his work. He’s an architect. How an architect could spend an hour in that mosque and not see the extraor-dinarily interesting details of construction which escaped his notice, I can’t imagine. Sometimes when I have occasion to go closely over the work of professional archaeologists, I think I’m something of an archaeologist myself—but of course that’s going too far! At any rate one can always have enough respect for the things one is studying to reproduce them as they really are. And that’s half the battle.23

In another letter written a few days later, on April 18th, 1909, she writes:

As I feared, all Herzfeld’s work has had to be redone and I have been at it hard for 3 days and a half. However, it’s all finished now and I don’t regret it because one learns more about buildings when one goes over them brick by brick with the measuring tape than in any other way. Also (but this is an unworthy consideration!) I shall have a merry time showing up Herzfeld. He deserves it however.24

Finally, we have Bell’s diary entry of April 23rd, 1909, cited above, when she had arrived at Assur and found too that the German excavators there were not favourably disposed towards Herzfeld. He had worked at Assur in previous years (1903–1905) and had apparently antagonized several members of the expedition, including Julius Jordan and Walter Andrae himself.25

The negative tone of Bell’s impressions of Herzfeld is difficult to ignore in her letters and diaries. It comes as some surprise, therefore, that later in 1909, after Bell had returned home from her Mesopotamian journey, she decided to write to Herzfeld. What followed is a lively exchange of ideas and opinions that continued in letters over the next three years. The contents of Herzfeld’s replies to Bell’s letters are discussed here.

Letters #1 (November 1st, 1909) and #2 (November 22nd, 1909)The first two letters sent by Herzfeld, in November 1909, can be treated together, since they both

concern the same issues and focus principally on architectural remains from the site of Samarra. These two letters were written by Herzfeld in English, whereas his five succeeding letters, dated between 1910 and 1912, were written in German. Since we do not possess the letters that Bell sent, we cannot be sure of the language in which she wrote, although we suspect that it was German—she had been well educated in German and French. By his third letter Herzfeld reverted to his native tongue, probably in acknowledgement of Bell’s fluency in German.

One can infer from Herzfeld’s response to Bell’s first letter that she had told him of the visit she had made to Samarra in the spring of 1909 and her examination of several Islamic monuments at that site, including the Great Mosque of al-Mutawakkil, the Qaṣr al-‘Ᾱshiq, the Qubbat al-Ṣulaibiyyah, the Abū Dulaf Mosque (the Great Mosque of Madīnat al-Mutawakkiliyya) and the Imām al-Dūr Mausoleum. Among these, Bell had been particularly interested in the Great Mosque of al-Mutawakkil; as is known from her diaries, plans and photography, she had spent the greatest length of time planning and photographing this complex (Fig. 3). Since it is one of the principal subjects of discussion in his first two letters, we can guess that this building was the main focus of Bell’s enquiries in her letters to Herzfeld. Judging by Herzfeld’s response, it would appear that Bell had questioned him about the correctness of his plan of the Great Mosque, which had appeared in his short 1907 report on Samarra,26 and which Bell consulted when she drew up her own plan and description of the mosque while visiting the site in 1909. As already cited, we know from her diary that Bell had found Herzfeld’s plan of the mosque “woefully bad” and thus she may have written to him in the hope of further clarification on the structure’s architectural details, or perhaps to present to him her own corrected version for consideration. After all, she had earlier written that with her new improved plan of the Great Mosque, she would “have a merry time showing up Herzfeld”.

Admittedly, Bell’s plan of the Great Mosque (Fig. 4a), published in her travel book Amurath to Amurath27 was a more accurate representation of the building than Herzfeld’s 1907 plan, which contained several notable errors (Fig. 4b). Among them were the omission of several of the mosque’s doorways in its outer walls, the incorrect positioning of the central circular basin of the interior courtyard fountain,28 an over-estimation of the number of supports in the prayer hall (ḥaram) at the

23 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Letter April 15, 1909. 24 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle

University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Letter April 18, 1909. 25 Hauser 2005: 523, 555.

26 Herzfeld 1907: fig. 8.27 Bell 1911: fig. 137.28 The central basin was known as the Kā’sat al-Firʻawn,

or “Bowl of Pharaoh”. See Leisten 2003: 50.

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Fig. 3 Bell’s photograph of the exterior of the north wall of the Great Mosque at Samarra. (Album L_067, Courtesy Mark Jackson, School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University).

Fig. 4 Plans of the Great Mosque at Samarra.a. Bell’s 1909 plan. (Adapted from Bell 1911: fig. 137)

b. Herzfeld’s 1907 plan.(Adapted from Herzfeld 1907, fig. 8)


southern end of the mosque; an over-estimation of the number of supports occurring in the eastern and western arcades (riwāqs); and the failure to observe a wider central aisle in the ḥaram, this also continuing in the central aisle of the northern riwāq.29

In addressing her concern over the accuracy of his plan of the Great Mosque, Herzfeld assures Bell in Letter #1 that he has now produced new photos, plans and details of this and other Samarra monuments, which are to be published shortly. The work in which these new materials would appear was Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris-Gebiet, authored by Sarre and Herzfeld, two volumes of which appeared in 1911.30 This publication provides a lavish description of the many Islamic sites and monuments Sarre and Herzfeld had visited during the course of their journey through Mesopotamia in 1908. In it, one can indeed find a description and much-corrected plan of the Great Mosque of al-Mutawakkil at Samarra.31 While there is no indication that Herzfeld enclosed a copy of this yet-to-be published plan in his first or second letters to Bell, he does provide a written description of the mosque’s internal layout which essentially concurs with the details presented in Archäologische Reise, and which by-and-large agrees with Bell’s own plan of the structure. Herzfeld makes no apologies or excuses for the deficiencies in his earlier published plan.32

Since the first two letters from Herzfeld also deal quite extensively with his opinion about the nature of the supports in the interior of the Great Mosque, it is likely that this issue was also queried by Bell in her letters to him. Herzfeld provides a lengthy discussion of the matter, although even at that time he does not seem to have reached a firm decision. In Letter #1, Herzfeld insists that the Great Mosque had marble columns and not, as in the case of the supports in the Abū Dulaf Mosque, piers of baked brick. Herzfeld points out as evidence that he and Sarre had found thick marble fragments within the mosque whose shape and thickness made it unlikely that they belonged to the flooring pavement. Bell may have remained dissatisfied with this response, because in Letter #2, Herzfeld writes “As to the supports of the Great Mosque at Samarra, I shall be very happy if I succeeded to convince you. And therefore I explain you my views in extenso, or rather so, for to explain it in extenso would also be a book more than a letter.” He then proceeds to outline the history of his thinking on the matter of the supports, in which he strenuously rejects the use of brick materials. This discussion largely parallels that which he reports in Archäologische Reise.33 In his continuing advocacy of the use of stone for the mosque’s supports, Herzfeld repeats his findings of marble fragments scattered within the mosque, and refers to the passage from the geographer

29 To be specific, Herzfeld’s 1907 (Fig. 4b here) is missing the central wide doors on the western and eastern sides of the curtain wall. These wider doorways actually align with the fountain in the centre in the court where the famous stone basin had stood. In the 1907 plan, the place of the central fountain is positioned too far south. Herzfeld failed to indicate the little postern doorways at the southern ends of the east and west walls. Regarding supports, the 1907 plan incorrectly gives thirty-four rows of supports going from east to west in the prayer hall. Bell’s own plan, in contrast, correctly indicates twenty-four rows of supports going from east to west (Bell 1911: fig. 137; Leisten 2003: 42). Herzfeld also incorrectly indicated thirty-six rows of supports running from north to south in the eastern and western riwāqs, while Bell herself counted twenty-four rows of columns, these being closer to the correct number (Leisten 2003: fig. 14: this later master-plan of Herzfeld’s shows twenty-four rows, although Leisten 2003, fig. 11, which is based on an letter written by Herzfeld in Feb. 1911, has twenty-two rows). Last, Herzfeld did not indicate a wider central aisle in the ḥaram that terminated at the miḥrāb (which Herzfeld thought to be a gate), nor the wider northern central aisle of the north riwāq (Leisten 2003: 42). These features were all correctly observed by Bell.30 Volumes I and III.31 Sarre and Herzfeld 1911: vol. I, 87–97; vol. III, Taf. XX.32 That Bell would have seen the actual plan of the mosque

by the time of her publication of Amurath to Amurath in 1911 is indicated by her footnote on p. 231 of that work, which acknowledges receipt of Herzfeld’s chapter of Archäolo-gische Reise. Nevertheless, she mentions that by the time she had received the chapter, her report on Samarra had already been printed.33 Sarre and Herzfeld 1911: vol. I, 89–92. Herzfeld guessed

at first that the interior of the Great Mosque had been made of bricks and that they had been plundered by brick-robbers in their building of the modern city. He then conjectured that such bricks had instead been robbed from the Beit al-Khalifa, since these could be transported easily by rafts over the water, and thus the Great Mosque was not a source of construction materials after all. Herzfeld also felt that the quantity of brick material afforded by the pillars in the mosque would not have amounted to much for future con-struction purposes, and that much would have been broken and unsuitable for re-use. Finally, there still should remain some quantities of bricks in the mosque if that is what the piers were truly made of. One other related point made in this letter is the fact that the columns must have directly supported the roof without arches. If there had been arches, traces of the fallen brickwork would have caused a great accumulation of rubbish beneath, and this does not appear to be the case. Moreover, further traces of their springing would be visible where the arcades met the inner surfaces of the outer walls.

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al-Muqaddasī (c. tenth century) in which the mosque is described as having columns of marble.34 He also refers to the passage by the historian al-Yaʻqūbī,35 that the caliph al-Muʻtaṣim ordered workmen in marble and marble-pavement and that houses for marble-working were opened at Lādhiqiyya and other places. Last, Herzfeld cites several other examples of architectural constructions in Iraq from early Abbasid times which made used of marble.36 Despite this defence of marble, however, we know that even as late as mid-January of 1911, shortly after excavations had begun on the Great Mosque at Samarra, Herzfeld was still considering the notion that that the mosque ceiling had been supported by wooden columns like that in the mosque of al-Manṣūr in Baghdad.37

Future letters from Herzfeld make no further comment on the Great Mosque, and from this we may infer that Bell had had enough of the topic and felt that it had been sufficiently dealt with. Her final opinion on the subject finds articulation in her report in Amurath to Amurath, in which she discusses the nature of the supports in the Great Mosque at Samarra and inclines with Herzfeld that the roof must have been carried on columns rather than brick piers because of the absence of any structural remains,38 and that they were either made of wood or marble columns. Bell too refers to the account of al-Muqaddasī and his observation of the presence of marble columns, which she feels cannot be wholly dismissed.39 Her position on the nature of the mosque’s interior supports and the materials used to produce them, therefore, agrees largely with Herzfeld’s own observations, and reflects her receptiveness to at least some of his conclusions despite whatever other objections to his scholarship she may have had. Perhaps Bell was influenced by the forceful tone of conviction in Herzfeld’s writing and the sense that he expertly commanded whatever materials he dealt with.40 This might then put into better context an exclamation made by Bell in a later diary entry when she passed through Baghdad in March 1911, on her second Mesopotamian journey: “Got my letters, read and answered them. Had a long talk with Godard in the hotel. He says he hears Herzfeld is now of opinion that there were no columns at all in the mosque at Samarra!”41 Bell herself had been swayed by the force of Herzfeld’s earlier conclusions about the Great Mosque, and now, annoyingly, she learned that he had changed his mind! Whatever the case, one may note that by this time Herzfeld had indeed been obliged to correct his earlier opinions about the supports of the Great Mosque. His first real excavations at the mosque, which he had initiated in January 1911, had revealed that the supports were composed of an octagonal brick pier core flanked by four marble or granite colonnettes, all supported by a square brick socle.42 In the end, therefore, it had to be admitted that brick was one of the materials employed in the supports, despite having been so forcefully ruled out earlier.

Another issue addressed in Letters #1 and #2 is the architectural style and layout of the Great Mosque of Samarra. This concerns the broader question of the direction from which influences in early Islamic art and architecture can be traced. Did much of the inspiration for artistic styles and architectural forms derive from the east, namely the lands of ancient Mesopotamia and Persia, or should one see a strong Western influence in these early Islamic works, either from the classical and

34 The translation of al-Muqaddasī provided in Northedge 2007: 329 is as follows: “And there is there a great mosque which was preferred to the Mosque of Damascus. Its walls were clothed with glazing, and columns of marble were placed in it, and it was carpeted. And it has a tall minaret, and settled affairs”.35 Translation in Northedge 2007: 268.36 Herzfeld lists a bridge in Baghdad, built entirely of

marble, called the Qanṭarah banī Zuraiq (Yāqūt IV 90). He also mentions the five vaults of the palace al-Tādj built by al-Muʻtadid in Baghdad, resting each on ten columns, five cubits in height. Last, he lists the marble-work in the old miḥrāb in the Khāsakī-Djāmi’ in Baghdad. These monu-ments are also listed by Sarre and Herzfeld in Archäologische Reise vol. I, 92.37 Leisten 2003: 42 and footnote 33, this being reported in

a letter to Sarre.38 Bell 1911: 235.39 Bell 1911: 235.40 In his English letters, Herzfeld frequently used

superlatives or underlined words to emphasize his convic-tions. In Letter #2, for example, we read, “So we must con-clude, that there never were arches like in the M. of Abu Delif. This fact is proved by the absolute absence of traces on the inner surface of the outer walls [. . .] They are so [. . .].” Regarding the use of marble columns in the Great Mosque, Herzfeld, referring to an account of al-Muqaddasī, writes, “Be it, that he saw the columns still standing, or that he cop-ied his inscription from a still older source, in every case there is no reason to doubt his statement, but every reason to prove it.” 41 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle

University, Gertrude Bell Archive, diary entry March 13, 1911. Bell is referring here to André Godard, the archaeolo-gist and architect who had worked with Henri Viollet in the French expedition to Samarra in 1910 (Leisten 2003: 10). The antagonistic relationship that existed between Viollet and Herzfeld probably influenced Godard’s own negative impression of Herzfeld. See Leisten 2003: 10–11.42 Leisten 2003: 42.


Byzantine worlds or possibly traditions emanating from Egypt? This particular topic seems to have presented itself in connection with the Great Mosque at Samarra because of its presumed similarities to the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo (completed in 264 A.H./A.D. 877). Not only do the materials and ground plan share many affinities, but the Ibn Tulun mosque also possesses a minaret characterized by a spiral staircase on the exterior which winds its way to the summit, much like the spiral Malwiyya associated with the Great Mosque at Samarra. Josef Strzygowski, among others, had already argued that Samarra was the source of the inspiration for that Egyptian structure,43 and we cannot doubt that Gertrude Bell, who was following Strzygowski’s scholarship closely at this time, felt it necessary to question Herzfeld on this matter.

Herzfeld’s response to the question of the Iraqi origins of the Ibn Tulun mosque, discussed in both Letters #1 and #2, contains within it comments about Strzygowski. It is notable that Strzygowski had a considerable influence on Gertrude Bell, while at the same time he was a thorn in the side of Ernst Herzfeld. Although rarely mentioned for his scholarly contributions today because of his racist ideology and sympathies with the National Socialist movement in Germany before the Second World War,44 Strzygowski had been a veritable giant of art historical scholarship in the early decades of the twentieth century, and became well known throughout Europe for his contributions on a vast number of topics, including Armenian, Coptic, Slavic, Syrian, Serbian, Persian and Germanic art, not to mention the then little-known fields of late antique Near Eastern and Byzantine art. By 1909 he occupied a prestigious chair in art history at the University of Vienna, and had already written several important and controversial works, including his polemical Orient oder Rom (1901), which strenuously argued against the traditional notion that the classical world, especially Rome, was the origin of all great Western art.45 On the contrary, Strzygowski argued that the Near East must be given sufficient credit for its creative power, and that it was the source of a great number of artistic developments that spread to the west and influenced European medieval art.46 Stryzgowski’s next book Kleinasien: Ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte, which was published in 1903, proceeded in a similar vein. It argued that Greek and Roman culture had had relatively little impact on the art of Asia, and specifically Anatolia, where local traditions had persevered.47

By the period of her correspondence with Herzfeld, Bell had been following Strzygowski’s scholarship for some time. We learn that when she first visited the site of the Binbirkilise in Anatolia, Bell was carrying a copy of Strzygowski’s Kleinasien with her in her saddle bag and that this work must originally have inspired her interest in early Christian Anatolian monuments in 1905.48 She and William Ramsay constantly consulted it when they drew up their plans and conclusions concerning the date and evolution of late antique ecclesiastical architecture at this site in 1907. In the end, their published work The Thousand and One Churches, which appeared in 1909, was dedicated to Strzygowski. Moreover, Bell’s contribution to this work clearly shows Stryzgowski’s influence, not only in her advocacy of the importance of Near Eastern artistic traditions, but also in the way in which her building typologies and architectural categorizations are formulated, and her emphasis on morphological developments in architectural form and decoration for determining developments through time and across space.49

Bell’s interest and familiarity with Strzygowski’s scholarship had also prompted her to write in 1905 a favourable review of his comprehensive 1904 report on the artistic and architectural program of the desert palace of Mshatta.50 Bell’s review was published in the French archaeological journal Revue archéologique51 at the behest of its editor, Saloman Reinach, Bell’s good friend and mentor. This review, and her own visit to that site, would have drawn her into the world of the Mshatta debate which had been raging for some time, since the site’s date and ethnicity were frustratingly

43 Schulz and Strzygowski 1904: 246.44 Ousterhout and Jackson 2008: xx.45 Ousterhout and Jackson 2008: xx.46 Marchand 1994: 119.47 Marchand 1994: 120.48 Bell’s letter from May 13, 1905, for example, indicates

that she used Strzygowski’s book as a reference guide to the

architecture of the churches at Maden Shaher (Binbirkilise) (Ousterhout and Jackson 2008: xx). Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle University, Gertrude Bell Archive.49 Ousterhout and Jackson 2008: xx–xxi. 50 Schulz and Strzygowski 1904.51 Bell 1905: 431–32.

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difficult to determine.52 It probably also brought her further awareness of Herzfeld himself, who was developing his own ideas about Mshatta, and formulating conclusions that would eventually appear in his brilliant article of 1910.

In his response to the issue of the similarities between the Great Mosque at Samarra and the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo, in Letter #1 to Bell Herzfeld takes an opposing view to Stryzgowski. This opinion essentially echoes what he had already written in his 1907 Samarra report. Of the minarets of the two complexes, he writes:

The Malwīya is a mere spiral, like the old Babylonian zikkurrats, and the Minaret of Ibn Ṭulūn is a tower of several stages, and the stages are of round, octagonal or square plan. The division in stages as well as the change of the different forms is a characteristically Hellenistic feature, absolutely unknown to the Malwīya, and perhaps to the ‘iraqian style of architecture. If really the idea of the staircase circling up outside is suggested by the Malwīya, the intrinsic difference of the Minaret of Ibn Ṭulūn shows the self-dependence of the Egyptian style of architecture much more than the contrary (Letter #1).

Herzfeld also rejects the opinion championed by Strzygowski, that the Great Mosque of Samarra had square piers of baked brick, just like the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. He notes that only the mosque of Abū Dulaf, the second largest mosque at Samarra, had square brick piers, whereas the Great Mosque itself had columns (of stone or wood). Thus, it would be incorrect to follow the Arab historian Quda’i, as did Strzygowski, who noted that Ibn Tulun had designed a mosque after that which he had seen in Samarra (at the Great Mosque).53 Herzfeld’s opinion here is one about which he would ultimately be proved wrong, but at the time, his strenuous objection to the eastern orientation of the Ibn Tulun mosque seems to have been provoked by the somewhat blind acceptance that followers of Strzygowski took towards the notion that all influences had arrived from the east. Herzfeld writes in Letter #1:

It is very easy to make the ‘Irāq the source of all novelties and improvements, because we know almost nothing of it, but in my opinion Syria and Egypt are of much more primary importance for the develop-ment of the Art of the Islam, than the ‘Iraq. And if there are influences, they go from West to East as strong and perhaps stronger than from East to West (Letter #1).

This objection is repeated in Letter #2:

If you urge the eastern origins of the pillar-type (referring here to the brick piers of baked brick), you must on the other side admit the most considerable influences spread over the ‘Irāq from Syria and Egypt. I never abrogate the former influences, but I cannot admit the one-sided acculturation of the eastern influ-ences. Every monument of Egypt, during the earliest and the later times of Islam preaches (?) the strong character of self-dependence and originality of the Egyptian art. If the Mosque of Ibn Ṭulūn is strongly influenced by the monuments of Sāmarrā, it shows in the same time, in which characteristical (sic) a degree the Egyptian artists transformed the schemes brought to them from outside (Letter #2).

Ultimately Herzfeld was correct to emphasize the multiplicity of directions from which early Islamic art and architecture was inspired, and the fact that older forms indigenous to a particular place of construction were often emulated and built upon. These arguments, which acknowledge the complex, entwined manner in which influences were utilized and melded into new forms to create the art of Islam, would ultimately win over most scholars—including Bell herself, who would come to recognize this important observation by the time of the publication of her final report on the early Islamic castle of Ukhaidir in 1914, discussed below.

The antagonism between Herzfeld and Strzygowski is clearly evident in Herzfeld’s letters to Bell. Even before his 1910 article on Mshatta, which effectively eclipsed Strzygowski’s own understanding of the decorative and architectural program of that monument and provoked a heavy stream of retaliatory retorts, Herzfeld had received criticisms from Stryzgowski in print. This included his 1907 report on Samarra, which Strzygowski had briefly reviewed in 1908. In the review, Strzygowski felt that Herzfeld’s study was “lacking in art historical results” and that Herzfeld should have waited for a more accurate recording of the Mosque of Samarra before publishing his studies.54 Herzfeld was clearly aggrieved by this review, calling it unfair and tactless. In Letter #2 he writes:

52 Marchand 1994: 124–25; Leisten 2005: 373.53 Schulz and Strzygowski 1904: 246. 54 In his second letter to Bell, Herzfeld makes reference to

this review, which appeared in the journal Deutsche Litera-turzeitung. See Strzygowski 1908: 107.


The “Kunsthistorischen Resultate” are not “verfehlt” if they do not agree with his prejudicial standard. . . It doesn’t suffice to assert emphatically that the origine (sic) of the Ṭūlūn-Type is ‘wirklich’ in Samarra, but to prove that assertion.

Herzfeld also comments, “This critic (Strzygowski) shows that his inmost interest is not the science, but his personal ‘gloire’.” But Herzfeld is also aware of Bell’s regard for Strzygowski, and adds,

I fear, you might be offended by these lines, for I know, you admire Strzygowski. But I beg you, not to be offended, and I assert you (sic), that I fully admire his genius too, but I believe, I make a better work, in trying to correct or to corroborate his statements, than to take them all like an evangile.

Of course, such a statement carries the insinuation that Bell herself, who respected Strzygowski a great deal, was herself nothing more than an “evangile”, and thereby rather undermines Herzfeld’s own attempt at tact.

Herzfeld’s first two letters to Bell include some comments about the Abū Dulaf Mosque at the extreme north end of the greater Samarra region.55 Bell had inspected this mosque during her 1909 visit to Samarra and had drawn up her own plan and taken photographs.56 As Herzfeld had not yet published a report on this mosque, Bell must have enquired after his knowledge of the structure, for he sends in his first letter a copy of the plan he had made of the mosque during his visit to it in 1908 with Sarre. This plan would subsequently be published in Sarre and Herzfeld’s Archäologische Reise and a journal article.57 Further comments about the Abū Dulaf Mosque, and in particular, the mosque’s differences from the Great Mosque of Samarra, are offered in Herzfeld’s second letter to Bell, along with some comments about the southern front of the mosque. Herzfeld assures Bell that in the middle of the southern front there is a big door and not a miḥrāb, as perhaps one might expect. Moreover, he makes reference to his rough plan of the dār al-imāra58 of which he had seen traces, which would have extended out from the southern side of the mosque’s facade.59 It is likely that Bell had questioned him on this building’s true outline, for she could not make out anything distinct herself, and Herzfeld’s response in the letter “That nonetheless they (the remains) exist and are truly measured so far as I measured them and as such measurements are possible without excavations” (Letter #2), suggests that he is endeavouring to remove doubts on her part as to the veracity of his plan.

One can look to Bell’s Amurath to Amurath to see what she ultimately accepted of Herzfeld’s opinion regarding the Abū Dulaf Mosque. In that work she remarks that the centre of the south wall could have had a miḥrāb but more likely it contained a door leading to a small building or vestibule marked now by shapeless mounds immediately to the south of the wall.60 Bell thus has shown herself to incline to Herzfeld’s opinion about the absence of a miḥrāb.61 Nevertheless, her doubts about Herzfeld’s ability to discern the true nature of the dār al-imāra are borne out by her footnote on the same page: “Herzfeld has made an attempt to reconstruct the vestibule of Abu Dulaf. Viollet has given a bare indication of it, and this is all that exists”.62 One can also note Bell’s other comment about Herzfeld’s work on the Abū Dulaf Mosque, this appearing in the footnote on an earlier page. Concerning his overall plan of the mosque, she reports: “My plan differs considerably from his, but only a re-examination of the mosque can prove which of us is right.”63 This is a fairly harmless poke on Bell’s part, and we suspect that she was merely trying to establish her own credibility by demonstrating her ability to weigh in independently on this architectural form, but the comment clearly stung Herzfeld, as future letters evince.

55 Leisten 2003, 58.56 See the plan in Bell 1911: fig. 164, and photos, figs.

165–66.57 Sarre and Herzfeld, 1911: vol. I, 69–77 for text descrip-

tion; vol III: Taf. XIV for plan, Taf. XV and XVI for photo-graphs; see also Herzfeld 1909: 345–49. 58 Literally “the palace of the governor”, this feature was

often appended to the south wall of the mosque, the qibla, and provided a means by which the caliph could directly

access the mosque.59 Sarre and Herzfeld 1911: vol. III, Taf. XIV.60 Bell 1911: 245.61 Herzfeld’s later excavations in 1913 would in fact reveal

a miḥrāb that projected from the qibla wall towards the south (Leisten 2003: 64).62 Bell 1911: 24563 Bell 1911: 243.

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The final major issue covered in the first two letters concerns the Imām al-Dūr mausoleum, another monument Bell visited as she passed by the northern end of Samarra in 1909.64 It seems that she noted an Arabic inscription engraved on a marble slab by the doorway of the shrine, where she read the date of 871 A.H. (A.D. 1466) after a villager had scraped away some of the whitewash that covered it at the bottom.65 Herzfeld reacts with considerable surprise over this find in Letter #1, given that he too had copied the inscription in 1908 and had not seen the date; the eminent philologist Max van Berchem had also studied it, and both had considered the inscription, on the basis of the style of writing, to be much older, perhaps around 400 A.H. /A.D. 995. Herzfeld adduced the brickwork of the mausoleum to be older as well. Herzfeld can only reconcile Bell’s find by suggesting that the date was added at the time of the building’s reconstruction, when some later stucco decoration was added and covered over some of the earlier windows of the shrine on the interior.

When Sarre and Herzfeld prepared their manuscript for Archäologische Reise, van Berchem, who provided the report on their copied inscriptions, respectfully included Bell’s observed date in a footnote despite his doubts about its presence.66 For her part, when Bell wrote up her description of the Imām al-Dūr in Amurath to Amurath, she defers to van Berchem’s authority, who had decided that the shape of the letters indicated a ninth century A.D. date, but suggests that the date she had seen may point to the time of a repair of the shrine.67 Her exchanges with Herzfeld are not mentioned and she credits Sarre for having copied the inscription.

Letters #3 (August 27th, 1910) and #4 (September 1st, 1910)The third and fourth letters sent by Herzfeld to Bell were written in late August and early

September of 1910. Although roughly a year had passed since Herzfeld’s last letters, there is no indication that the two had actually met by this time. It is known, however, that Bell had travelled to Munich in August 1910 to see a museum exhibition of art objects from the Islamic world which had been organized by Herzfeld’s colleague Friedrich Sarre, who at the time was head of the Islamic collection at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin.68 From her letters we know that Bell had been able to meet Sarre in Munich.69

It would have been around this time that Bell was working on the completion of her book manuscript Amurath to Amurath, and no doubt she was seeking clarification or confirmation about several details relating to the Islamic and pre-Islamic monuments she had visited during the course of her 1909 journey, and which she hoped to include in her book.70 Although we tend to think of Bell as a gentlewoman of leisure who had plenty of time to prepare her books, her letters reveal that her social responsibilities were often burdensome and time-consuming. In a letter to her step-mother on August 26th, 1910, she writes:

I am overwhelmed by the work that lies before me now—maps, illustrations, and even some writing. And it must not be scamped. I shall have to find some time even while we have people with us.71

Later, in October of the same year, when Bell’s work on her manuscript was near completion and probably at its most intensive, her social responsibilities still occupied a great deal of her time and energies, as reflected in a letter to her step-mother from Rounton Grange on October 2nd, 1910:

Rounton Grange Oct 2 Dearest Mother. Item: George is going to Alderley tomorrow and P. . . . . is writing to the butler about it. Now I must tell you that George Grey can’t come till the 17th. Maurice wants to alter his shoot to the 19th so as to get him. If you approve will you also write to the Bainbridges and ask

64 The mausoleum purportedly belonged to Muhammad al-Duri, the 11th son of Musa al-Kazim. It was built by Sharaf al-daulah Muslim ibn Quraish, prince of Mosul (A.D. 1061–1086) during the dynasty of the ‘Uqaylids. See Hillenbrand 1994: 323, 325.65 Bell 1911: 214. 66 Sarre and Herzfeld 1911: 34.67 Bell 1911: 214–15.68 The title of the exhibition was “Ausstellung von

Meisterwerken Muhammedanischer Kunst.” See Leisten 2003: 4; Gunter and Hauser 2005: 16.

69 An undated letter in August 1910 mentions Bell’s visit with Sarre, while another letter dated August 21 1910, describes Bell’s visits to the exhibition in Munich. 70 In a letter to her step-mother, dated August 26, 1910,

Bell reports that she met with the publisher Heinemann upon her return to London from Munich and Paris in connection with the submission of her manuscript.71 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle

University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Letter dated August 26, 1910.


them to come and shoot from the 18th to the 20th—I know you have not called on her, but don’t you think you might so word the letter as to make that not matter? Maurice is writing to Charlie Mitchell to ask him also to shoot and if he comes I will write and ask Miss M. to come with him. The really . . . . . . thing is that the Filippis are now landed here alone on Sunday the 16th! I can’t help it for Maurice was quite decided on not having his shoot later than the 15th and I can’t now ask them to change again. Would it do you think be a good plan to ask the de Bunsens to come for that Sunday? She begged me to ask her again when they came back from Ireland in Oct. Then we should not have the Filippis alone and we should have pol-ished off the de Bunsens. And if the Filippis stay on Monday the 17th we shall have George Grey and possibly the Mitchells arriving that evening. I don’t see how to make a better job of it than this and I hope you will think well of it. The only drawback is that I believe Father is away on Tuesday night, but I don’t see how that is to be helped. Perhaps you would telegraph to me in the morning telling me if I am to write to the de Bunsens and whether you will write to Mrs Bainbridge. It’s gorgeous weather today. Mrs B’s address is Mrs E. Bainbridge, Market Place, Richmond; he is Colonel, and will you say a small shoot for is only rabbits and ducks, between ourselves. Your affectionate daughter Gertrude.72

It is a wonder that Bell made any progress on her book given this flurry of social engagements!Much of the content of Herzfeld’s third letter (Letter #3) is taken up with his opinion regarding

Sasanian and Islamic vaults, and he mentions his awareness of Bell having discussed this same issue with Sarre in Munich. Mesopotamian vaulting was clearly of interest to Bell, who had seen and recorded several vaulted constructions during her 1909 trip, including those at the desert castle of Ukhaidir in southern Mesopotamia. She wanted to understand their temporal development so that she could accurately date the period of Ukhaidir’s construction. Herzfeld responded with his own detailed opinion about vaulting, largely repeating what he had already reported in his article on the desert palace of Mshatta, published earlier in the same year.73 He observed that in the case of ancient arches and vaults, the width of the arch and opening were the same, while in the Sasanian period, the width of the arch and vault was often greater than that of the opening below. Last, during the Islamic period, the width of the arch was smaller than the opening below. Herzfeld’s discussion was supported in the letter by sketches of the arch-types and a drawing of one side of the great arch of the Ṭāq i Kisrā at the Sasanian site of Ctesiphon, where no ledge or springing-in can be observed that would have supported a narrower brick vault above. Herzfeld also notes that in the case of other Sasanian buildings, notably Sarvistan, it is conceivable that one may observe here and there the springing-inward of the vaults, but Sarvistan is admittedly a late or perhaps even post-Sasanian monument, and this architectural feature is by no means the rule in Pre-Islamic times.74

In Letter #4 to Bell, written only a few days later, but after which Bell must herself have sent another letter to him with photographs, Herzfeld provides a further response to the matter of Sasanian and Islamic vaulting. He compliments Bell on her “schönen” photographs of Ctesiphon and Ukhaidir, which “zeigen allerdings viel mehr als die Photographien des J. H. St.” (“depict everything much better than the photographs from J. H. St”).

This comment indicates that Herzfeld had read Bell’s first published article on the site of Ukhaidir, which had appeared earlier in 1910 in the Journal of Hellenistic Studies,75 and which represented her first published attempt to describe and date this remarkable structure located in the southern Mesopotamian desert west of Kerbela. Bell had visited Ukhaidir in the early Spring of 1909, and this had truly proved to be the highlight of her journey as it had been frequented by few European travellers before her, and she was the first to do a proper scientific investigation of it. The arches present at Ukhaidir confirm, according to Herzfeld, that the Ukhaidir castle must be Islamic in date (Umayyad or Abbasid). He also acknowledges Bell’s observation, supported by her enclosed photograph, that in one of the side chambers in the Ṭāq i Kisrā at Ctesiphon (of Sasanian date), the vaulted ceiling was indeed set forward slightly from the face of the wall, an architectural feature Herzfeld had not believed to exist until the Islamic period (Fig. 5a). In his letter he encloses a copy of a photograph he himself had taken of the same feature, noting that because it had been taken a little more to the west, “das Profile nicht so deutlich ist, außerdem ohne Formen schein und

72 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Letter dated October 2, 1910. 73 Herzfeld 1910: 110–11.

74 Bier’s more recent investigations of Sarvistan suggest that the site may post-date the Sasanain period; see Bier 1986. 75 Bell 1910: 69–81.

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Schlagerschatten”; (“the profile is not as clear, furthermore it appears formless and doesn’t cast a shadow”) (Fig. 5b).76 Further, he reiterates that unlike this side chamber, the main barrel vault of the Ṭāq i Kisrā does not comprise this inward projection.

None of these statements contain within them a clear admission of error on Herzfeld’s part, but at the same time, he does not ignore or reject Bell’s findings about the vaulting at Ctesiphon. On the contrary, one can sense in Herzfeld’s writing a grudging acceptance of her astute observation. Both Letters #3 and #4 are written in a respectful tone, and in both letters Herzfeld expresses the desire to meet Bell in Mesopotamia in the following year, knowing that she will be making another trip there. He himself would be working at the site of Samarra at the same time. The letters indicate openness on the part of Herzfeld to engage in scholarly matters, and there is no obvious tone of superiority on his part. His remark that “one would have there (at Samarra) the opportunity to discuss many scientific and practical questions” seems to reflect the level of scholarly respect he felt for Bell at the time.

Given the amiable tone of Herzfeld’s correspondence with Bell, it is surprising to read the way in which Bell reports his opinions on the matter of the development of the arch and vault in Amurath to Amurath, which would have been submitted to the publishers in late 1910, only a month or two after she had received Herzfeld’s third and fourth letters. Specifically, when she is describing the vault construction of the rooms and corridors of Ukhaidir and their parallels to the earlier

76 The photograph (Fig. 5b here) of which Herzfeld sent a copy to Bell, is probably one and the same photograph that appears in Sarre and Herzfeld 1911: vol. III, Taf. XLIVb. It was taken further to the west in this room-wing, and does

not show the profile of the vault as clearly as in Bell’s photo, which she published in Amurath to Amurath (Bell 1911: fig. 109).

Fig. 5: Photographs of one of the side chambers in the Ṭāq i Kisrā at Ctesiphon, showing the remains of the brick vault.

a. Bell’s photo, in which the slight inward projection of the vault can be seen. (Album L_003, Courtesy Mark Jackson, School of Historical Studies, Newcastle University)

b. Herzfeld’s photo of the same chamber (appearing in Sarre and Herzfeld 1911, vol. III: Taf. XLIVb, left), in which the inward projection of the vault is less visible (Courtesy Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art

and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery).


construction at Ctesiphon, she notes in a footnote (Bell 1911: 153), “I wish to call special attention to the presence of this construction at Ctesiphon because Dr. Herzfeld has stated erroneously that it does not exist in Sasanian buildings”.77 This is a rather sharp criticism to put into print and it is doubtful that Herzfeld would have anticipated it.

Letter #5 (September 17th, 1911)Letter #5, written from the Mesopotamian town of Ctesiphon, hints that a shift had occurred in

Herzfeld’s relationship with Bell. Before describing the contents of Letter #5, it is important to know what had unfolded prior to its writing. First, Bell’s book, Amurath to Amurath had been published earlier that year, and it is clear from Herzfeld’s letter that its contents had become known to him. Of particular relevance to Bell’s relationship to Herzfeld are her comments made about him in this book. While in one instance, Bell gratefully acknowledges Herzfeld for his up-dated plan of the Great Mosque of Samarra, although it reached her too late to integrate into her printed description of the ruins,78 her negative remarks about him, namely that a) he had made an erroneous comment about the development of brick vaulting;79 and b) his plan of the Abū Dulaf mosque differs considerably from hers and that only a proper re-examination of the mosque will prove which of them is right,80 were no doubt injurious to the ever-sensitive Herzfeld.

Besides the publication of her book, Bell had completed her second trip to Mesopotamia, undertaken between January and May of 1911. Her journey took her back to Ukhaidir in order to check her measurements of the castle, to complete her plans, and to take additional photographs. She also visited the German archaeological expeditions at Babylon and Assur. Bell did not visit Samarra, however, even though she would have known full well that Herzfeld would have been there. Instead, her itinerary suggests that she may deliberately have tried to avoid Samarra, for after leaving Baghdad, instead of heading north along the Tigris in the direction of Samarra, she turned north-eastward along the Diyala River, eventually reaching the Jebel Hamrin and the Persian frontier. Her destination was the Sasanian palace of Qaṣr-i Shīrīn in Persia, which she planned and photographed before returning back to the Tigris River by way of Kirkuk. She proceeded on to Assur on the Tigris, where she had a joyful reunion with the German team there, especially its director, Walter Andrae. It is probable that Herzfeld eventually learned of Bell’s itinerary and omission of Samarra through friends and colleagues in Baghdad who had encountered her when she had passed through the city in March.81 He must have felt slighted that she had not visited him.

By September 1911, after having spent the last nine months directing the excavations of Samarra, Herzfeld himself had become physically and mentally exhausted. This was a troubling time in Herzfeld’s life, and his exhaustion was caused by several factors. Without question, the instability of his job situation in Germany continued to be a source of anxiety, even while in the field. Although Herzfeld had secured his position as the field director at Samarra, as a scholar whose primary expertise was the archaeology of the Near East—a field that did not yet exist in German universities—he still had not secured a permanent post at a university in Germany. This insecurity weighed heavily on him.82

A second source of anxiety came from the difficulties Herzfeld was experiencing at Samarra. The local and Ottoman authorities in Samarra had been impeding and even sabotaging Herzfeld’s efforts to excavate many of the monuments in the vast ruin field.83 His strained relations with the local authorities required him on more than one occasion to suspend operations in the field and to send letters of complaint to Sarre, still in Germany, and telegrams to the German vice-consul and the Ottoman authorities in Baghdad.84 Compounding these difficulties were the high costs of maintaining

77 Bell is referring here to Herzfeld’s statement in his Mshatta article, that a slight inward projection of the arches from the walls does not occur in any Sasanian structures; Herzfeld 1910: 110–11.78 Bell 1911: 231.79 Bell 1911: 153.80 Bell 1911: 243.81 Bell mentions in her diary, for example, that she met up

with Mr Levack in Baghdad on March 15, 1911 (Robinson

Library Special Collections, Newcastle University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Diary entry March 15,1911). Levack was the vice-consult of the American consulate in Baghdad, and a long-time friend of Herzfeld’s (Leisten 2003: 10).82 The troubled letters sent from Herzfeld to Carl Becker

at this time reflect in particular his anxieties related to his scholarly career. See Marchand 2009, 409, especially n. 69.83 Leisten 2003: 11–19; Kröger 2005: 54.84 Leisten 2003: 15.

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the excavation and a strained budget. By the end of August 1911 the excavations had to be severely cut back for lack of funds, with the only hope of resuming at a greater capacity being the anticipated arrival of Friedrich Sarre in a few months’ time.85

Lastly, we cannot doubt that Herzfeld felt the strain of attacks against his scholarship, particularly after the fallout of his article on Mshatta in Der Islam, which by this time included several sharply critical reviews by Josef Strzygowski. One of these will be discussed in greater detail further below as it implicates Bell. As is reflected in Herzfeld’s letters to Bell, these criticisms affected him gravely and must have contributed in no small way to his steady mental and emotional deterioration over the course of the 1911 field season at Samarra. When Sarre did finally arrive in Samarra in late November 1911, a long discussion resulted in the decision to end the current campaign and to return in the following year rather than continue with the campaign and initiate new excavations.86 While many reasons were put forth for the campaign’s termination, one was certainly Herzfeld’s health, “which had been constantly deteriorating under the pressure of exhausting work, quarrels with the authorities, and the full responsibility for the success of the project at Samarra”.87

It is under these difficult circumstances that Herzfeld’s fifth letter to Bell was written on September 17th, 1911, from the site of Ctesiphon. Along with Baghdad and Seleucia, he had visited Ctesiphon while on a short reprieve from his duties at Samarra.

After acknowledging the receipt of a letter that Bell sent from England, his own letter begins with a description once more of the large main vault of the Ṭāq i Kisrā at Ctesiphon, again assuring Bell that it has no protruding ledge for the springing of the arch, but rather a slight plaster-covered brick cornice, which certainly could not support the weight of the vault above. Thus, while Bell’s springing ledge could be found in the side vaulted chambers, it was not present in other parts of the structure. His comment leads him to differentiate between what he considers to be an “architectural principle” and sporadic occurrences. In the case of the inwardly protruding ledge for a vault and for pointed arches, two features that would come to typify the Islamic period, their sporadic occurrences in the architecture of the earlier Sasanian period do not qualify at that time as “architectural principles”. They only become principles in the early Islamic Period. Thus Herzfeld feels that his previous statements about this issue, both in print and in his letters to Bell, have not been erroneous, despite what she may have thought.

Herzfeld immediately moves on from the topic of vaults to one last mention of the mausoleum of Imām al-Dūr north of Samarra. He reports that he had visited the site again and could find no date on any of the alabaster slabs that conformed to the date of A.H. 871 seen by Bell. He assures her that he had chiselled away the entire slab in question, as well as the right corner underneath, and could find nothing of the inscription beyond that which had already been copied. One can suppose from the rather brusque tone of this part of the letter that Herzfeld is anxious to prove that Bell herself may have been wrong on at least one count.

A short paragraph ensues in which Herzfeld briefly describes his discovery of a new large palace at Samarra—“ein riesengroßer Mshatta-Ukhaidir” (“a vast Mshatta-Ukhaidir”)—which he believes to be of the “al-Hira” type because of the palace layout’s origins at the pre-Islamic city of al-Hira in southern Mesopotamia; a type which, in Herzfeld’s opinion, takes its form from a Roman military encampment (a cohort castra).88 Herzfeld makes reference here to an architectural form that he had already discussed in his “Genesis” article,89 but which here at Samarra seems to have taken its ultimate and most majestic form. The structure to which Herzfeld refers is the palace known as Balkuwārā, built around A.H. 243/A.D. 857 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil in honour of the birth of his heir, the later caliph al-Muʻtazz.90 It is located in the vast ruin field known as Manqūr in the extreme south of Samarra on the eastern bank.91 Herzfeld had first exposed the edifice in July, continuing there until October 9th.92 While mentioned only briefly in this letter, this was a

85 Sarre was only in Samarra very briefly, from Nov. 23 to Dec. 28, 1911; Kröger 2005: 54; Leisten 2003: 16–17.86 Leisten 2003: 18.87 Leisten 2003: 18. 88 Leisten 2005: 376.

89 Herzfeld 1910: 47–48.90 Leisten 2005: 377.91 Leisten 2003: 81.92 Leisten 2003: 15–17; 2005: 376–77.


tremendously significant find for Herzfeld, and it was one in which Bell would take increased interest as she probed further into the architectural organization of Ukhaidir, and recognized striking parallels between the two palaces.

Intriguingly, the next paragraph makes reference to a letter that Herzfeld had addressed to Bell and posted to Aleppo, probably in the hope that she would receive the letter when she passed through that city in the spring of 1911. We guess that it was mailed by Herzfeld from Samarra shortly after he had read, or at least had acquired knowledge of, the contents of Bell’s Amurath to Amurath, and knew the comments she had written about him. The letter presumably was received by Bell when she stopped in Aleppo in May 1911. It is unfortunate that we do not possess this letter, but we can guess that its contents may have displeased Bell, since Herzfeld remarks “. . .aus ihrem Briefe sehe ich zu meiner Freude, dass Sie mir den Brief nach Aleppo nicht übel genommen haben” (“I see to my delight from your letter that you haven’t taken the letter to Aleppo poorly”). Immediately following this comment he proceeds to acknowledge the mistake he had made in his plans of the mosque of Abū Dulaf, and thus we might conjecture that Herzfeld’s Aleppo letter had also contained a response to Bell’s criticism of this specific issue, to which she had drawn attention in Amurath to Amurath. He writes:

Die Moschee hat 19 Arkaden an der Langeseite der Hofes. Mein Skizzenbuchaufnahme hat auch 19, in einer Anmerkung des Textes können Sie lesen, dass ich da von 19 Arkaden spreche. Wieso auf dem Plan 20 stehen, ist mir ein Rätsel, ich habe immer geglaubt, es wäre nur 19. Ich hatte damals ungeheuer viel zu thun und hatte einer Zeichner zur Aushilfe. Dadurch muss der Fehler entstanden sein.

The mosque has 19 arcades on the long side of the courtyard. The drawing in my sketchbook also has 19, and in a comment in the text you can read that I speak there of 19 arcades. How 20 exist in the plans is a mystery to me. I have always believed it was 19. At that time I had an enormous amount to do and had a draftsman as temporary help. As a result, the mistake occurred.

Herzfeld also reveals why he felt so unhappy about Bell’s criticisms in print. It had largely to do with Josef Strzygowski:

An Ihrer Bemerkung über die Unexactheit meiner Aufnahmen und Ihrem Hinweis auf meine irrtumliche Behauptung über die spezifische Gewölbeconstruction, hatte ich deshalb solchen Anstoß genommen, weil ich erwartete, dass Strzygowski das sofort benutzen würde. Darin habe ich mich nicht getäuscht. Nur gegen seine Betonung dieser Dinge habe ich in einem kurzen Artikel für Orient. Lit. Zeitung Stellung nehmen müssen. Denn es ist vollständig unberechtigt. Es thut mir leid, ich hätte gern zur Polemik gegen Sie vernichten, aber ich habe Sie nicht provoziert.)

I had therefore taken such exception to your comment about the inaccuracy of my plans and your allusion to my erroneous assertion about the specific vault-construction, as I expected that Strzygowski would immediately make use of it. Here I was not mistaken. I had to take a position against the emphasis on these things in a short article for the Orientalische Literaturzeitung. This behaviour is unwarranted. I am sorry, I would have gladly avoided every polemic against you, but I did not provoke this.

Strygowski’s review had itself appeared in the journal Orientalische Literaturzeitung.93 What aggrieved Herzfeld was that Strzygowski used Bell’s negative comments against him, citing her observation of the inwardly projecting vaults in the Sasanian building of the Ṭāq-i Kisrā at Ctesiphon and Herzfeld’s failure to recognize this feature. Strzygowski wrote:

Herzfeld sehe sich doch das Gewölbe in einem der Nebenräume gerade dieses Tāq an (Bell, Amurath fig. 109) und er wird finden, dass gerade die Art, die er für spezifisch islamisch ansieht, schon dort vorkommt. Tatsache ist, dass auch Miss Bell auf diese Tatsache die Aufmerksamkeit lenkt “because Dr. Herzfeld has stated erroneously that it does not exist in Sasanian buildings”.

May Herzfeld just look at the vault in one of the side rooms at this very Taq (Bell, Amurath fig. 109), and he will find that the very type which he considers to be specifically Islamic already exists there. In truth, Miss Bell has already drawn attention to this fact: “because Dr. Herzfeld has stated erroneously that it does not exist in Sasanian buildings.”

Herzfeld felt compelled to defend himself with a written response to this harsh review, and it is this reply to which he refers in his letter. Although it appears that Herzfeld originally sent the retort

93 Strzygowski 1911.

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to Orientalische Literaturzeitung, we learn in his next letter to Bell (Letter #6) that OLZ did not want to print it, possibly because of its harsh tone, but that Carl Becker, the editor of the journal Der Islam, after some consideration, did feel that it was right to print. Ultimately this harsh retort appeared in late 1911 in volume 2 of Der Islam (pp. 411–13). In the review, one can clearly sense Herzfeld’s agitation, not only against Strzygowski, but also against Bell. He writes:

Dass ich auf eine Photographie Miss Bell’s vom Ṭāq i Kisrā aufmerksam gemacht werde, kommt mir komisch vor. Meine Aufnahme von Ktesiphon liegt vor. Ich war fünfmal dort und kenne die Ruine einigermassen.

That I am alerted to a photograph of Miss Bell’s of the Ṭāq i Kisrā seems odd to me. My documentation of Ktesiphon is out (i.e. in print). I was there five times and I know the ruins to a considerable extent.94

One can also read the footnote that appears on the same page of the review:

Da Strz. durch sein Zitat Miss Bell’s gegen mich polemisierende Worte aus ihrer Verborgenheit in “Amurath“ an die Öffentlichkeit einer Zeitschrift zieht, so sehe ich mich ungern zu folgender Bemerkung gezwungen: Ich war in Korrespondenz mit Miss Bell über Ktesiphon, Samarra und Imam Dūr. Miss Bell glaubte, das grosse Gewölbe des Khosrau zeige den in Frage stehenden Gewölbevorsprung. Ich konnste sie überzeugen, dass das nicht der Fall ist, vielmehr ein kleines Ziegelgesims die Kämpferlinie markiert. Also weder an diesem Gewölbe noch an den Hunderten der Frontbogen die islamische Weise, sondern nur an den rundbogigen Nebentonnen. Das islamische Konstruktionsprinzip ist eben noch nicht Prinzip, so wenig wie der Spitzbogen. Auch in Sarwistān kommt übrigens etwas Ähnliches vor. Man kann sich denken, dass ich erstaunt war, in „Amurath“ meinen Irrtum formell festgestellt zu finden.

Since Strz. has, through his quote, brought out Miss Bell’s polemical statements against me from their concealment in “Amurath” to the public forum of a journal, I find myself reluctantly compelled to remark: I was in correspondence with Miss Bell about Ktesiphon, Samarra and Imam Dūr. Miss Bell thought that the great vault of Khosrau showed the springing of the vault in question. I was able to convince her that this is not the case, but that it is only a small brick cornice that denotes the springing line. So neither in this vault nor in the hundreds of facade arches can one see the Islamic method, but only in the round-arched side barrel-vaults. Clearly, the Islamic principle of construction is not yet a (general) principle any more than the pointed arch. One can imagine that I was amazed to find in “Amurath” my mistake formally noted.95

Herzfeld’s bitterness is also conveyed in another paragraph of the article, in which he accuses Bell and others of uncritically following Strzygowski’s opinions and allowing such opinions to guide their work, whereas Herzfeld conducted research purely on his own terms:

Jetzt grabe ich in Samarra, und zur Aufnahme von Ktesiphon habe ich in diesen Tagen Dastadjird und Qaṣr i Shīrīn gefügt, und hoffe in 4 Tagen ein noch wichtigeres sasanidisches Monument zu untersuchen. Ich kann diese Aufnahmen in Ruhe denen des General de Beylié und der Miss Bell, die „in Strz’s Sinne reisen“, gegenüberstellen lassen. Ich bin nicht der Apostel eines Evangeliums und reise in niemandes Sinne.

Now I dig in Samarra, I have recently added Dastadjird and Qaṣr i Shīrīn to the documentation of Ktesiphon, and hope to investigate an even more important Sasanian monument in four days’ time. With due composure, I can compare these reports to those of General de Beylié and Miss Bell who travel in the “spirit of Strzygowski”. I am not a Gospel’s apostle, and travel in no one’s spirit.96

Letter #6 (November 29th, 1911)The attacks in print on Herzfeld’s character and scholarship, and the bitter manner in which he

felt compelled to defend himself, explain in large part his dispirited state of mind and the somewhat negative and guarded tone of Letter #5 to Bell. Herzfeld’s distress can be further detected in Letter #6, written from Samarra on November 29th 1911, just around the time that the Samarra excavations were suspended. It seems, however, that a letter received from Bell in the intervening time served to at least ameliorate some of the antagonism between them. The first three paragraphs of Letter #6 are presented here in full:

Hochverehrte Miss Bell, Sie haben mir durch Ihren Brief von 21. Oct. eine wirkliche Freude bereitet. Vor allem durch das was Sie mir über jenen nach Aleppo geschichteten Brief mir Ihre nicht abgesandte Antwort schreiben. Wenn

94 Herzfeld 1911a 412.95 Herzfeld 1911a: 412, n. 1.

96 Herzfeld 1911a: 412–13.


man so lange ganz allein lebt wie ich, wird man sehr empfindlich Worte eines Briefes oder eines Buches denkt man bis in ihre letzten Folgerungen durch und verleiht ihnen so Bedeutungen, die sie nicht haben; man vergrößert alles und wird gereizt. Zu Hause lässt schon am Umgang mit Menschen einem keine Zeit den Dingen so in allen Consequenzen hinein nachzugehen. Das zu meiner Entschuldigung. Ich muss Ihnen aber auch noch sagen, dass ich Ihr Amurath to Amurath mehrere Male gelesen habe und sich viele Worte daraus mir wegen ihrer Wahrheit und Form sehr tief eingeprägt haben. Die andere Freude war mir Ihr Kritik uber meine Besprechung des Amida-Werkes. Und auch da muss ich Ihnen völlig recht geben: die Form ist eines bedauerlichen. Aber Strzygowski hatte mich maßlos gereizt: es waren vor allem 2 Sachen, da mir unvergesslich sind: ein Artikel in der Frankfurter Zeitung, wo er offentlich versuchte, mir die Ausführung wissenschafticher Unternehmungen anzuvertrauen—das ist doch ein unerhörter Vorgang—und sein Auftreten in München, wo ich und mehrere Freunde von mir auf Dr. van Berchems Aufforderung zur Besprechung der C.I.A. Pläne Berchems zusammengekommen waren. Strzygowski erschien da, verhandelte einen vollen Tag mit v.B. Wir waren aber alle Pläne prinzip-iell einig. Am naechsten morgen um 6 Uhr ließ mich Berchem rufen, hatte einen Anfall so tiefer Depression und Verstimmung, dass er zur nicht zu beruhigen war Trotzdem mir niemand glauben wollte schob ich die Schande auf Strzygowski; Berchem wollte alles widerrufen. Ich telegraphieterte I. F. Becker, den hergere-ist kam, und Berchem allmählich wieder mehr Zuversicht und Ruhe gab. Und ich hatte Recht: Strz. war die Ursache. Damals waren alleine Freunde noch nicht empört darüber als ich selbst. Leider habe ich außer jener Amarra-Besprechung noch einen kurzen persönlichen Artikel geschrieben, den die OLZ nicht abdrucken wollte, den aber Becker—nach Wochen langen Überlegung—für richtig hielt zu drucken. Jetzt sind Monate darüber verlaufen und schon wünschte ich er erschiene nicht. Vermüt-lich aber ist er schon gedruckt. Es ist darin auch eine Anmerkung, die sich dagegen wendet, dass Strz. Ihre Anmerkung über die Construction des Gewölbes in Ktesiphon sofort gegen mich ausnuzt. Ich telegra-phiere heute an Becker, das noch zu streichen, fürchte aber das kommt zu spät und die Summner des Islam ist schon erschienen. In diesem Falle bitte ich Sie jene Anmerkung entschuldigen zu wollen: sie ist von langer Zeit geschrieben und es ist äußern verletzend, wie Strz. jene Stelle heranzieht.

Esteemed Miss Bell, Your letter of October 21st brought me great joy. More than anything, through that which you write about the response to my letter sent to Aleppo that you did not send. When one lives so completely alone as I, one becomes very sensitive. One reads far too much into the words in books, and imparts an impor-tance that they do not have; one amplifies everything and becomes irritable. Dealings with people at home leave little time to follow matters through to all their implications. My apologies for this. I also have to say that I read your “Amurath to Amurath” a number of times. And the truth and form of many of the words in it have been imprinted on my memory. I was also pleased to see your criticism of my discussion of the Amida work.97 In this case, you are abso-lutely right: the form is an unfortunate one. But Strzygowski had distressed me greatly: most of all it is two things that are unforgettable to me: an article in the Frankfurter Zeitung where he publicly tried to entrust me with the execution of scholarly undertakings—this is outrageous behaviour—and his appearance in Munich, where many friends and I had come together at Dr. Van Berchem’s command to discuss the C.I.A. [Corpus inscriptionum arabicarum] plans.98 Strzygowski appeared there and debated an entire day with v.B. [Max van Berchem]. In principle we were agreed on all the plans. The next morning at 6:00, Berchem called me, and had an attack of such deep depression and ill humour that he was inconsolable. Even if no one wanted to believe me, I put the blame on Strzygowski; Berchem wanted to call off the whole thing. I telegraphed C. H. Becker, who came, and gradually gave Berchem his confidence and peace of mind. And I was right: Strzyg. was the cause. At the time, my friends were even more disgusted about it than I was. Unfortunately, besides that Amida discussion, I have written another short personal article that the OLZ did not want to print, but that Becker99— after weeks of consideration—decided it was right to print. Now months have passed and I already wish it would not appear. Presumably it is already printed.100 There

97 In March 1911 Herzfeld wrote a long review of the work Amida, written by J. Strzygowski and M. van Berchem (Strzygowski and van Berchem 1910). Gertrude Bell herself contributed to this work, in the form of a descriptive chapter entitled “The Churches and Monasteries of the Tur Abdin” based on her visit and record of the Tur Abdin region of Anatolia during the last stage of her 1909 journey through the Near East. Although Herzfeld had nothing negative to say about van Berchem’s or Bell’s contributions, thirty-nine pages of the review article were devoted to a critique of Strzygowski’s observations and conclusions, particularly his controversial view that one must look to Persia for the source of all fine art. Herzfeld’s review appeared in the September issue of Orientalistische Literaturzeitung (Herzfeld 1911b). One can infer from Herzfeld’s words to

Bell in Letter #6 that she had admonished him for being so harsh to Strzygowski in print.98 The Corpus inscriptionum arabicarum was an inter-

national collaboration among scholars to collect and publish Arab inscriptions from around the Middle East. Van Berchem himself contributed to this ambitious project with epigraphic material from Egypt, Jerusalem, Syria and Anatolia, these appearing in several volumes of Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum; van Berchem 1894–1920; Bloom 2002: xiv.99 C. H. Becker was at this time the editor of the journal

Der Islam.100 Herzfeld’s response was published in Der Islam 2 in

late 1911 (Herzfeld 1911a).

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is a remark in it that goes against Strz.’s use of your observation about the construction of the vaults at Ktesiphon against me.101 I will telegraph Becker to discard that today, but I fear it is too late and the issue of Islam [Der Islam] is already published, in which case I ask that you please excuse that remark: it was written a long time ago and it is hurtful to express how Strz. draws on that position.

From these excerpts we learn that Herzfeld was relieved by the contents of Bell’s last letter. We can perhaps surmise that upon receiving his earlier harsh letter in Aleppo, she drafted a reply to Herzfeld, but in the end did not send it, possibly because she regretted its resentful tone and did not want to provoke further antagonism. Herzfeld also endeavours to apologize for his own bad behaviour, explaining that he was driven to it by Strzygowski, who had been injurious not only to him, but also to his colleague Max van Berchem, the renowned Arab epigrapher and art historian. It is interesting that the incident between Strzygowski and van Berchem should be cited as the final straw for Herzfeld, for it underlines the incredible respect and affection that van Berchem commanded from Herzfeld, not to mention many others.102 It was as if van Berchem was incapable of bad behaviour, and that any negative treatment towards him crossed an unforgivable line of professional conduct. For his part, van Berchem’s positive relationship with so many querulous and self-centred academics makes it clear that he “was an exceptional human being with a positive genius for friendship”.103 Finally, Herzfeld’s profuse apology to Bell concerning the vindictive tone of his recent review reflects his desire to make amends with her and to make no more negative remarks. Bell’s previous letter to Herzfeld must also have had an appeasing tone, and suggests that she too was making an effort to repair past grievances.

The remainder of Letter #6 continues in a collegial vein, in which Herzfeld relates details and drawings of the vault decorations from the palace of Balkuwārā at Samarra and its similarities to those at Ukhaidir; comments on more inscriptions from Imam Dūr and the identity of the tomb; notes the absence of cross-vaults in all of the Sasanian buildings he had visited; and conjectures on the date of the Sasanian monument of Sarvistan. All of these points appear to be responses to questions posed by Bell. The letter closes with another word of thanks for Bell’s last letter, along with the hope that her view of his work has been improved.

Letter #7 (September 11th, 1912)The last extant letter sent from Herzfeld to Bell is dated almost a year later than Letter # 6, and

reads in a friendly tone. Herzfeld announces the forthcoming publication of his and Sarre’s work at Samarra, particularly their report on the palace of Balkuwārā, its plans, and its overall comparison to Ukhaidir. He also relays a comment from a colleague, Professor Moritz,104 who had expressed disappointment that the German publication of Ukhaidir, which had appeared in that year (1912) did not include the inscription that Bell had herself found in the mosque.105 Last, Herzfeld announces his plans for a departure to Samarra on October 6th 1912, from Berlin.

101 Herzfeld is referring here to Strzygowski’s review in OLZ 14 (1911, described above), where Bell’s criticism had appeared in print.

102 Hillenbrand 1991: 26. 103 Hillenbrand 1991: 26. Several of the letters sent from

Bell to van Berchem (which are housed in the Bibliothèque de Genève) refer further to the relationship between Bell and Herzfeld and the problematic character of Strzygowski. See Asher-Greve 2008: 192.

104 Bernhard Moritz was a German Arabic scholar who had met Bell on several previous occasions in Cairo, where he had been the head of the Khedivial Library (between 1896 and 1911). By the time of this 1912 letter, Moritz had returned to Berlin and had become the Director of the Library of the Seminar for Oriental Languages, a post he held until 1924. For a brief overview of Moritz’s life and career, see Carswell 1981: ix–x.

105 Shortly after Bell had completed her first visit to Ukhaidir in the spring of 1909, members of the Deutsche

Orient-Gesellschaft team at Babylon made a visit to Ukhai-dir, and subsequently published their own report on the site (Reuther 1912). The publication appeared two years before Bell’s own Ukhaidir report. Although Bell praised the Germans’ masterly efforts in the preface of her book (Bell 1914: xi), one cannot help but think that news of their work at Ukhaidir and their publication of the site were distressing to Bell, who had effectively been ‘scooped’. Bell herself may have alerted the Germans to the existence of Ukhaidir in the first place. In 1909, just two days after having departed from Ukhaidir (on March 30), Bell visited the German excavations at Babylon (April 1–4). While there, she was forthcoming with her plans and observations with the German team members who, at the time, included Friedrich Wetzel (see Bell’s letter dated April 2, Newcastle University Library, Gertrude Bell Archive, Letters 2/4/1909). She does not mention anywhere in her 1909 diaries or letters that the Germans had any prior knowledge of this castle, much less were planning an expedition of their own there.


We cannot be sure whether Bell wrote to Herzfeld again after this letter, but we do know from a letter written to her step-mother that she made a trip to Berlin at the end of September, only shortly after Letter #7 was received. Moreover, Bell’s itinerary this time appears to have included a meeting not only with Professor Moritz, mentioned in Herzfeld’s letter above, but also with Herzfeld himself:

[Postmarked 26 September 1912] Hotel “Der Furstenhof” Berlin Thursday. Dearest Mother. Yesterday morning I saw all Herzfeld’s photographs of Samarra—wonderfully interesting. And then I saw Andrae’s things in the museum and after lunch I returned to the museum where there are heaps of marvellous things which I have not yet seen. Dr. Moritz, who was once curator of the Cairo Library, dined with me and we had a long talk about Mesopotamian geography, of which he is now very full. I spent 4 hours this morning with Herzfeld, looking over and discussing plans and photographs, his and mine. Also I made the acquaintance of his family, nice people. Now I’m going to tea with Marie v. Bunsen. What with museums and professors my days are now quite full till I leave. It has been well worth while coming—it is always worthwhile to know what the other people are doing. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude.106

From this letter, one might gather that Bell, upon hearing of Herzfeld’s departure to Mesopotamia in early October, wanted to meet him in Berlin before he left, so that she could discuss various archaeological matters with him. At this time, much of her scholarly attention was focused on the preparation of her manuscript on The Palace and Mosque of Ukhaidir, which she would submit for publication with Clarendon Press in late 1913, and which would be published in 1914. Bell must have realized by this time that Herzfeld’s own record of the architecture at Samarra, particularly that of the palace of Balkuwārā, was of tremendous importance to her own report on Ukhaidir, since the two early Islamic complexes shared several significant architectural features, and she must have felt it worthwhile to seek his advice and opinion before a consultation with him became impossible for some time.107 Bell’s last remark, “It has been well worth coming—it is always worthwhile to know what the other people are doing” does seem to indicate that the primary purpose of her trip to Berlin was academic and not social. Her time spent with Herzfeld, looking over his plans and photographs of Samarra, as well as interacting with him on a more personal level, meeting members of his family108 suggests that a certain level of friendly accord had finally been reached between the two.

Herzfeld’s Influence on Bell’s Investigations of UkhaidirIt is not only in the correspondence that one sees evidence of this reconciliation. Bell’s published

report, The Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir, which was published in 1914 and which represents the culmination of her research and thinking on the date, form and function of this desert castle, shows the extent to which she followed Herzfeld’s scholarship, and the high degree to which she acknowledged and ultimately accepted his research and opinions, not merely concerning his work at Samarra, but more broadly regarding the state and development of early Islamic art and architecture throughout the Near East.

Bell accords Herzfeld no fewer than thirty-eight citations in her Ukhaidir book, either referencing art historical observations published by Herzfeld through the course of his archaeological investigations of Islamic and pre-Islamic monuments in Syria, Iraq and Iran, or citing particular opinions he held about the identification, date or function of various archaeological remains. Herzfeld received far more citations than any other scholar in Bell’s Ukhaidir report, not only because he was prolifically publishing at that time on the same general corpus of material as Bell, but because she had come to put considerable faith in his astute observations and conclusions regarding the identification, function and date of that material.

Bell’s debt to Herzfeld’s scholarship can be seen in her appropriation of Herzfeld’s essential views about the material culture of the Near East, and in particular how she has adopted his perceptions concerning the origins and developments of the art and architecture of the early Islamic period.

106 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Letter September 28, 1912.

107 Herzfeld’s second campaign to Samarra took place between October 1912 and July 1913; Gunter and Hauser

2005: xiv. 108 Bell may possibly have met Herzfeld’s sister Charlotte,

or his parents, who were living in Berlin at this time; Kröger 2005: 50.

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Herzfeld was one of the first scholars to see a complex interplay of both old and new artistic, technological and architectural elements, from multiple regions within the Near East and beyond, as defining principles behind the style and form taken by monuments of the early Islamic period. Nowhere does Herzfeld more keenly express this view than in his essay on the Umayyad complex of Mshatta, in which he asserts through several convincing examples that it is the very heterogeneous nature of the stylistic and structural elements which make up the Mshatta complex; the fact that its decorative and architectural inspiration derives from so many different cultures and provinces of the Near East that were traded back and forth; that it has incorporated traditional elements alongside new ones, and has employed a multiethnic workforce, that identify it as a truly Islamic monument rather than a product of some other culture, people or earlier time period.109 For her part, Bell adopts this same essential perspective and most of Herzfeld’s observable criteria in her determination of the date and identification of desert castle of Ukhaidir, which she argues to be an Abbasid period complex of the mid-eighth century A.D..110 She also accepts the multi-directional nature of Ukhaidir’s influences: having been inspired in part by earlier Sasanian artistic and architectural styles, being at home in Iraq though the use of local materials and long-standing technological traditions, and borrowing some elements from the Hellenistic West, but all in all resulting in a wholly distinctive structure of the early Islamic period. In taking such a perspective, Bell has moved beyond the more simplistic assertions of scholars such as Strzygowski, who with their polemicizing stance were determined to locate and isolate only one vital source of inspiration that defined the essence of an artistic or architectural monument, be it from the East or West. Bell, in her scholarly maturity, has accepted the complexity with which ideas and influences were exchanged and intermingled in the early years of Islam, where old traditions were combined with new elements to give rise to a new and distinctive cultural style.

While Bell followed Herzfeld in his perspective on the origins and development of early Islamic art and architecture, she did not slavishly repeat each and every one of his arguments in her discussion of Ukhaidir, nor did she necessarily agree with all of them. A significant point of disagreement concerns an architectural style believed to have derived from the pre-Islamic Lahkmid capital of al-Hirah in southern Mesopotamia (c. 300–600 A.D.), which according to Herzfeld served as the principal inspiration for the architectural form of several early Islamic complexes, including Mshatta, Ukhaidir and the palace of Balkuwārā at Samarra.111 Herzfeld, moreover, on the basis of architectural evidence and medieval literary documentation, interpreted the hira palatial style as ultimately deriving from the layout and form of a Roman cohort camp, with which the Lakhmids would have become familiar through their wars against Roman and Byzantine Syria.112 Bell was not convinced by Herzfeld’s particular emphasis on the Roman cohort encampment element of the hira style.113 While early Islamic complexes like Mshatta and Ukhaidir certainly shared the element of the Roman castrum, principally in the form of towered outer fortification walls and the placement of gates, their inner configuration did not, in her opinion, match up particularly well with anything from Roman military camps.114 Overall, Bell was more comfortable drawing analogies between the internal layouts of the early Islamic palaces, with their distinctive central room and two side wings, and the long line of palatial styles known in the Near East, ultimately deriving from the hilani style of palatial architecture of the Assyrians and Hittites, and finding their way many centuries later, through the Achaemenids, into the configuration of the iwans in the palaces of Sasanian rulers such as are known from the site of Qaṣr-i Shīrīn in present-day Iran.115 It is perhaps significant that Bell’s own observations about the development of early Islamic palaces, and especially her discussion of the hilani/iwan palatial layout and its derivation from earlier Sasanian palaces, conform to recent scholarly interpretations of the hira style in early Islamic palaces and the debt they owe to Sasanian

109 Herzfeld 1910: 32, 34, 51, 59, 63, 121, 122, 130–31; Leisten 2003: 372.

110 Bell 1914: 168.111 Herzfeld 1910: 126–28; 1912: 39–41.112 Herzfeld 1910: 127; Leisten 2005: 376–80.113 Bell 1914: 58, 86, 120.

114 Bell 1914: 120–21.115 Bell 1914: 60–63; 80, 86–87, 119. Note, however, that

recent Iranian excavations at the site of Qaṣr-i Shīrīn indi-cate that the palace may date as late as the Abbasid period. This later date, then, may best explain its close relationship with Ukhaidir (Yousef Mouradi, pers. comm.).


palaces.116 Bell’s astute observations of architectural styles and her ability to trace persuasively such styles through several cultures and chronological eras should not be undervalued. In many ways, her command over a large body of materials spanning several eras of antiquity, and her abilities as a researcher, matched those of Herzfeld.

ConclusionAs a group, the letters sent from Herzfeld to Bell represent a fascinating corpus. They cover

a period of time during which both were intensively investigating similar issues on the development of early Islamic art and architecture in Mesopotamia. At the same time they highlight the rather combative environment of Oriental scholarship existing in the early twentieth century. The letters reflect Gertrude Bell’s attitude towards Herzfeld, showing initially some distain for his accomplishments and perceived arrogance, and later a growing acceptance of his hard work, wide knowledge and intelligence, these ultimately leading her to accept and incorporate a great deal of his research into her own studies. Given Bell’s earlier allegiance to Strzygowski, we may guess that much of her initial prejudice against Herzfeld was provoked by him; in any case, these negative impressions do not persist, and at the same time Strzygowski’s views slowly lose their hold over her. Bell may well have been affected by the acerbic tone of Strzygowski’s published reviews of Herzfeld’s work, and Herzfeld’s own negative experiences with Strzygowski as described in his letters. Moreover, Bell’s correspondence with other colleagues acquainted with Strzygowski and who knew of his churlish character may also have tempered her harsh judgement of Herzfeld. Of particular interest in this regard is a letter sent from Max van Berchem to Bell, written on October 28th, 1911, shortly after she had written to Herzfeld (on October 21st). It is clear from van Berchem’s letter that by this time Bell had read Herzfeld’s review of Amida,117 and that she was seeking van Berchem’s opinion of it:

Je n’ai pas encore lu l’article de Herzfeld sur Amida. Je l’ai parcouru, mais ces querelles perpétuelles entre Allemands me dégoûtent tellement que je n’ai pas le courage de le lire en détail. Je vous ai déjà dit mon opinion sur Strzygowski; je crains qu’avec son caractère trop entier, il ne continue à se faire du tort à lui-même. Quand on le prend de très haut avec les autres, il faut être sûr de ce que l’on avance. Or, en Kunst-geschichte, on ne peut jamais être parfaitement sûr d’avoir raison et malheureusement, avec ses qualités brillantes, notre ami a décidément trop de goût pour les hypothèses aventureuses, où la science n’a plus grand chose à voir. Si j’encourage Herzfeld, ce n’est pas pour ses théories sur l’hist. de l’art (je lui ai dit qu’elles ne m’intéressent guère), c’est parce qu’il sait admirablement recueillir des matériaux, peut-être un trop vite, c’est vrai, mais avec quelle promptitude, et quelle abondance de détails! Il m’envoie presque chaque semaine des documents intéressants. Voilà longtemps déjà qu’il m’a écrit que le mystérieux édifice de la citadelle de Diarbekr ne doit pas avoir grande valeur, je suis curieux de savoir ce qu’il en pensera. Quant à vos théories, elles m’intéresseront toujours, parce que vous avez de l’esprit et de la mesure; et puis, vous faites de si beaux relevés!

I have not yet really read Herzfeld’s article on Amida. I had a quick look at it, but these unending argu-ments between the Germans really put me off so much that I have not had the heart to read it in detail. I already gave you my opinion on Strzygowski; I fear that with his uncompromising approach, he only makes difficulties for himself. If you are going to get on your high horse with people, you had better be sure of what you are arguing about. Still, in Kunstgeschichte, you can never be completely sure you are right and unfortunately, for all his brilliant qualities, our friend definitely has a weakness for crazy theories which don’t have a lot to do with science. If I admire Herzfeld, it is not for his theories on the history of art (I told him they do not interest me much), it is because he is very good at collecting material; maybe a little too fast, it is true, but nevertheless fast and with an abundance of detail! He sends me something interesting almost every week. Quite a while ago, he wrote to me that the mysterious building on the citadel at Diyarbakir was of no great value; I am curious to know what exactly he thinks of it. As for your theories, they still interest me because you are clever but cautious; and you document things so well!118

116 Leisten 2005: 383.117 See footnote 85 above, in which the Amida review is

described.118 Robinson Library Special Collections, Newcastle

University, Gertrude Bell Archive, Miscellaneous, Item 13,

Unpublished letter to Gertrude Bell from Max van Berchem, October 28, 1911. Permission to transcribe and translate a large portion of the letter has been provided by the Max van Berchem estate, managed by the Fondation Max van Berchem (Geneva).

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This letter highlights not only van Berchem’s gift for diplomacy—note his glowing compliment to Bell at the end!—but also his ability to assess accurately the strengths and weaknesses of his colleagues without causing undue offence or injury. One can note, incidentally, that van Berchem even enjoyed a long-established friendship with Strzygowski, “a circumstance that—given Strzygowski’s absolute genius for making enemies—speaks volumes about the Swiss scholar’s personal qualities”.119 In any event, there is no question that Bell respected van Berchem, and it is likely that she took to heart his perceptive opinions of others, including Herzfeld.

Our discussion of the correspondence between Herzfeld and Bell comes to a close with one final letter. This was written by Bell, and it is dated to February 13th, 1915. By this time war had broken out between Germany and France, and Bell was working in a Red Cross depot in Boulogne:

From Bologne.(Hotel Meurice)Dear Dr. Herzfeld, I received through Prof. Hecps[?] a very welcome message from you and I am writing our friend Max van Berchem to send you this card from me. It is to tell you that I often think of my German friends and long for news of them—Koldewey, Andrae, you and many others. Where are you all? Let us remember that for us at least friendship is stronger than war. I am yours very sincerely, Gertrude Bell I am in a Red Cross Office here.120

The special relationship that Bell felt towards her German colleagues is evident in this letter, and it is significant that she names Herzfeld as a friend alongside Walter Andrae and Robert Koldewey, her favorite acquaintances. It is regrettable that just as Bell reached a level of accord with Herzfeld, and attained a remarkable level of scholarly achievement with her masterly account of Ukhaidir, Germany and Britain should fall into a war that would change everything. After the war Gertrude Bell would abandon her scholarly pursuit of archaeology, and thenceforth become linked primarily to Middle Eastern politics. Ernst Herzfeld would continue to pursue archaeology, but his name would come to be associated primarily with the antiquity of Persia. The future exploits of these remarkable individuals are altogether different stories.

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Lisa CooperAssociate Professor, Near Eastern ArchaeologyDeptartment of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious StudiesUniversity of British ColumbiaVancouver, [email protected]

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