Page 140 - Life of Gertrude Bell

14

Hail

In the winter of 1909 Lt-Colonel Percy Cox, the Indian Govern­
ment’s Resident in the Persian Gulf, was on leave in England and
a mutual friend, Richmond Ritchie, arranged for Gertrude to
meet him so that she could discuss with him her long-entertained
plan to journey into central Arabia. She wanted to start at one
of the Gulf states, presumably Kuwait or Ujair on the A1 Hasa
coast, and make her way through the territory of Najd to Hail
in Jabal Shammar at its northern extremity. Cox declared that
tribal conditions in that area were too unstable to allow of such
a journey and so she reconciled herself to taking the northern
route from Damascus. It was a sensible decision from many
points of view. Not even Charles Doughty had been able to face
the rigours of southern Najd and the dangers posed by its wild
and fanatical tribesmen. The greatest of all Arabian explorers,
Charles Huber, turned back on his tracks only to be murdered by
his own guides. The Austrian Baron Nolde was driven to suicide
by the attempt. Things had improved since early 1902 when Ibn
Saud or, to give him his full name, Abdul Aziz bin Abdurrahman
al Saud had returned to Riyadh from his enforced exile in Kuwait
and set out to restore the kingdom of his forefathers, the Wahhabi
empire, which once embraced almost the entire peninsula of
Arabia. But his territory was closed to the outside world. Two
men had visited Riyadh from the outside in the intervening
years, the Dane Raunkiaer and the Englishman Gerald Leachman,
but they had been taken under escort to the Saudi capital and
were lucky to escape with their lives. More importantly, Britain
was engaged in delicate negotiations with Turkey in 1913 with
the object of strengthening Ottoman authority in its Asian
dominions, especially in central Arabia, and Ibn Saud was