Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture.

£10,000 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A lovely copy of this uncommon work, handsomely illustrated with Bell’s photographs of the Fortress of Al-Ukhaidir, one of the most remarkable surviving examples of Abbasid architecture . It was presented to Lady George Campbell, but does not appear to be in Bell’s hand, suggesting that the press or a secretary of Bell’s inscribed some copies on her behalf. After graduating in Modern History from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in 1892, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) engaged in a period of world travel that led to her initial experiences of the Middle East. She first visited the fortress of Al-Ukhaidir in March 1909 as a part of an expedition to survey the Roman and Byzantine fortresses on the banks of the Euphrates, which gave her the material for one of her most important books, Amurath to Amaranth (London, 1911). Just two years later, she made a second trip “to undertake a fuller survey of the palace of Ukhaidir, completing her initial sketches and drafts while exchanging notes with a German archaeological team [ Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft ] … [T]he palace on the west bank of the Euphrates, some 120 miles south-west of Baghdad, remains one of the finest surviving examples of early Islamic architecture. Ukhaidir had not been scientifically explored until 1908–9 when Louis Massignon published some preliminary notes in the Bulletin de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (March 1909) …[Bell’s] own findings were initially published in the Hellenic Journal (1910, pt 1, p. 69),

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