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Louisa Jebb
Louisa Jebb and a woman friend rode from Constantinople across Anatolia and the Taurus, past Harran into Mesopotamia, floated down the Tigris on a raft to…
Louisa Jebb and a woman friend rode from Constantinople across Anatolia and the Taurus, past Harran into Mesopotamia, floated down the Tigris on a raft to Baghdad, and went on to Babylon before crossing the desert by way of Palmyra. Her account mixes comedy and danger: tangled arrangements with officials, rumours of brigands, a village reception with dancing, a storm on the river, Arab hospitality and a tense meeting with hostile tribesmen. She writes as someone who came to love the country and its silence, not as a conqueror passing through.
Jebb, later Mrs Roland Wilkins, published the book in 1908, and it remains one of the liveliest travel accounts of Ottoman Iraq and Syria. PaulW reads all twenty-four chapters alone, in about seven hours: an Englishwoman's Baghdad of more than a century ago.
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