Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was the best known traveler in the Middle East and Arabia in the years before World War I. The British intelligence bureau in Cairo hired her as an advisor on Arabia. After the war, she was very involved in the political negotiations that divided the Arab world into new countries and established British political influence in the region.

Gertrude Bell was born into a wealthy family in the English county of Durham on July 14, 1868. Her father owned an iron works. Her mother died in childbirth two year after Bell's birth, and a stepmother raised the young child. At sixteen she attended Queens College and then went to Lady Margaret Hall, a womens college at Oxford University. She graduated with high honors in history.

First Trip to the Middle East

Bell traveled to the Middle East for the first time in 1892 to visit her uncle, who...