Organised Tours to Petra – Hilda Waldron and the Lunn Tour of 1908

Throughout most of the century between Burckhardt (1812) and the outbreak of the First World War (1914), most western visitors to Petra undertook the Long Desert Route of c. 40 days from Cairo and Suez through Aqaba and ultimately on to Hebron and Jerusalem. A few came direct from Hebron down the Wadi Araba to Petra. Burckhardt however reached Petra through Moab and Edom as did a few of his immediate successors but thereafter it was a route seldom attempted. The explanation lies in the rapacity of the Mujalli rulers of Kerak along this Transjordanian route. That all changed in the later 1890s when the Ottoman government progressively extended its network of garrisons southwards to include Kerak, then the other sites of great Crusader period castles at Tafila and Shaubak and at Ma’an and Wadi Musa itself. This route was far shorter than the 40 days through Sinai and it was not long before western tour organisers saw the potential for ‘tourism’ from Palestine to Petra.

One of those who saw the potential was Sir Henry Lunn – whose company is better-known in more recent times as one element of the travel company, Lunn Poly. Lunn evidently organised several such tours in the decade before 1914 but few details are known. One source now is the travel diary of Hilda Waldron who joined the tour of 1908 together with her sister Fanny and cousin Florence Wood. Hilda’s grand-daughter has kindly provided access to the transcribed diary, to photographs taken by members of the party and to a copy of Lunn’s prospectus for the tour.

The party is interesting in various ways but not least because of its size – 15 westerners, and that nine of them were women. Throughout the 19^th century women had been included in parties reaching Petra from Egypt but were a rarity. Plainly circumstances had changed and they could anticipate travelling in greater ease and security. They left Jerusalem on 1 April 1918, reached Petra on 17 April and left on 21 April for Ma’an where they boarded a train to Damascus.

The Waldron party was not the first on this route in the early 21^st century. Emily Hornby and her sisters Mary and Fanny had followed the same route in 1901 and Gertrude Bell was there in 1905. All this might imply complete security but it was deceptive. The Mujallis at Kerak were held in check but resented it. Hilda’s sister returned to Petra in 1909 but just a year later the Mujallis organised an uprising and massacred the several hundred Ottoman soldiers in and around Petra. That took place while a party of American visitors was present on their way to Petra and underscores the continued dangers of the route.

In the subsequent few years before the outbreak of war, westerners were again visiting Petra. Most famous was T. E. Lawrence in c. late February 1914 who reports encountering two rather redoubtable British ladies – Lady Evelyn Cobbold and Lady Mary Legge. The former subsequently converted to Islam and became the first known western woman to visit Mecca on pilgrimage.

Figure 1: Front and back page of the 24 page brochure advertising the tour of 1908

 

Figure 2: The Lunn Party of 1908. Hilda Waldron, holding up an arm, is seated on the ground at the right of centre

Tristram and ….’s Expedition to Moab in 1872

Henry Baker Tristram – Canon Tristram as he was to become soon afterwards, undertook an expedition across the Jordan to Moab in early 1872. As with his other journeys of exploration, this was followed soon after by both scholarly articles in specialist periodicals and a semi-popular book (1873). As in his earlier journey in Palestine and across the Jordan from which a book had arisen (1865), he is fulsome in his thanks to his western travelling companions who are named and often their special contribution mentioned. The list of companions seems complete for the journey of 1864-5; that for 1872 omits a name.

The missing name is the Rev. Dr Christian David Ginsburg, the famous Biblical scholar and it is a most curious omission. Not only was Ginsburg already a notable figure but the grant of £200 from the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1871 was awarded for the expedition with Tristram and Ginsburg both named as part of the committee of six “appointed for the purpose of undertaking a Geographical Exploration of the Country of Moab”. Only those two were to take part in the expedition. Tristram does mention Ginsburg in the official report he published (alongside that of Ginsburg) in the BAAS Report but in his book he reduces him to “another of our party”. Ginsburg does name those he regarded as part of the expedition – including Tristram, but never the names of the young friends of Tristram the latter had invited to join them.

Their guide in Moab – the German missionary Augustus Klein, was obliged for family reasons to leave the expedition after it crossed the Wadi Mujib and it is clear Ginsberg left with him. A closer reading of Tristram’s accounts reveals what appear to be attacks on an unnamed person who is probably Ginsberg. Now, we may turn to Ginsberg’s unpublished journals to read of his exasperation with Tristram and the circumstances which led up to their parting. A parting sufficiently bitter that Tristram – a fellow clergyman, deliberately excised Ginsberg from his account of the expedition leaving himself as the central and sole leader of something intended to be a partnership. Reading both publications and the unpublished journal suggests the differences went beyond those of personality – the narrowly focused scholar and the expansive traveller with his light-hearted and much younger friends. Perhaps more serious were the academic differences that emerged and which reading Ginsburg’s journal will reveal to put alongside the remarks of Tristram.

Tristram, H. B. (1865) The Land of Israel. A Journal of Travels in Palestine Undertaken with Special Reference to its Physical Character, London
Tristram, H. B. (1873) The Land of Moab. Travels and Discoveries on the East side of the Dead Sea and Jordan, London

 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

John Hyde of Manchester (c. 1780–1825)

Giovanni Finati’s account of his own travels in Egypt and the Levant as dragoman for several British visitors includes several references to Hyde. In 1819 Hyde was in Egypt and cut his name and date on a temple at Karnak and a stele at Aswan – ‘HYDE 1819’. Someone he knew at that time was William Bankes and there is a letter from Hyde to Bankes in the latters archives at Kingston Lacey in Dorset. He was writing from Cairo in October 1819 about his recent visit to St Catherine’s Convent in Sinai and his failure to find a text Bankes had seen. In June-July 1820 he appears in the pages of Henniker’s account of his travels in Palestine and we learn there that when Henniker was robbed, one of the items he never recovered was a book of Hyde’s that “contained his journal to the Oasis” – presumably Siwa. The British Library has many of Hyde’s papers including journals relating to some of his travels in the Levant in 1820 and 1821 – Lebanon, Syria (including Palmyra) and Persia. By 10 June 1822 he was at Poona in India (where he died of cholera at Moorshedabad in Bengal on 24 April 1825).

Hyde’s name and date carefully incised in the surface of the temple at Karnak (Photo: Alan Fildes)

None of the surviving documents just cited include a visit ‘east of Jordan’ but he can in fact be placed at three locations there. In 1863 the French expedition of Félicien de Saulcy recorded that when they reached the Nabataean temple at Al-Qasr in Moab, they discovered “ we are not the first who visit it, for we read on the vestibule wall the name HYDE, followed by 1822.” A few months later while in Amman and examining the Umayyad palace on the citadel who did they meet again but ‘HEYDE (sic)’. In 1882 Captain Conder guided two British royal princes through the region including a visit to Salt where he recorded near a spring just south of the town “A small tablet, painted in red with the name of an early explorer, was observed on the side wall of this monument (= tomb/ chapel).” It read ‘HYDE 1820’.

A painted grafitto on a Roman tomb/ church at Salt. Drawing: C. Conder 1882: 217

There is a conflict with the dates and – unless we posit two trips east of Jordan, the year 1820 fits best with what else we know of his itinerary. Whichever year it was, Hyde is one of the very earliest western travellers in what is now Jordan and surely stimulated by his time spent in Egypt with Bankes and Finati who had been in northern Jordan in 1816 and 1818. Was he – like the handful of earlier western visitors to Al-Qasr, going to or coming from Petra?

More on the Blaines

Mr Blaine

If the Blaines (see Blog below of 6 October) kept journals from their journey through Egypt, to Petra and into the Decapolis, Syria and Lebanon, they seem not to have survived. On the face of it, a dead-end leaving just the bare bones of their expedition in the East.

By chance, glancing at the two volumes published by the German orientalist and Arabist, Friedrich Dieterici in 1853, revealed his own journey to Petra from Cairo was in the same year as the Blaines (1849) and fairly precisely dated. He was in Petra itself from 21-25 March 1849 – much the same period by my calculations, as the Blaines.

As westerners often made the long and hazardous trip in large groups, I looked a bit further into Dieterici’s books. Sure enough, right at the start of his second volume where he begins the long story of his journey from Cairo, he mentions ‘ein Engländerin’ with his party and shortly after refers to ‘Mr Blaine, meine Reisegefährte’ (travelling companion). So Mary Anne and Delabere crossed Sinai with the Dieterici Party and were in Petra 4 days in precisely 21-25 March. Although Mary Anne may have been the first western woman in modern times in the Decapolis, she had had predecessors at Petra, though not many. On the other hand, she is thought to have been born on Prince Edward Island, which would make her the first known Canadian to travel East of Jordan

Mrs Blaine

As Dieterici went on later to travel in northwest Jordan where we know the Blaines were in May 1849, it seems likely they continued to travel together. It may well be that Dieterici mentions them frequently – though 19th century writers were often very circumspect in naming others, often reducing them to Mr T or Miss W or even giving them pseudonyms. But the real reason I cannot say more at the moment is that Dieterici’s book is printed in German Gothic script. Too many more pressing jobs at the moment to slog through transliterating into roman script before reading. I look forward to Google devising software that will transliterate Gothic to roman but until then … this is a low priority. A Blog on Dieterici must wait.

Online list of travellers to Petra

The late Norman Lewis compiled a list of the travellers to Petra known to him through their publications or archival documents. He was generous in sharing it with others and it can be seen in one of its most recent forms online now. It contains errors and much may now be added but it represents an invaluable starting point for those researching 19th century travel to one area ‘east of Jordan’.
http://www.jordanjubilee.com/history/petra-bibliography.htm

Petra – “A rose-red city, half as old as Time”

John William Burgon (1813-1888)

Not again! How many more times is that line going to be quoted by everyone who ever writes anything about Petra!

Many people do know the line and a good many could tell you it was from a poem written by John William Burgon (1813-1888) – ‘Dean Burgon’. Much less well-known is that Burgon had never visited Petra – or even the region. In 1845, a very mature student of 32, he entered a poem in the competition for Oxford’s Newdigate Prize. The theme that year was ‘Petra’, a place increasingly ‘in-the-news’ as a steady trickle of bolder western travellers undertook the immensely demanding journey, and wrote about it when they returned home. Burgon won on this – his third attempt, joining an illustrious list of winners over the two centuries including Oscar Wilde, Matthew Arnold and John Buchan.

Photograph of John William Burgon from: Goulburn 1892 John William Burgon late Dean of Chichester: A Biography with extracts from his letters and early journals, Vol. 1 (John Murray: London).

Even less well-known is that Burgon eventually did visit Petra – but not till 17 years later by which time he was almost 50. Two publications offer lengthy and – at the time published, fairly comprehensive lists of western travellers to Petra before 1914. Oddly, neither includes Burgon and a search through even other 19th century writers now easily found for free download, reveals no knowledge of Burgon’s visit …. while endlessly quoting his poem.

The evidence for Burgon’s visit is preserved in a two-volume biography consisting in large part in the numerous letters and other documents he wrote. In 1892 – four years after his death, Edward Goulburn published extensive parts of Burgon’s papers including the spate of letters he wrote in Egypt, crossing Sinai, at Aqaba and at Petra itself, then at Jerusalem after the journey. There is some repetition as he reports the same details to different correspondents, but collectively they allow the reconstruction of this visit.

The impetus for the journey lay with a wealthy lady friend (‘Miss Webb’) Burgon had originally met in Italy. This ‘Webb Party’ set off from Lake Constance for Egypt on 10 September 1861 and there followed the customary extensive cruise down the Nile – in their case as far as the 2nd Cataract. They then set off from Cairo on Saturday 9 March 1862 for Suez, Mt Sinai and reached Aqaba on Saturday 5 April, after four weeks of gruelling travel on camels.

Burgon had hoped they would reach Jerusalem to celebrate Easter there on Good Friday (18th April that year), but their journey took much longer. Instead, they were at Petra for four and half days, having arrived on Wednedsay 16th April 1862 then staying Good Friday, Easter Sunday and leaving on Easter Monday, 21 April.

Burgon reports a generally untroubled visit – unlike the visit just two weeks earlier when one of that group had sent a messenger back hoping to dissuade the Webb Party from proceeding.

As always, Burgon refers to his sketching of ruins and it would be interesting to know if they have survived. He was impressed – 17 years after immortalising the place in verse, he was there. Strangely, he never mentions the poem (at least in the published correspondence). Now he was writing in a letter begun in Petra itself on Easter Sunday (20 April 1862) that it was ‘the most astonishing and interesting place I ever visited, and may well stand alone.’ He remarks on the ‘sandstone cliffs … in colour unrivalled’ but goes on, however, to admit: ‘… there is nothing rosy in Petra, by any means’! A puzzling remark given the immense range of rosy colours one does see at Petra.

On again through the Wadi Araba to Hebron, where they stayed two days, before reaching Jerusalem on Tuesday 29 April 1862. According to Burgon, they had by then been travelling with camels for 50 days. Burgon fell ill in Jerusalem and had to miss the subsequent journeys the rest of the Webb Party made, including the trip east of the Jordan Miss Webb had been planning before they left Egypt. He eventually moved on to Jaffa in a jolting litter drawn by mules, and had to be carried bodily onto a boat which took him to Beirut. Very ill there, he was attended by doctors and prescribed various medicines, remarking in one letter home: “How can a man be taking 6 gr. of quinine per day, and three wine glasses of tonic, with wine, pale ale, and solid food at 9, 1 and 5, without being strengthened?” Perhaps the treatment as much as the illness was the cause of his ‘indescribable languor, and faintness.’

He spent all of June recovering in Beirut before catching a steamer to Marseilles, arriving home on 18 July 1862.

The Webb Party consisted of Miss (Elizabeth Frances) Webb (a niece of Sir John Guise), of Chesham Place (Belgravia), her cousin Miss Frances (‘Fanny’) Guise, their two maids, Captain (RN Retd) and Mrs Bayley and Burgon himself. Captain Bayley is especially interesting – while Burgon sketched, he was taking photographs, over a hundred on the Nile alone, says Burgon.

It is surprising that the visit by Burgon of all people is known to so few. But there is another little mystery to be pursued. While at Aqaba, Burgon reports giving Sheikh Mohammad, the Alawin beduin chief who is to lead them on to Petra, “dear Charles’s message to his father, and said how sorry he would be to hear that Sheik Husseyn is dead”. ‘Charles’ is one of Burgon’s regular correspondents and it was to his home he went to convalesce after returning to England. Charles Longuet Higgins (1806-85) is in fact Burgon’s brother-in-law, married to his sister Helen Eliza. Research is at an early stage but happily Burgon himself subsequently published a short biography of Charles Higgins in his book Lives of Twelve Good Men. In it he reports that Charles Higgins and his brother Henry, and a companion Mr de Grille, “… struck across the desert from Cairo for the Convent of S. Catharine, and entered the Holy Land by way of Hebron, – taking Petra and Mount Hor in their way. … The travellers succeeded in their object, which was to reach Jerusalem (April 8th [1848]) in ample time to witness the solemnities of Holy Week and Easter.” The date is early for visitors to Petra and the visit is otherwise unknown. Indeed, until now the only known visitor to Petra that year is the enigmatic ‘R W G 1848’ from a graffito scratched on the wall of the Khazneh. We may now (perhaps) resolve that puzzle too – ‘R W G’ is probably R W de Grille, though who he is remains (as yet) a mystery …

– DLK

– Article originally appeared on the APAAME blog, reproduced with permission.

More on the Bekes (Beeks)

Emily and Charles Beke were early travellers in what is now Jordan. Emily was a particularly notable traveller simply as that rarity amongst western travellers up to that point – a woman. But even in 1862 she was not the first known western women to travel in Jordan – Charlotte Rowley had visited Petra with her husband and a friend in 1836 and Mary Ann Roberton Blaine was in northewestern Jordan with her husband in 1849.

The Beke family had also had a member in the region before Charles and Emily. In 1839 Charles’ younger brother, William Beek (he kept the old spelling of the family name), an engineer in The East India Company had worked with the Irishman, George Moore around the Dead Sea (‘On the Dead Sea and Some Positions in Syria’, JRGS 7 (1837): 456). Various hints point to William having also been to Petra and Jarash at least. William is an interesting character in his own right. A few years earlier he had apparently served as an adventurer in the army of the Persian Crown Prince, Abbas Mirza. It was reported that ‘he led a siege and an escapade against a Turkoman fortress in Khorasan’, in what is now Turkmenistan.

William later appears in Sicily and Italy apparently managing mining operations. An infant son died there as a gravestone from the English Cemetery at Messina in Sicily records:
“William James Beek born 1st December and died 25th June 1840, the son of Ann and William George Beek”.

Another son – Charley, survived to work alongside his father until the 1870s at least and a further son – Reginald Maitland Beek, married a girl in Queensland in September 1888.

A fascinating family and deserving of further investigation, not least for their activities ‘east of Jordan’.

– Article originally appeared on the APAAME blog, copied with permission.

Miss Mary Arnold – Missionary at Kerak

Image: T. Durley, 1910, Lethaby of Moab; a record of missionary adventure, peril, and toil, Marshall Brothers, London: 190.

In the 1880s and 90s an intrepid British missionary called Willian Lethaby took up residence at Kerak in what is now west central Jordan. The indigenous population was mixed Muslim and Christian but fairly uniformly lawless, preying on each other and on any travellers passing by. Lethaby and his wife lived a hard life and suffered a great deal there from neighbours who often could be aggressive and even violent. Some of the burden of their efforts to proselytise and provide basic health care and education was shared when they were joined by Miss Mary Arnold. She appears in books of the time as a robust character and well-able to deal with the harsh neighbours and environment. One of the reports she sent back to Britain concerns a journey she made from Kerak to Jerusalem. In it she explains that because of feuding between beduin north of Kerak, she travelled south, down from the plateau to the valley south of the Dead Sea then north through Hebron to Jerusalem. The description makes it clear she was following the old Roman road known as the Zoar Ascent. This is the route I followed on the ‘walk’ organised by Prof. Haim Ben-David last year (blog post) and readers might like to read Mary Arnold’s account (see below). Of interest, too, is that when the missionaries were all forced to leave Kerak in 1894, it was said that she returned to her family in Western Australia. In the 1890s, the population of WA was small and the numbers who belonged to the Weslyan Methodist Church must have been tiny. A remarkable woman indeed.
DLK

LETTER FROM MISS ARNOLD extract from A. Forder (1902) With the Arabs in Tent and Town, an account of missionary work, life and experiences in Moab and Edom and the first missionary journey into Arabia from the north, 3rd ed., London, Marshall Brothers: 16-25.

The not so ancient travels to Rabbath-Ammon

In our current research on the vast hinterland of the ancient city of modern day Amman, Hellenistic Philadelphia, Biblical Rabbath-Ammon, we have been reading many travellers’ accounts of exploring the ruins of the lands of Moab and Gilead.

Sketch of Rabbath-Ammon from L. Oliphant, 1880, The Land of Gilead with excursions in the Lebanon, William Blackwood and Sons (Edinburgh/London): 264. Digitised by the Internet Archive.

These historical accounts were mostly written in the 19th century. Some accounts seem to dwell on the flea-bitten sleepless nights in Bedouin accommodation, their finesse, or lack thereof, of dealings with the Arab tribes to secure guides and protection on the perilous journeys to isolated historical sites, and anecdotal commentary on the lifestyle of the ‘Musselman’, Christian and Bedouin they come across in these territories. Other accounts, such as that of Tristram, are overwhelming concerned with the flora and fauna of the region.

Most important for us, however, are the references to and reports of ruins they come across. Most accounts try and attribute the sites to those towns and cities mentioned in the Bible, but many also refer the sites to passages in Pliny the Elder, Josephus and other ancient writers.

Moreover, as these travellers were making their way through this area well before any urbanisation had occurred, they preserve, sometimes only in passing, the existence of ruins that have long since disappeared. These may be the only such reference to these sites, and it is from these accounts we can hope to reconstruct an idea of the hinterland of Amman – now completely covered in the urban sprawl of an increasingly expanding modern city. Many of these accounts are also accompanied by sketches and maps which further help us identify and locate these sites now erased from the archaeological record, or simply waiting to be refound.

Many of these works are out of copyright and can be found digitised and accessible for free in places such as Google Books, the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org), and Hathi Trust digital library (http://www.hathitrust.org/).

– Article originally appeared on the APAAME blog, copied with permission.