Hailed as a classic upon its first publication in 1934, The Valleys of the Assassins firmly established Freya Stark as one of her generation's most intrepid explorers. The book chronicles her travels into Luristan, the mountainous terrain nestled between Iraq and present-day Iran, often with only a single guide and on a shoestring budget. Stark writes engagingly of the nomadic peoples who inhabit the region's valleys and brings to life the stories of the ancient kingdoms of the Middle East, including that of the Lords of Alamut, a band of hashish-eating terrorists whose stronghold in the Elburz Mountains Stark was the first to document for the Royal Geographical Society. Her account is at once a highly readable travel narrative and a richly drawn, sympathetic portrait of a people told from their own compelling point of view. This edition includes a new Introduction by Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Stark's biographer.
Written just after World War II, Perseus in the Wind (named after the constellation) is perhaps the most personal, and haunting, of all Freya Stark's writings. Putting together memories and reflections, "harvested from life and accident", that have carried her through her travels, Stark muses on the seasons, the effect light has on a landscape at a particular time of day, the smell of the earth after rain, Muslim saints, Indian temples, war, and old age. Each chapter is devoted to a particular theme: Happiness (simple pleasures, like her father's passion for the view from his cabin in Canada); Education (to be able to command happiness, recognize beauty, value death, increase enjoyment); Beauty (incongruous, flighty, and elusive - a description of the stars, the burst of flowers in a park); Death (a childhood awareness of the finality of Time, the meaningfulness of the end); Memory (the jeweled quality of literature, pleasure, love, an echo or a scent when aged by the passage of time). Woven throughout this beautifully-crafted book are references to Stark's many travels, from Asolo to Aden, Iran to India. For those who have loved her travel writing, Perseus in the Wind illuminates the motivations behind her journeys and the woman behind the traveler.
A memoir of a woman’s trek through rural Turkey and its ancient history: “A sharp-eyed, thoughtful, and knowledgeable traveler.” —The New York Times In 1956, Freya Stark traveled through back-country Turkey by truck and horseback, often alone. She reached places little visited and never written about. The country people welcomed her with generosity despite their meager resources. She was traveling in time as well, and found significance in recalling the life of Alexander the Great as she retraced his journey in reverse. Twenty-two centuries earlier he was the first to dream of a united world—and Stark’s observations reflect not just this land’s physical connections to antiquity but the human longings that persist through millennia. “One of the finest travel writers of [the twentieth] century.” —The New Yorker “Stark’s forte is the ability to take the reader to an ancient site and, through the scanty remains that are left today, evoke the past of which they were a part.” —The New York Times “Describing a Jeep-and-mule trek she undertook in 1956 through the back country of Anatolia, Stark retraces (in reverse) the progress of Alexander the Great more than two millennia before . . . Stark has a wonderfully understated sense of humor.” —Kirkus Reviews
Unlike Syria and Iraq, where Europeans were well protected, Persia in 1930 was an independent country only recently recovering from years of lawlessness. Despite its apparent dangers, Freya Stark's romantic soul found an affinity with people who seemed to prefer poverty with freedom to sub-colonial affluence. Before venturing into Mazanderan Dame Freya spent a month in Hamadan. She set out for Alamut in the middle of May heading for the castle of Hassan-i Sabbah. She returned to the valleys the following year, in August 1931, to explore the castle of Lamasur, one of the last of the Ismaili strongholds. She sojourned briefly in Tehran in September 1931, before the prospect of buried treasure took her to Luristan. In March 1943, while employed by the Ministry of Information, she was invited to spend her leave with Lord Wavell in Tehran. She received permission to use an official car to make the journey from Dehli and set off from Quetta. She travelled for several days across Baluchistan to Meshed, from there a detour of some 1200 miles took her to Tehran by way of Kerman and at last allowed her to visit Isfahan.
With such tantalizing chapters as "In Defence of Smuggling" and "Lunch with Homer," this is a witty, eye-opening tapestry of Freya Stark's writings on travel and a life spent as one of the twentieth century's most formidable adventurers. In chronological order, spanning an extraordinary 50 years from 1919 to 1967, Stark muses on the nature of travel and of being a woman—both writer and explorer—in what was then predominantly a male world. She also shares jewel-bright stories from across the world—Arabia to North Africa, Iran and India—that captivate the reader with every sentence. There are romantic picnics under starlit skies on remote islands, meaningful moments of quiet in Mecca and Jerusalem and heartfelt accounts of encounters with a kaleidoscope of people. The Zodiac Arch resurrects lost worlds, reveals a little of the woman behind the legend and is, at heart, a magnetic read for all those under the spell of wanderlust.
Freya Stark's first experience of the Near East was in 1927, when she stayed in Beirut, taking lessons to improve her Arabic. Boarding at a mission in Broumana, she began to explore the surrounding countryside, then a tranquil and idyllic area of deep, wooded valleys. In 1928 she moved to Damascus and was then able to visit Baalbek. Throughout the interwar years she travelled extensively in the Levant. In Syria she explored the castles of the Assassins, the Jebel Druze and the deserted Byzantine cities of the Orontes Valley. In Palestine, Acre and Jerusalem gradually won her affections, and in Jordan she visited the new capital city of Amman, then scarcely more than a village, and the ancient Nabatean 'lost city' of Petra. She returned to the Levant frequently during the war, and also throughout the 1950s. Her final trip to the region was in 1977, when she travelled by raft down the Euphrates River. For Freya Stark the Levant was the foundation of her love for the Middle East and the starting point for many of her travels further afield. This volume contains many of her best photographs, spanning the fifty years of her love affair with the Levant.
LETTERS FROM SYRIA JOHN MURRAY. CONTENTS PACE: i. FROM VENICE TO BEIRUT. LETTERS 112 j In the first of these letters Freya Stark has left her home at Asolo and has set out from Venice on a small cargo vessel for her first journey east of Italy and her first contact with the Near East. The s. s. Abbazia takes her as far as Rhodes, where she spends a few days before proceeding on s. s Diana to Beirut, The whole passage occupies three weeks. In the course of it she describes her first impressions of many famous places. 2. LEARNING ARABIC AT BRUMANA. LETTERS 13 63 23 The writer of these letters is now to spend three cold winter months at Brumana, a Syrian village on a slope of the Lebanon high above Beirut. She went with a recom mendation from the well-known orientalist Sir Thomas Arnold, and her object in settling there was to gain a command of fiuent Arabic. She had already received a grounding in this difficult tongue, first from an old Franciscan missionary friar at San Remo, then in 1926 from an Egyptian teacher in London, and finally in 1327 at the School of Oriental Studies. 3. FIRST VISIT TO DAMASCUS. LETTERS 6489 87 Telling of a month at Damascus, where the writer stayed in a native household in the Moslem quarter, and was much hampered by ill-health due to insanitary conditions. After three weeks convalescence in Brwnana she is joined by her friend Venetia Buddicom, whose acquaintance the reader has already made in the course of this correspondence. DAMASCUS AND THENCE TO LETTERS go 1 08 127 friends go by car to Baalbek and Damascus. Their next expedition is an unconventional and adventurous one, seeing that the Druse revolt of August, 1925, had continued until March, 1927, and that the French rulers of Syria were far from welcoming intruders. They are mounted on donkeys and with a Druse guide called Najm make a leisurely progress towards Palestine. At the end of eleven days they are at Bosra. There they dismiss their guide and take a car for Jericho and Jerusalem. 5. POSTSCRIPTS FROM ASOLO AND BRUMANA. LETTERS 109 in i 9 These letters re-introduce some persons and places already familiar to the reader, who will perhaps discern in the last sentence of all a link with the opening chapter of Baghdad Sketches. VI LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS From photographs by Miss Venetia Buddicom, except Frontispiece and those otherwise marked Freya Stark Frontispiece at end of book 1. Lindos, Rhodes Marine Photo Service, Colchester 2. Coastal hills of Syria 1 3. Asphodels over Syrian ruins 4. Flocks of the Beduin 4. Hawking in Syrian cornfields 5. Cutting the corn 6. Roman ruins at Baalbek 7. Great Mosque, Damascus Photo. P. 0. 8. In a Damascus bazaar 9. A cobbler at Damascus 10. Escort first seen 1 1 . Freya Stark, Najm and Arif 1 2. Groups at Deir All 13. Stone doors at Burdk 14. Freya Stark and Arifby the well at Redeme 14. Inside the guest room at Redeme vii 15. Beduin girl dancing near Shahba 15. Coffeepots 1 6 School children at Redeme 17. Miss Buddicom and French officers at Shahba 18. Circular temple at Kanawat 1 8. Little theatre in the ravine ig. Ruins at Kanawat 20. Ruins t Kanawat 20. Temple ruins below Sir 2 1 . The castle guard at Bosra 21. Children in gateway at Atyl 22. Mutib and his grandchildren at Resas 22. Making butter at Resas 23. MufiVs tent at Resas 23. Ruined mosque and minaret at Salhad 24. Bosra From photographs by the author Sketch map drawn by H. W. Hawes xi Vlll FOREWORD THESE letters, written on my first coming to Asia, were neatly and dreamlessly at rest in Sir John Murrays cup board when, between one blitz and another, the Pub lishers eye fell upon them. They were asked for and obtained the dislocation of war between me and the printer made the sending 6f proofs impracticable Sir Sydney Cockerell has most kindly edited them and seen them through the Press...
Lycia, on the southwestern coast of Turkey, is an ancient land steeped in mystery, myth, and legend. Figured prominently throughout history and literature, Lycia is known as home to the fiery chimera; heartland of worship for the goddess Leto; old ally of Troy; lure to conquering Cyrus and Alexander; and irresistible destination for centuries of travelers, artists, and writers. Part of "The Turquoise Coast", Lycia now attracts more tourists to its glimmering shores than any other part of Turkey. In the early 1950s, following the trail of the ancient Persian and Greek traders, famed travel writer Freya Stark set out by boat to explore the Lycian coast. South from Smyrna, she was guided by traces of Lycia's rich history and cultural heritage. For all those who now follow in her wake, there can be no better, more evocative or knowledgable guide to Turkey's most enchanting coast.
In 1939 when war broke out, Dame Freya Stark was already established as a traveller and writer. Her knowledge of the Middle East and her genius for friendship made her ideally suited to the task of influencing public opinion for the Allied cause.
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