Asian Geographic 3 - 2016 SG

The Valleys of the Assassins established Freya Stark as

one of her generation’s most prolific explorers. The book

chronicles her travels into Luristan, or Lorestan, the

mountainous terrain located between Iraq and present-

day Iran. Stark also became the first female to document

for the Royal Geographical Society in London.

leFt Explorer and
author Dame Freya Stark
photographed in May 1957

First Forays Abroad

And so, in 1927 at the age of 34, Stark

boarded a cargo ship bound for Beirut,

with scant funds in her pocket. For the

first time in her life, she could come

and go as she pleased. Everywhere

seemed bursting with possibilities.

In the 1920s, the Middle East was

a mess. The Ottoman Empire had

collapsed and Britain and France

held a series of officially temporary

mandates, which showed little sign

of giving way to the independent

states which the Arabs had been

promised. Many of the Bedouin tribes

had been brutally suppressed and

their territories were governed by

martial law. None of this fazed Stark. If

anything, it made her more curious.

Setting out from Damascus on a

donkey accompanied by an English

lady friend and a Druze guide, Stark

ventured straight into these forbidden

lands. She prided herself on travelling

The Valleys of the Assassins: and

Other Persian Travels (1934)

a Professor suggested Stark take up
Arabic. It was shortly after the first
world war when the Middle East was
in flux that Stark became desperate
for any opportunity which might allow
her to leave her life of drudgery in
Italy behind. When her sister, Vera,
died from a miscarriage in 1926, Stark
concluded that her true cause of death
was that she had let other people
decide how she would live. Stark was
not going to make the same mistake.

BEIRUT

(LEBANON)

DAMASCUS

(SYRIAN)

BAGHDAD

(IRAQ)

ALAMUT

CASTLE

(IRAN)

HADHRAMAUT

(YEMEN)

LURISTAN

(IRAN)

CANA

(ISRAEL)