Remembering the explorer/writer/photographer, Freya Stark, today on her birthday
Born in Paris, the British/Italian woman was gifted as a little girl, the book “A Thousand and One Nights”, which inspired her later travels. She served as a VAD (“Voluntary Aid Detachment”, i.e, a volunteer civilian nurse), in Italy during WWI, and learned a bevy of languages, including Arabic, Persian, Italian, English and others.
In 1927, Stark embarked on her first trip to the Near East, carrying only a fur coat, a revolver, and a little money. In the late 1920s/30s, she traveled throughout Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Iran and beyond. Occasionally, she ran into the politically charged reality of an area that, at the time, was under the colonial rule of France, Britain, et al. Writing about dealing with authorities, Stark wrote, “The great and almost only comfort about being a woman, is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is, and no one is surprised.”
Stark preferred to travel into dangerous and contested areas - she once inserted herself into a harem while in Iraq, providing a unique insight into a hidden world. She wrote about Bedouin peasants and tribal leaders, and was comfortable speaking with both.
Stark’s travels differed from those of her fellow female explorers, Gertrude Bell some years earlier, and her contemporary Aloha Wanderwell: Bell was an upper-class English aristocratic woman who stayed in fine hotels, and held parochial views towards indigenous peoples at times; Wanderwell traveled with a huge well-funded expedition. Stark, however, traveled alone, living and interacting with local peoples, speaking their language.
Stark’s work and viewpoints on the Near East would be controversial today. During WWII, she was essentially used as a propagandist for the British side.
Her last trip was to Afghanistan in 1968 when she was 75 years old, to see the 12th century brick-built Minaret of Jam, located in the inaccessible Hindu Kush region towards the northwest of the country.
Stark left approx 6,000 photographs, 50,000 negatives, and dozens of writings, of which her most well known is 1934’s “The Valley of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels”.
Freya Stark died in Italy in 1993 at the age of 100.
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