From the Sahara To Samarkand
Selected Travel Writings of Rosita Forbes, 1919-1937
Edited with an Introduction by Margaret Bald
ISBN: 978-1-60419-030-4
Rosita Forbes explored the Libyan desert, sailed the Red Sea, and trekked deep into Abyssinia, later chronicling her adventures in some thirty books and numerous articles. A celebrated journalist, lecturer, and filmmaker, her remarkable story deserves to be rediscovered by a new generation.
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“In real life, the big things and the little things are inextricably mixed up together, so in Libya at one moment, one worried because one’s native boots were full of holes, and at the next, perhaps, one wondered how long one would be alive to wear them.”
Rosita Forbes
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In the 1920s and ’30s, the extraordinary Rosita Forbes explored the Libyan desert, sailed across the Red Sea to Yemen, trekked more than a thousand miles into remote Abyssinia, and traveled in Southeast Asia and China, Morocco, Turkey, Iraq, Persia, and Afghanistan. She wrote some thirty books about these and other journeys, was a widely published journalist, a documentary filmmaker, and the editor of a pioneering women’s magazine.
Forbes was also a Jazz Age style icon, known as much for her glamour and charm as for her splendid adventures and the engaging and insightful books she wrote about them. This is the first anthology of her travel writing.
Overview
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EDITOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
EDITOR’S NOTE
1919: Into Java and Sumatra
Java
Java and Sumatra
1919: Between Two Armies in China
Southern China
Chin-Chow
1921: The Secret of the Sahara: Kufara
We Enter on the Great Adventure
The Elusive Dunes
1922: An Attempted Pilgrimage to Mecca
An Adventure that Failed
Being the Account of an Attempted Pilgrimage to Mecca
The Pilgrimage Continued
1923: Odyssey in Yemen and Asir
The Odyssey of a Sambukh
Guests of a Hermit Emir
The Menace of a Crowd
1924: Morocco: The Sultan of the Mountains
Into the Days of Haroun Er Rashid
The Wild Land of Raisuli
Raisuli Himself
1925: A Thousand Miles of Abyssinia
Anticipation
The Arks at Harrar
Chiefly Mules and Marriages
The Palaces of Gondar
1928: A Woman with the Legion—South of the Atlas, Morocco
A Woman with the Legion—South of the Atlas, Morocco
1931: Interlude in Turkey, Iraq, and Persia
Veiled and Unveiled Women of the Middle East
Iraq and the Holy Cities of Shia Islam
Interlude in the Anderun
From Isfahan to Shiraz by Motor-Truck
Through the Mountains of Kurdistan
1937: From Kabul to Samarkand
The Nomads’ Road to Kabul
Kabul
In Kandahar
Travelling with Afghans
Bamyan, Valley of the Giant Buddhas
Through the Hindu Kush to Doab
The Glory of Tamerlane
BOOKS BY ROSITA FORBES
ABOUT THE EDITOR
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ISBN-13: 9781604190304
Publication date: 09/01/2010
Pages: 369
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
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“Rosita Forbes is a name most modern readers will not recognize. In the 1920s and 1930s, however, she was one of the world’s most popular travel writers, venturing to remote destinations in the Middle and Far East, often in disguise, often in search of legendary places rarely visited by westerners. She was a daring and colorful personality, known to royalty yet willing to ride mules, camels and broken-down jalopies to reach her destinations. Forbes penned 30 books, all now out of print. This book holds 32 of her travel stories describing fascinating places she visited, many of which have been forever altered by modernity. In addition, Forbes provided invaluable descriptions of women she met. She also noted, but barely complained about, insect scourges, bad weather, treacherous guides and poor housing conditions. Her stories retain many archaic place names, so readers will need to consult geographic references, adding to the charm of exploring this collection.”
Kay Hardy Campbell (Saudi Aramco World, March/April 2012)
Reviews
“Living women explorer-travellers support this book with great enthusiasm. . . . With Rosita Forbes’ books long out of print, Margaret Bald has done a great service, to her and to us, in bringing out this book. Many of us will need to take to the second-hand bookshops or our libraries to search out her other books once we have absorbed this excellent starter.”
Deborah Manley (ASTENE Bulletin, Autumn 2011, pg 12)
“Almost a century ago, Rosita Forbes, the bride of an adulterous Scottish army officer, pawned her wedding ring, bought a horse, a revolver, and a camera and embarked on what would be a long, adventurous career as a travel writer…. Margaret Bald provides a taste of some of Forbes’s forays into the Libyan Desert, Iraq, Afghanistan and a disintegrating, post-World War I China…. Best… is the story of her attempted pilgrimage to Mecca in August 1922. Swathed in a shapeless black abaya, she identifies herself as half Turk, half Egyptian and sets out with hundreds of Muslim pilgrims on a boat sailing across the Red Sea from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.”
Joshua Hammer (The New York Times, Sunday Book Review)
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“[Rosita Forbes] published two autobiographies and a dozen books about her travels in the Pacific, the Sahara, Abyssinia, Afghanistan, South America, Samarkand, India and the Bahamas. . . . Indeed, this book is a series of adventures—many of them in ASTENE-land—and I was delighted to be introduced to it.”
Deborah Manley (ASTENE Bulletin, Autumn 2011, pg 13)
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“[Rosita Forbes’s] incredible courage, with her apparent implacability in the face of often daunting odds . . . has one spellbound from start to finish of this remarkable anthology. . . . An inspiring volume for modern-day travelers, whether of the armchair variety or of the more adventurous kind, this book is not to be missed.”
Lois Henderson (BookPleasures.com)
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“From the Sahara to Samarkand is the first anthology of [Rosita Forbes’s] travel writings to be published. It includes selections from eight of her travel books…a thorough and enthusiastic introduction to her life and work, and a photo gallery.”
Patricia Dubrava (The Bloomsbury Review)
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“A choice addition to any literary collection focusing on travel writing.”
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“This is a book to read, enjoy, imagine the difficulties [Rosita Forbes] encountered, and problems she had to solve, and discuss with like-minded friends. Highly recommended!”
Hrayr Berberoglu (Wine’s World Blog)
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“What an astonishing book this is! Rosita Forbes was not just intrepid but extremely intelligent, not just adventurous but deeply curious, not just a fine writer but a shrewd and sympathetic observer as well. It’s rare to find a person at once so iconoclastic, unconventional and fearless and yet so attuned to her fellow human beings across the globe.”
Rosemary Mahoney (author of Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff)
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“Oh, how captivating are the details of her descriptions, the gutsiness of her adventures, her disguises and lies as she moves through mostly Arabic/Islamic worlds where the English are unwelcome, women are hidden, and amenities are rare! Even with a whiff of colonialism, this is a unique and captivating view of the world, from 1919 to 1937, from a beautiful and memorable woman whose playfulness with words makes this great fun to read!”
Rita Golden Gelman (author of Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World)
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“The world could do with a few more female explorers. No one better to lead the way than the undaunted Rosita Forbes. Praise to Margaret Bald for bringing back this great traveler and writer to the spotlight, where she belongs.”
Arita Baaijens (author of Desert Songs: A Woman Explorer in Egypt and Sudan and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society)
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“From the Sahara to Samarkand not only covers the travels of Rosita Forbes. It reveals the extraordinary courage mixed with knowledge and humour that were keynotes in Sita’s remarkable life. Margaret Bald in her excellent introduction captures with splendid detail Sita’s break from the traditions of “What Women Did” in the 1920s and 1930s. Sita travelled through desert sand by camel or on foot. She visited mosques and temples in dangerous places and met heroes in the process. She wrote with style and beautiful language. Margaret Bald’s introduction, the photo album, and the travel writings themselves are elegant summaries of the splendid diversities in Sita’s life.”
Lord Renton of Mount Harry (nephew of Rosita Forbes and author of Chief Whip: People, Power and Patronage in Westminster)
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PRAISE FOR: THE WRITINGS OF ROSITA FORBES
“She has an intense and imaginative curiosity about her fellow-humans, makes friends with them everywhere, shares the most appalling living conditions with a gay heart. And she writes of all this with cleverness and a vibrant personal quality of vividness and wit.” - The New York Times
“She was a keen observer, a shrewd commentator on men and races, and a forceful and interesting writer. Vital, indefatigable, and immensely courageous, she was not only one of the leading women explorers of, at the very least, her own time but one of its most picturesque and entertaining personalities.” —The Times of London (in Rosita Forbes’s obituary)
“By all odds the most absorbing narrative of dangerous adventuring in unknown regions since Shackleton’s ‘South.’ ” — New York Tribune (on The Secret of the Sahara: Kufara)
“…a record of travel and adventure that sparkles with wit and humor, and at the same time throws into relief an intimate and unforgettable picture….” — St. Louis Globe Democrat (on Forbidden Road: Kabul to Samarkand)
“Colorful” is the word for her style, but she employs it with considerable skill. Thanks to her powers of observation and to a capacity for letting things happen to her, the story of which she is the not over-obtrusive heroine provides the reader with a picture that is instructive as well as animated.” — Peter Fleming (The Times Literary Supplement on Forbidden Road: Kabul to Samarkand)
“Miss Forbes is one of the most accurate, and incidentally most entertaining of explorers.” — Saturday Review of Literature
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About the Editor
Margaret Bald
Margaret Bald is the author of Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds and the co-author of 120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature and 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature. She has been a freelance journalist and foreign correspondent, an editorial consultant to the United Nations, managing editor of World Press Review Magazine, and publications director at the social policy research organization MDRC. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.