Freya Stark In Southern Arabia

In 1934 Freya Stark, encouraged by her recent awards from the Royal Geographical and Royal Central Asian Societies, set out to explore the Incense Road in Arabia. The magnificent canyons of Wadi Hadhramaut, stretching for 350 miles inland from the coast, inspired Dame Freya to produce some of her best photographs. The fortified cities with their mud-brick skyscrapers and luscious palm groves perched along the valley beneath towering cliffs are amongst the most visually stunning sights in the world. This once-rich region, home to the Queen of Sheba and made prosperous as a trading route between India and Europe, was by then part of the Aden Protectorate under British rule, but very little of the country had been explored by Westerners. Dame Freya's particular empathy with local people, speaking their own language, resulted in charming pictures of people she worked or travelled with, and the homes and costumes of the period. She travelled in the country twice during the 1930s, and both times was forced to leave due to illness. However, her pictures of Aden, Mukalla and Shibam are exceptional in evoking traditional life in this fertile region of Arabia. During the second world war she returned to Aden and was sent by the Ministry of Information to counter Italian influence in the neighbouring Kingdom of Yemen. Armed only with her charm and a primitive cinema projector, she helped persuade the legendary Imam Yahya to keep his country out of war. Forty years later, at the age of 83, she returned to North Yemen, revisiting some of the places she remembered most fondly.