# Freya Stark: A Biography

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-18 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Molly Izzard, Freya Stark: A Biography, bahai-library.com.
> ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> 
> Freya Stark:
> 
> A Biography
> 
> Molly Izzard
> pp. 61, 61
> 
> London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1993
> 
> 1. Text, from Izzard's book
> 
> [page 61]
> 
> ...
> Arrived in Baghdad, Freya put up at the Zia Hotel at fifteen shillings a
> day, and immediately threw herself into her adventure with a search for
> somewhere cheaper to live. This she found while wandering about the
> immediate locality. It was a small mud house in a warren of narrow alleyways
> off the town's main thoroughfare, Rashidi Street. Her Arabic was sufficient
> to read the notice that it was empty, and on her own initiative she decided
> to take it. She negotiated a lease with the help of one of her Syrian introductions,
> a young member of the Bahá'í sect employed in the Government
> Irrigation Department, and a few days later called at the Education Ministry,
> and left a note and her address for the British Adviser there, Lionel Smith,
> a friend of the Ker family, to whom she had an introduction. ...
> 
> [page 63]
> 
> ...
> Looked at askance by her fellow-nationals, Freya's bold assertion of her
> individuality fell rather flat. It produced feelings of mortification and of
> rejection unsuspected by her new acquaintances, and in this perhaps were
> sown the seeds of her future overbearingly dismissive attitude to mere wives,
> and her distancing of herself from the preoccupations of the local resident
> community. As her only 'respectable' connections in British official society,
> Lionel Smith and Stefana Drower worked conscientiously to promote Freya's
> acceptability to their colleagues. Slowly, she made up the ground she had
> lost on arrival, when her association with the American missionaries, and
> her handful of introductions to worthy but unglamorous middle-class Iraqis,
> members of the Bahá'í sect, did not commend her socially to her compatriots.
> 
> ...
> 
> Her treks in 1927 and 1928 in Lebanon and Syria had the protective
> influence of the Protestant mission community behind them. Similarly in
> Persia in May 1930, when she set out alone from Iraq in quest of the
> Assassins' lairs, it was Bahá'í introductions in Baghdad who put her in
> contact with a local landowner in Qasvin; he consigned her to the care of
> one of his tenants in the Alamut and held him responsible for her well-being.
> ...
> 
> 2. Text, from Geniesse's book
> 
> Note: the following excerpt is from Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark, by Jane Fletcher Geniesse (Random House, 1999), online at Google Books. It is included here because it seemed too short to warrant its own post:
> 
> ... An Arab friend in Damascus had put Freya in touch with a local member of the Bahá'í movement, an enlightened and rationalist religious sect from Persia, who helped her find three rooms up a steep staircase and behind a stout door that had to be opened with a foot-long latchkey. ...
> 
> 3. Image scans of Izzard's book (click image for full-size version)
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views5863 views since posted 2013-07-01; last edit 2013-07-01 02:29 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../izzard_freya_stark_biography
> Language
> English
> Permission
> fair use
> History
> Scanned 2001 by Dan Povey; Proofread 2013-07-02 by Jonah Winters.
> Share
> 
> Shortlink: bahai-library.com/2226
> Citation: ris/2226
> 
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> — *Freya Stark: A Biography (Used by permission of the curator)*