Born in Paris and educated in London, Dame Freya Stark (1893-1993) invested a great deal of time and money learning Arabic and other languages, which would be her tools of discovery. Living to the age of 100, she devoted her life to the art of solo travel, writing two dozen highly personal travel books.
Freya Stark visited numerous countries, including Turkey, the Middle East, Greece, and Italy. Her passion was the Middle East, and her purpose was to explore these antique lands before, as one biographer wrote, they were "irretrievably caught up in the cacaphonic whirl of the modern world."
In 1928, at age 35, Stark established herself at the forefront of exploration with an audacious journey into forbidden territory of the Syrian Druze. While there, she was thrown in a military prison, but not before a trek across the infamous Valley of the Assassins, where a heretical sect of Muslims known for committing political and religious murders lived. The resulting book, The Valley of the Assassins (1934), established her recognizable style, combining practical travel advice with a lively commentary on the people, places, customs, and history of Iran. The book also brought her money and fame, in addition to grants from the Royal Geographical Society to pursue additional explorations.
During the 1930s, Stark ventured into the outback of southern Arabia, where only a few Western explorers had previously dared go. She discovered the hidden routes of the great incense trade of antiquity, whose great cities are just now being excavated--right where she had said they would be found. Stark continued to explore well into her 60s, when she followed in the footsteps of Alexander the Great in his epic journeys into Asia. The trips resulted in three of her most well-known books, The Lycian Shore, Ionia: A Quest and Alexander's Path. In them, she not only explores the trails upon which Alexander and his army marched, but also documents the impact that Greek civilization made on the nations of the Middle East.
Good Quote: “To awaken quite alone in a strange town," Stark wrote, "is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”
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