2. [Mesopotamia / Mosul Content] – [Luke, Sir Harry / Lukach, Harry].
Wonderful example of the research trips Harry Luke made for his later publications: Copy of a full page letter Sir Harry wrote from Mosul to his father in 1924: “My dear Father, only a hearty line in the state of great rush to tell you that we safely accomplished the Journey across the desert from Jerusalem to Damascus to Baghdad, though it took us 5 days instead of 2 and a half owing to breakdown and sticking in the mud etc. At one place, half way across the desert, we stuck for 20 hours. We left Jerusalem on the 9th and got to Baghdad on the 14th at noon and had to leave that same evening for Mosul, as the trains only go twice a week. We had 15 hours in the train to the Northern terminus of the Baghdad Railway and then 75 miles by car. We are being put up by the British Political Officer here, in a charming house. Today I have been out all day in neighbouring Jacobite and Chaldean villages and monasteries and this evening visited one of the persons I had especially come here to Kurdistan to see, namely the hereditary Patriarch of the Nestorians, now a boy of 15, who has been Patriarch for 3 years, an attractive shy lad who not officiating as Patriarch plays football with the other Nestorian children. Tomorrow we go out to the Shrine of the Yezidis, or Devil-worshippers, in the company of their hereditary Emir (who I am told is always tight). We leave here on the 20th for Bagdad and then straight back to Jerusalem.”
[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. Mosul, 1924. Octavo. One and a half page – Typescript Letter. From the private collection / library of colonial governor, diplomat and historian, Sir Harry Luke.
