By Desert Ways to Baghdad: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

By Desert Ways to Baghdad, credited to Louisa Jebb Wilkins, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of By Desert Ways to Baghdad by Louisa Jebb Wilkins. Read in English by PaulW. Every age witnesses the birth of some great soul. Sometimes events bring these people to the attention of the world. More often than not, they alter the lives around them, then pass on quietly. Such a soul belonged to the author of this cherished book. There was nothing in Louisa Jebb's comfortable Victorian youth to indicate she would one day take to the saddle and pen one of the most eloquent equestrian travel books ever written. Yet in the early years of the 20th century, Jebb set out with a female companion to cross the Turkish Empire on horseback. To say they were unprepared to become Long Riders would be an understatement. Neither of them could speak the local language. Furthermore, both wore cumbersome full-length skirts and rode side-saddles. They were, in a word, enthusiastic amateurs who believed courage and common sense would see them through. Remarkably, it did. Having hired a picturesque guide and reliable horses, they set out to explore the secret corners of the Sultan's empire. What they discovered were guarded harems and regal Pashas, fabled rivers and a desert world of intense beauty. If Jebb rode into Turkey expecting to find adventure, she found it. Yet she discovered something else - nomadic freedom. It is her personal observations about this subject that set "By Desert Ways to Baghdad and Damascus" apart from other equestrian travel books. "In the untravelled parts of the East you reign supreme, there is no need to go about securely chained to a gold watch. Ignore Time, and he is your servant," she observed wisely. Sadly, revolution and death soon swept across this fabled land, wiping away the kingdom of the Turkish Caliphs and laying the foundations for the grief which enshrouds this unhappy part of the world today. Upon her return to "civilization" the author lamented about what she had found, then lost. "Last night we were dirty, isolated and free, tonight we are clean, sociable and trammelled. Last night the setting sun's final message was burnt into us. Tonight the sunset passed unheeded as we sit imprisoned and oppressed by the confining walls of Damascus Palace Hotel. We are no longer princesses whose hands are kissed. We are now judged by the cost of our raiment." Few books contain as many great abiding truths as this one does. - Summary by Goodreads

Recording facts

• Recording title: By Desert Ways to Baghdad
• Author credits: Louisa Jebb Wilkins
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 24
• Listed recording duration: 7:06:25

Catalogue topics

• travel
• exploration
• victorian
• turkish empire
• baghdad
• damascus

Track guide

1. 00 - Prologue — 10:25
2. 01 - Disentanglement — 12:52
3. 02 - Brigandage — 14:55
4. 03 - Social Intercourse — 10:00
5. 04 - The Dawn of the Baghdad Railway — 38:53
6. 05 - In the Taurus — 28:37
7. 06 - Royal Progress — 23:52
8. 07 - Harran: A Digression into the Land of Abraham — 19:31
9. 08 - That Unblessed Land, Mesopotamia — 24:59
10. 09 - Afloat — 9:43
11. 10 - Held Up — 25:37
12. 11 - A Reception and a Dance — 11:34
13. 12 - An Encounter with an Englishman — 12:49
14. 13 - The Creed of the Koran — 14:37
15. 14 - The Evil One — 15:33
16. 15 - Arab Hospitality — 14:15
17. 16 - A Storm and a Lull — 15:05
18. 17 - An Encounter with Fanatics — 10:54
19. 18 - The End of the Raft — 9:11
20. 19 - Babylon — 19:04
21. 20 - The Sound of the Desert — 19:07
22. 21 - Palmyra — 11:04
23. 22 - An Armenian and a Turk — 35:51
24. 23 - Retrospective — 17:57

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.