Chapter 5

Fig. 11.Relief from Quyundjik.(FromL’Art antique de la Perse, by kind permission of M. Dieulafoy.)

Fig. 11.Relief from Quyundjik.

(FromL’Art antique de la Perse, by kind permission of M. Dieulafoy.)

façades as those of Ctesiphon or Ukhaiḍir. But it must be admitted that while the recessing of Babylonian and Assyrian wall surfaces is in no sense an imitation of architectural forms, least of all an imitation of the column, which was an element unknown to the designers of these recessed buildings,[137]and that while on the Quyundjik relief the architrave is placed directly upon the piers without the intermission of impost or capital, the engaged columns of Firûzâbâd are true columns carrying an impost, and the whole scheme is no longer a pattern, but a copy in relief of a colonnade in the round. In thecourtyard the rectangular niching is retained, but without the engaged columns.[138]On the façade of the palace a series of seven arched niches is set high up in the wall, on either side of the arched opening of the lîwân.[139]It is a motive which recalls the open loggias in the façade of an Assyrian palace.[140]

The palace of Sarvistân bears an obvious relationship to that of Firûzâbâd, but the strict symmetry which regulates the latter is not so closely adhered to, and the construction is handled with greater freedom and skill (Plate 76). The principal lîwân happens, it is true, to have resumed the old latitudinal disposition, but the longitudinal lîwân is present in a subsidiary position. The lateral chambers are provided with wide arched openings which, together with the arch of the lîwân, form a façade not unlike those of the Ukhaiḍir courts.[141]The breaking of the façade by doors leading into the lateral chambers of the lîwân occurs first at Hatra, and characterizes all lîwân buildings later than that of Sarvistân. Instead, however, of the piers and engaged columns of Ukhaiḍir, the three arches of Sarvistân are separated by groups of triple flutes. These flutes are far more clearly connected with ancient oriental tradition than the engaged columns of Firûzâbâd. They are derived from the reed-like flutings of Babylonia and Assyria, which are to be found as late as the Parthian counterfeit at Tellôh.[142]The motive does not disappear after the Mohammadan invasion. It occurs at Kharâneh, a ḥîrah on the western borders of the Syrian desert (see below,Plate 80, Fig. 2), and I found it upon the façade of Sultan Khân, a Seldjuk building in the heart of Asia Minor.[143]Here, as at Sarvistân, it flanks a central doorway. At Sarvistân it gives way at the angles of the palace to a single engaged column. As at Firûzâbâd, the audience hall at Sarvistân is a square domed chamber, but it opens immediately into the posterior courtyard and a single lîwân faces it on the further side. Besides the partial detachment from the wall of the supports of some of the vaults and of the columns bearing the smaller dome, there are other evidences of advance in structural knowledge. In the central lîwân, in the tower chambers, and in the central domed chamber the walls are partially hollowed out by blind niches, which add to the security of the vaults while they increase the interior space of the chambers. These blind niches lend to the supports of the dome something of the appearance of free standing angle piers, and they show a dawning apprehension of the fact that the thrust of the dome is concentrated mainly upon the corners of the substructure. In the isolated dome of Ferâshâbâd[144]the hollowing out of the walls is carried yet further.

The building material used in walls and vaults is undressed stone and mortar,but at Sarvistân the stones are more carefully coursed than at Firûzâbâd. As far as can be judged from photographs, the vaults must have been built over a centering. They oversailed the walls as at Ukhaiḍir, while the semicircular door and window arches were set back from the jambs according to Dieulafoy’s restoration, and oversailed the walls according to the restoration of Flandin.[145]The side walls of the palace are broken by frequent doorways, and in the smaller dome windows were pierced through the drum.[146]The domes are built far more skilfully than those of Firûzâbâd. The zone which contains the squinch oversails the wall, standing flush with the outer edge of a small cornice adorned with a dog-tooth. The squinches are built with a proficiency which is in marked contrast with their rude prototypes at Firûzâbâd. They are divided from the dome by a second dog-tooth cornice, and the dome itself is constructed of light brick tiles.[147]This combination of the two materials is resorted to again at Ukhaiḍir. The niches in the columned chambers are covered with semi-domes which are set clumsily over the angles on very small squinches.[148]The Achaemenidizing plaster-work of Firûzâbâd is not repeated, but the dog-tooth is copied from the cornice under the dome in the older palace. It is significant that the cornices of Sarvistân have but one fillet instead of the two fillets of Firûzâbâd. A tendency to reduce the importance of horizontal decorations is characteristic of Sasanian and of Mohammadan work in Mesopotamia (see below,p. 130).

Both for Firûzâbâd and for Sarvistân a minute re-examination is urgently needed, but the political conditions of the province of Fars are not favourable to archaeological research. Nor was the state of affairs ideal at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn when I was there in April 1911, and I measured the palace of Khusrau to the tune of the whizzing of stray bullets. That they were not intended to hit me was due principally to the fortunate circumstance of my having been accredited by a powerful Kurdish ally on the Turkish side of the frontier to the leading Kurdish brigand, Kerîm Khân, on the Persian side. This fact rendered the situation more reassuring, but I was not tempted to prolong my stay beyond the five days which I devoted to the palaces, neither did I loiter over my work. It would have been difficult to push on further into the interior, or perhaps I should say that it would have been too expensive; for though Kerîm Khân would have provided me with an escort, he would have expected a small fortune in return for his protection, and perhaps it might fairly be urged that he would have deserved it. According to the information which has reached me from Baghdâd, matters have gone from bad to worse since the date of my visit, and the high road of the Sasanian kings has been definitely closed to traffic.

Like the Achaemenid palaces, Firûzâbâd and Sarvistân were not intended for the lodging of vast hordes of retainers. These may have been accommodated in tents or in mud-built houses of an unpretending nature. But with the close of the sixth century we come to a group of royal dwelling-places wherein provision was made for an indefinite number of women, courtiers, servants, and guards, and the type of building thus created was taken over by the khalifs of Islâm and extended to proportions vaster still. Of this type the palace of Khusrau at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn is the best example we possess.[149]In general terms Ukhaiḍir is its fortified counterpart.

The palace of Khusrau is built upon an artificial platform like Persepolis and the Assyrian palaces, while additional lodgings for the king’s family and suite are placed on the level of the plain. The double ramps or stairways by which the platform is approached are exactly similar to those employed in the older prototypes. The eastern end of the platform is occupied by an immense open space lying before the entrance to the state apartments. A deep porch, possibly with columns on either side, leads into a latitudinal chamber, the details of which cannot be determined without excavation. From this antechamber a doorway communicates with the square hall of audience, which corresponds precisely with the audience halls of Firûzâbâd and Sarvistân. In the posterior wall there is a deep lîwân in which, perhaps, the throne of the Chosroës may have been placed. Behind the reception-rooms there is an open court round which the living-rooms are grouped, not singly, but in a series of subsidiary courts, some of which are placed on a lower level. The whole scheme is thus exactly parallel to the scheme of the palaces in Fars, though the reduplication and enlargement of the various parts somewhat obscures the resemblance at first sight. At Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn a porch is added to the lîwân palace and the entrance lîwân has become a closed chamber, the porch having superseded the columned entrance of the Achaemenids and the archways of the earlier Sasanians. The rectangular audience hall of the normal Sasanian khilâni palace follows. The small lîwân to the rear, with its flanking rooms, have their parallel at Firûzâbâd, but the small lîwân at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn forms part of the hall of audience andthree of the flanking rooms can be entered from that hall, as well as from the open court behind it.

I must pass from what went before to what came after and draw a comparison between the palace of Khusrau and the desert palace of Ukhaiḍir. A characteristic feature of the latter, the girdle of walls, must be left out of account. At Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn the walls were placed round the large pleasure-grounds with which the Sasanian king surrounded his dwelling. It is the wall-less Ukhaiḍir, the Ukhaiḍir as it was originally conceived by its builders, which must be taken into consideration, though even in that first design the desert ḥîrah was not left entirely defenceless, since it was compressed into the rectangle of its own enclosing walls, strengthened by towers. The space within those walls had to be utilized to the full. At Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn the guards could be lodged in the lower rooms about the stairways, at Ukhaiḍir they were gathered together within the main entrance. The great hall is, in fact, a monumental gateway. It belongs to the system of defences which is absent from the Sasanian palaces. The Mohammadan builders reverted to an older type, to the fortified palace of the ancient East. At Khorsâbâd the principal entrance to the palace lay within the walls of the acropolis, and it was not, therefore, strongly fortified, but such gates as those in the acropolis walls are the true progenitors of the Ukhaiḍir scheme (Plate 78, Fig. 1). In Sargon’s palace the long entrance passage, some 10 metres wide, represents the great hall of Ukhaiḍir; the lateral chambers on either side are divided at Ukhaiḍir into groups of smaller lateral rooms which, both at Khorsâbâd and at Ukhaiḍir, were very insufficiently lighted. In either case some additional light is obtained from a court into which the chambers open. The symmetrical arrangement of the Ukhaiḍir gate with the central court and audience rooms behind it would not have appealed to ancient authorities on fortification. Chaldaean and Assyrian gateways are seldom if ever situated opposite to one another, an asymmetrical disposition being accounted better for purposes of defence.[150]The long passage room of Khorsâbâd and Ukhaiḍir, but without the lateral chambers, exists in some of the excavated gateways at Susa,[151]and at Susa above the gateway stands a hypostyle pavilion offering a high and airy abode to the great folk who inhabited the palaces within, just as at Ukhaiḍir an open court with lîwâns on all sides occupies the high summit of the gate-house. At Ukhaiḍir there is no direct communication between the ground floor of the gate-house block and the rest of the palace, except one door out of the great hall. The gate tower and hall, with the adjoining rooms for dependants, and the mosque, which had of necessity to be accessible to all, formed the public part of the building, and the upper stories, since they too could only be reached by passing through the public rooms, cannot be regarded as containing private apartments. The better rooms may have been intendedfor guests; the chambers in the gate-tower, and those which were in direct connexion with the chemin de ronde, for guards.

The great open platform of Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn is represented at Ukhaiḍir by the central court. The ceremonial rooms at Ukhaiḍir recall with singular fidelity the disposition at Firûzâbâd, but the flanking chambers of the lîwân (the old tower chambers of the khilâni palace) have doors of their own, as at Hatra and Sarvistân, and the three halls are barrel vaulted instead of domed. Special care has been taken with these vaults. In the audience chamber (No. 30), as in the lîwân (No. 29), they are finely built of brick, while in rooms 33 and 40 they are set upon columns. The unequal intercolumniations in these rooms (the columns stand ·90 metre from the walls and 2·50 metres from each other) is no doubt due to a desire to secure as much space as possible in the centre of the room, but it produces a singular resemblance to Sasanian methods, where the short columns are set close to the walls that they may be the more easily bound in with them by arches. The rooms round the small courtFare probably not intended for dwelling-rooms, but stand in some definite relation to the ceremonial chambers; as Dr. Reuther has suggested, the little room 37, with chimney-pipes in the vault, may have been used for the preparation of light refreshments for the prince and his guests. For what special purpose the elaborately decorated rooms 31 and 32 were intended it is of course impossible to say, but as I shall point out (p. 115) they accord with a similar arrangement at Kharâneh. The rooms of ceremony were provided with a serdâb under No. 42. Almost exactly the same grouping of chambers is found in the block which was set at a later date into the eastern part of the palace yard. The north-east angle of the yard forms the court; the façade of the annex is adorned with engaged columns and niches; even the serdâb and the stair to the roof are reproduced. It is clear that we have here a second set of reception-rooms similar to the first, but why a second set was needed it is impossible to tell. The fact that an outer stair was added to the older part of the palace, so as to place the new reception-rooms in direct connexion with the first floor of the gate-house block, the floor which I have tentatively assigned to guests, leads me to suggest that the second ceremonial lîwân, with its dependences, was intended for any visitor who was of such distinction as to need a separate audience room.

The courtsB,C,H, andGcan have served no other purpose than that of the ḥaram, the dwelling-places for the wives and children. Each court is a habitation complete in itself, a bait as it is called in Arabic, a house. Each is provided with a winter and a summer lîwân, with living-rooms adjoining it, and behind each lîwân lies a long narrow room partly open, with chimney-pipes in the vault—the kitchen.[152]Each bait has access to two of the chambers hollowed out ofthe towers, which, according to the suggestion of the authors ofOcheïdir, were probably closets. In two of the courts,BandH, the flanking chambers of the lîwân are provided with anterooms which open into the court through an archway resting on engaged columns. They are covered with barrel vaults running at right angles to the vaults of the chambers behind, and separated from the lîwân vault by transverse arches. The vault of the lîwân is carried straight through from the back wall to the wall of the court, but the side walls are not continued through to the court, as inCandG, but open through wide arches into the antechambers. These arches are the transverse arches against which the antechamber vaults abut. In the ground plan this group has the appearance of a short lîwân flanked by two short chambers, with an antechamber common to all three, though structurally this would not be a true description. The antechamber predicts the modern ṭarmah, which is, as a rule, either a short antechamber to the central room only, or a long antechamber common to all the three rooms (Fig. 12). In either case the modern ṭarmah is actually that which the ṭarmah of Ukhaiḍir only appears to be, an independent latitudinal antechamber cutting off part of the lîwân.

Fig. 12.Modern Ṭarmah houses.(FromDas Wohnhaus in Bagdad, by kind permission of Dr. Reuther.)

Fig. 12.Modern Ṭarmah houses.

(FromDas Wohnhaus in Bagdad, by kind permission of Dr. Reuther.)

In courtEthe arrangement of the rooms is modified owing to the exiguous space which remained at the back of the ceremonial chambers. The elements are, however, the same, a court, a lîwân with side chambers, and a kitchen. To these are added a stair leading to the roof, which is absent from the ḥaram courts. It is reasonable to assume that courtEwas the private bait of the lord of Ukhaiḍir. These courts or baits are foreshadowed in the posterior courts of the Achaemenid and the early Sasanian palaces (again Firûzâbâd offers the closest parallel); in the palace of Khusrau they reach a development which was to be very little modified at Ukhaiḍir. The scheme can best be studied in the courts on the lower levelO,Q, andS. Each of these courts is provided on the west side with a lîwân, flanking chambers, and a ṭarmah, while a fourth chamber to the north may be a kitchen. To the south a vaulted passage leads in each case to a posterior courtP,R, andT. On the eastern side of the forecourts there is another lîwân group, much shallower than the first and without a ṭarmah or any subsidiary rooms. The flanking chambers of the eastern lîwâns have small doors into the court and into the vaulted passage behind them. As far as I could judge, the three forecourts communicated with each other, in which case the strict isolationof the baits of Ukhaiḍir is a new feature. In courtsKandMthe arrangement is a little different. The east end in one court only is occupied by a shallow lîwân group, the west end in both by a deep lîwân group with a ṭarmah, but the subsidiary chambers are to the rear, one small and one larger room, approached by a door through the lîwân and opening on to a posterior court. The four baits on the upper level are very similar. The subsidiary chambers are placed behind the main lîwân; in courtsCandGthere is a group of rooms to the side, and courtGis without the shallow eastern lîwân group in its forecourt, but possesses it on the west side of its posterior court. Neither courtsEnorIhave the small lîwâns. All the courts communicate with one another (except perhaps courtsIandH) and with the passage. These long vaulted passages are a feature of Ukhaiḍir also. The building materials at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn are those of Ukhaiḍir and Sarvistân, undressed stones, coursed with a certain amount of care, and burnt brick tiles for the finer work.

One further step in the long history of oriental palaces can now be taken, thanks to the excavations of Professor Sarre and Dr. Herzfeld at Sâmarrâ. Part of the plan of the great complex of Balkuwârâ lies before us (Fig. 13). Just as the palace of Khusrau reproduced the khilâni palaces on a gigantic scale, so Balkuwârâ is a gigantic reproduction of Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn. The approach to the palace, through two courts, covers an area some 300 metres long (the measurements are only my approximate estimates made from the scale of Dr. Herzfeld’s outline plan) and passes under three ornamental gateways. A third courtyard, lying before the halls of audience, is over 100 metres long and is set round on two sides by a free standing colonnade (instead of the blind arcade of Ukhaiḍir), a corridor, and a long line of rooms, these last carried round the third side also. An immense lîwân, 30 metres long by 15 metres wide, with two rows of flanking chambers, occupies the centre of the fourth side. Beyond a small latitudinal room there is a group of four great chambers arranged crosswise. Meeting in a central chamber, between the arms of the cross, lies a complex of nine smaller rooms, four groups in all, and beyond this we find another latitudinal room and a great lîwân opening into a garden court.[153]On the further side of this garden pavilions stand upon the banks of the Tigris. The area to the left of the ceremonial halls is occupied by twenty-four courts, each one a bait after the manner of Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn and Ukhaiḍir. Besides the lîwân group at one end (Dr. Herzfeld speaks of the principal room as⏊-shaped, but judging from his outline the form is produced by the combination of the lîwân group and the ṭarmah) and the group of three shallower rooms at the opposite end, there are three rooms down either side of each court, and rooms flanking the group at either end. Some of the courts are still bigger and more complex. In the right

Fig. 13.Balkuwârâ. (FromErster vorläufiger Bericht über die Ausgrabungen von Sâmarrâ, by kind permission of Dr. Herzfeld.)

wing of the palace, besides a number of baits of a more or less normal character, there are a bazaar and barracks. The huge building here displayed covers only a quarter of the whole area of Balkuwârâ. It is interesting to note that the chief mosque lies to the right hand of the main entrance, just as at Ukhaiḍir it lies to the right of the gate. The smaller palace of al-’Âshiq is again composed of a central block between two wings.[154]The audience chambers appear to consist of a large lîwân with a rectangular room behind it, this room being flanked by two similar rooms (compare Firûzâbâd). The general features of the main gateway, a closed lîwân flanked by two chambers on either side, each with an antechamber, were already known, as well as the details of the wall decoration on either side of the gate.[155]M. Viollet, who did some work in 1910 on the great palace known as the Bait al-Khalîfah, has published a sketch-plan of it,[156]and Dr. Herzfeld is now engaged on further excavations there. Both he and M. Viollet have published exceedingly instructive photographs of stucco decoration from the palaces, and I gave a few inAmurath to Amurath. Dr. Herzfeld’s series is naturally far the most interesting, as his work has been the most thorough.

If the palace of Khusrau is unmistakably the culminating point of a long oriental tradition, and the model for future generations of oriental potentates, it serves also to illuminate the little known period during which it arose; it throws light upon the ḥîrahs of the Lakhmid phylarchs, concerning which we have practically no contemporary information. Mas’ûdi tells us that the khalif Mutawakkil copied in one of his palaces a scheme which had been adopted by a king of Ḥîrah. It consisted of a central block, wherein was situated the audience chamber, and two wings containing storerooms and lodgings for courtiers. In front lay an open court common to all three parts of the palace; the way to the audience chamber passed through three gates. Dr. Herzfeld, when he had laid bare the plan of Balkuwârâ, realized that it corresponded with Mas’ûdi’s description.[157]That Mas’ûdi believed the type of the Ḥîri with two sleeves to have been created by a Nu’mânid prince in imitation of the battle array of his army, we, who are acquainted with older monuments, know to be incorrect;[158]it is the latest descendant of a long ancestral line of oriental palaces which runs back through the Achaemenid and the Assyrian to the Hittite. The palace of Khusrau is as perfect an instance of the scheme as is the palace of Balkuwârâ; the differences between them are differences of dimension, not of kind. At Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn old oriental traits, such as the artificial platform and the double stairways, are peculiarly well marked. The three gates of Balkuwârâ are not present at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn, or rather they are not laid out in the samerelation to one another, but it is very possible that Mas’ûdi’s account of the Nu’mânid palace was coloured by a lively recollection of the glories of Balkuwârâ, which in his day was beginning to fall into ruin. Sâmarrâ was finally abandoned by the khalifs in 892, and Mas’ûdi wrote in 943. But if Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn fulfils the requirements of the tenth-century writer, so does Ukhaiḍir, and Ukhaiḍir, standing within two days’ journey of Ḥîrah, may well be taken to be the closest representation of the Lakhmid ḥîrahs until Khawarnaq itself is excavated.

Fig. 14.Scheme of Pompeiian house.(From Mau’sPompeii, by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan.)

Fig. 14.Scheme of Pompeiian house.

(From Mau’sPompeii, by kind permission of Messrs. Macmillan.)

The genesis of the lîwân house as it appears in the palace of Khusrau, at Ukhaiḍir and at Balkuwârâ has emerged from the analysis of a long series of more ancient buildings. The baits adhere severely, I might almost say implacably, to a type which was derived ultimately from the khilâni. It is, however, possible that in their later form another influence may have been at work. We know that, to a certain extent at any rate, the Parthians adopted the Hellenistic house. The Greek peristyle is found in Parthian houses at Babylon and at Niffer (Fig. 9); but, on the other hand, in the Parthian palace at Tellôh, ‘in spite of the penetration into the heart of Asia of the elements of Greek civilization, the constructors, contemporaries of the Seleucids, have remained in all points faithful to the traditions of ancient Asiatic civilization,’[159]and at Hatra no Hellenistic house has yet been recorded. The plan of the Hellenistic house is well known from excavation, principally at Delos and at Priene. As early as the second centuryB.C.it is found in combination with the Roman atrium house at Pompeii (Fig. 14). In the ordinary private house, which was too small to admit of a complete peristyle, the oecus gives into the courtyard through a prostas with an open colonnaded façade, while other less important rooms are set round the remaining sides of the court (Fig. 15). This has already something of the appearance of a lîwân group with a ṭarmah, and the resemblance is increased if oecus and prostas are reduplicated and two rooms placed in the centre (Fig. 16). The genesis of this house is totally different from that of the lîwân-ṭarmah house; the house of Priene is an abridgement of the peristyle house, the lîwân-ṭarmah house is a development of the khilâni, but it is nevertheless possible that theHellenistic peristyle house, in its abridged form, may have given the initial impulse which led to the adding of the ṭarmah to the lîwân. We may be sure that no columned façade could have come into existence in Mesopotamia before the close of the second Babylonian empire, and indeed at Ukhaiḍir the columned façade is not applied to the ṭarmah house, though it is found in arcaded galleries—for instance in No. 20. Moreover, the rooms in courtsBandHare structurally more closely related to the simple lîwân of Hatra than to the oecus-prostas house, while the modern ṭarmah house is structurally, as well as in plan, one with the latter.

Fig. 15.Priene, house 33. (FromPriene, by kind permission of the General Director of the K. Museen in Berlin.)Fig. 16.Priene, house 24. (FromPriene.)

Fig. 15.Priene, house 33. (FromPriene, by kind permission of the General Director of the K. Museen in Berlin.)

Fig. 16.Priene, house 24. (FromPriene.)

What is the principle which determined the arrangement of the rooms or groups of rooms within the bait, and of the baits within the palace? Professor Koldewey, in one of those generalizations, as profound as they are brilliant, which we owe to his learning and acumen, has laid down a law touching architectural grouping which will be of service in considering this question. Speaking of the intentional separation of the main chamber of a Babylonian temple from the encompassing wall, he says: ‘This intentional separation is perhaps connected historically with the origin of the Babylonian house, which must be dealt with in another place. In my view, a view which rests upon the study of Babylonian ground-plans in historic and in prehistoric times, the grouping of chambers in ground-plans throughout the Babylonian cultural sphere proceeds from the interior. The embracing wall, Duru, is the primary, the indispensable essential.Within the compass of the wall, the single chambers are set in such fashion, and in such fashion are they linked together, that ultimately a court remains over. In the Greek house, on the other hand, the single chambers, Megara, are so placed, and joined together in such manner, that ultimately a court results. The Italic house creates for itself a kind of court by sundering a roof which was originally continuous. It is therefore possible to distinguish between the different types of houses with courtyards by defining the Babylonian ground-plan as injunctive, the Greek as conjunctive, and the Italic as disjunctive.’[160]

Fig. 17.Palace at Pergamon.(From Durm’sBaukunst der Griechen, by kind permission of Messrs. Gebhardt.)

Fig. 17.Palace at Pergamon.

(From Durm’sBaukunst der Griechen, by kind permission of Messrs. Gebhardt.)

With the disjunctive plan Mesopotamian archaeology is not concerned; nor do I believe that the conjunctive plan was either widely or permanently of importance, at any rate up to the period to which Ukhaiḍir belongs. The Greek scheme cannot be brought into sharper contrast with the Mesopotamian than by laying a plan such as that of the Pergamene palace (Fig. 17) beside a plan such as that of the smaller palace at Niffer (Fig. 9). I select with intention a building wherein Hellenism has influenced the details, but left the fundamental principle unchanged. At Pergamon the court results from the manner in which the isolated chambers are placed and linked together; at Niffer a court remains over from the manner in which the chambers or groups of chambers are placed within, and linked to, the encompassing wall. In the baits of Ukhaiḍir it is no less the encompassing wall which is the indispensable essential, and it may even be surmised that the latitudinal chamber which lies behind the lîwân is a survival of the intentional separation of the principal room from the wall. But it is not only the bait, the unit, which must be considered, it is the grouping of units. Now these units are so placed round the encompassingwall, and joined together in such fashion, as to leave a court over. In detailed and in general disposition Ukhaiḍir exhibits the injunctive plan.

Before considering the Umayyad ḥîrahs of the western desert three other Sasanian buildings must be passed briefly under review. I will deal first, though it is not first in date, with the second palace at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn, Chehâr Qapû.

Is it a palace? A glance at the plan is enough to prove that it does not fall precisely within the four corners of the scheme to which Khusrau’s palace belongs. This divergence of plan, and the peculiar character imparted to the ruins by the isolated quadrangular chamber which dominates the whole complex, have led to the suggestion that Chehâr Qapû may have been a fire temple. In support of this view two buildings have been cited, the rectangular western annex at Hatra, and a ruin excavated by Dieulafoy at Susa. The last-named instance carries little weight.[161]Its resemblance to Hatra depends upon the reconstruction proposed by Dieulafoy upon data too slight to be convincing. Until a further examination has been made, the ruin at Susa offers too frail a substructure for the lightest of theories. As regards Hatra (Fig. 10), the western annex blocks a window in one of the smaller rooms of the south lîwân and is therefore certainly a later addition. But the learned author of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft publication has given us two plans of smaller palaces, found among the ruins in the city, of which one certainly, and the other probably, is composed of a lîwân with its flanking chambers, and a posterior rectangular room with, however, the interposition of a narrow latitudinal room between them (Fig. 18). Dr. Andrae has pointed out that while a lîwân group combined with a rectangular chamber, but without a latitudinal chamber, exists in the main palace (south lîwân), two lîwâns with a latitudinal chamber but without the rectangular chamber are found in the northern annex, which, like the western annex, is a later addition to the palace. The fact that the dispositions observed in the main palace are not entirely isolated examples is of the highest significance, but it does not solve the problem connected with the so-called ‘temple’. In all these palaces the posterior quadrangular chamber may have been a sanctuary, or it may equally well have been a living-room. The theory that in the main palace it is indeed a sanctuary rests mainly upon the symbolic representations carved upon the lintel of one of its doorways.[162]The motives there used are familiar elements of Parthian decoration. The dragon occurs upon the façade of Hatra itself and was found by Loftus among the Parthian fragments at Warka,[163]as well as upon a lintel excavated by George Smith at Quyundjik,[164]but there is no saying whether the lintel belonged to a sanctuary or to a private dwelling. Nor is there much to be learnt, with regard to fire temples, from literary sources. Herodotus declares that it was not the practice of the Persians

Fig. 18.Small palace at Hatra. (FromHatra, by kind permission of the D. Orient-Gesellschaft.)

to erect statues, temples, or altars;[165]Strabo that they erect neither statues nor altars, but, considering the heaven as Jupiter, sacrifice on a high place. Strabo goes on, however, to state that they have large shrines called Pyraetheia, in the middle of which the Magi, entering daily into the shrine, maintain an inextinguished fire.[166]Trustworthy architectural data for such buildings we do not possess, and as Dr. Andrae has observed, the rectangular chamber at Hatra is unlike any other temple known to us, either in the East or in the West.[167]In the outer court of the palace he found a ruin which he calls tentatively an âteshgâh (fire altar).[168]It is a block of masonry almost square which stood 10 to 12 metres high and has traces of a stair that may either have wound round three sides of the tower, or have zigzagged up the face on one side only. He compares it with the tower some 28 metres high at Djûr, near Firûzâbâd, which was published by M. Dieulafoy[169]. The Djûr tower may date from the time of Ardeshîr Bâbagân,A.D.227-240. Here, too, there was a stair, which must have wound three times round the tower in order to attain the platform at the summit. M. Dieulafoy was struck by the resemblances that existed between the tower at Djûr, the ziggurat at Khorsâbâd, and the minarets at Sâmarrâ and at Cairo.[170]A ramp winding round the ziggurat to the summit of the pyramid is described by Herodotus, but has not yet been assured by excavation, and even the existence of pyramids with platforms at various heights among the ruins hitherto examined is doubtful.[171]The whole question of fire altar and fire temple is therefore very obscure. The towers at Djûr and at Hatra may have been sacrificial altars, and Strabo bears witness to the fact that the Persians sacrificed in a high place; but I find it difficult to believe that they can have been intended for an inextinguished fire. To keep a fire alight in so exposed a spot would have taxed the ingenuity of the Magi beyond endurance. The shrines in which the perpetual fire burnt must have afforded better shelter, but what shape they assumed we do not know. No help can be expected from this quarter, and the problem presented by Chehâr Qapû must be considered on its merits. It is slightly cleared by a recognition of the fact.

The quadrangular chamber of Chehâr Qapû, viewed impartially, does not offer any serious difficulty. If the audience hall in the palace of Khusrau were standing, its aspect would be much the same, for it too was a large square chamber with a dome rising above and dominating the rest of the palace. At Sarvistân a parallel structure exists to this day. But it is the surrounding buildings which are different, and the question is further complicated by the circumstance that the rooms in the immediate vicinity of the domed hall are so much ruined that their exact arrangement cannot be decided without some excavation—it is provoking to think how little excavation would be needed. So far as can be observed at present Chehâr Qapû is a rectangular complex with the main entrance to the east; the gateway is flanked to the south by two courts, to the north by one, each court being furnished with small rectangular rooms. I conjecture that these were guard-rooms, and they may be compared with the rooms under the ramps in the palace of Khusrau. The main entrance opened into a long quadrangular court with a monumental gate at the further end. To the north of this court, and communicating with it by a door at the eastern end, there is an almost quadrangular area, formed by rooms set round the courtyard numberedEon the plan. The rooms are latitudinal, and they bear no resemblance to the lîwâns of the palace of Khusrau. To the west lies another court,F, with latitudinal rooms on two sides and an independent communication with the entrance court; still further west are two smaller courts,GandH,with rooms on two sides; and finally, to the north of the domed hall, there seems to have been a fifth court or open space with rooms on two sides. The south wing is not symmetrical with the north wing and it is considerably wider. There are three large courts here. CourtIhas chambers on three sides; those on the south side resembling a lîwân group with a ṭarmah. CourtJhas on the south side a latitudinal chamber, with a ṭarmah on the north side, and a passage communicating with the entrance court,A. CourtKhas a lîwân group with a ṭarmah on the south side; the north and west sides are ruined. Beyond this lies a totally ruined area, to the west of which stand two rooms, apparently with a ṭarmah, and at the south-west end of the palace there is a series of four rooms. With the exception of the small courts on either side of the main gate, all the courts seem to have had some direct intercommunication; this was probably the case in the palace of Khusrau also. The grouping of the rooms in the court is, however, almost entirely unlike that which has been described in the larger palace at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn, at Ukhaiḍir, or at Sâmarrâ. CourtsIandKalone, with their lîwâns and ṭarmahs, offer shadowy resemblances to the others. The arrangement of the rooms, the irregularity of the areas covered by the courts, and the tendency towards an asymmetrical disposition, point to a reversion to the methods of the ancient East. Symmetry plays no part in the palace-planning of Babylonia and Assyria. From the earliest to the latest, from the Chaldaean palaces[172]to the palace of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon,[173]through all the intervening palaces in Assyria, at Nimrûd, at Quyundjik, at Khorsâbâd and at Assur, no principle of symmetry is to be observed. Nor yet is it to be found, except quite fortuitously, in the Hittite khilâni palaces (the late khilâni, north-west ofGin Fig. 5, is one of the few instances), although they originated in the symmetrical gateway; and it is markedly absent in the northern Hittite palaces and temples at Boghâz Keui, though in other respects they have little in common with the southern Hittite monuments.[174]Assyrian temples more nearly approach to a symmetrical disposition, but only under influences foreign to Assyria, influences which can be traced back to the end of the twelfth century before Christ in the Anu-Adad temple at Assur. The old Assyrian scheme, of which we have one example in the temple of Assur, at Assur, built by Shamshi-Adad, was derived from the Babylonian temple plan and, like the Babylonian, it was asymmetrical. The imported plan is characterized by the substitution of longitudinal for latitudinal chambers.[175]But these foreign, probably Westerninfluences (for they were responsible also for the creation of Solomon’s temple, apparently a symmetrical building),[176]could not reduce Assyrian architecture to an ordered plan, and the temples in Sargon’s palace at Khorsâbâd fall far short of symmetry,[177]while in Babylonia the longitudinal chamber, i.e. the imported plan, was never adopted, and until the latest period, the temples, like the palaces, remained entirely unsymmetrical.[178]The plan of Quyundjik, which is the most complete record of any Assyrian palace which has yet been published, throws considerable light upon Chehâr Qapû (Plate 77). CourtsXXVIIandXXXin the temple area, courtsXVIII,XIX,XX, andXXIIin the domestic quarters, exhibit an unsymmetrical grouping of latitudinal and longitudinal chambers very much akin to that of the courts of Chehâr Qapû. In courtXVIwe have a foreshadowing of the ṭarmah scheme. (Place believes the rooms in courtXVIto have been storehouses for wine, from the quantity of jars found in them.)[179]It would be ridiculous to push a minute comparison too far, seeing that a period of over 1,000 years separates the two buildings, but a certain resemblance in details and, still more, a general correspondence on the fundamental principle of asymmetry leads me to suspect that a primaeval tradition survived through all the innovations of Greece or Rome, Parthia or Persia, and that, at the end of the sixth century, it had sufficient vitality to guide the craftsmen to Khusrau Parwêz in the composition of a monumental building. Survivals of this nature are not infrequently connected with hieratic tradition, and if my conjecture is correct it might serve in some measure to support the claim to a non-secular character which had been put forward for Chehâr Qapû, although the domed hall, which we must assume to have been the sanctuary, bears no resemblance to the cella and anteroom of the Babylonian or of the Assyrian temple. It would be necessary to postulate that while the Sasanian builder retained in the courts and chambers of his temenos something of an ancient tradition which had come to be regarded as sacred, he gave to the shrine wherein the holy element burned with a perpetual flame the form which had been assumed by the ceremonial dwelling of the divine Chosroës.

The two remaining Sasanian buildings which it will be necessary to mention are Ctesiphon and Karkh. Ctesiphon is the most famous of all the later Persian palaces (Fig. 19). It was erected by Shapûr I (A.D.242-272)[180]and is therefore about 100 years later than Hatra, and earlier than Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn by some 250 years. Not only chronologically, but also in plan, it is closely related to the Parthian palace. It reproduces in yet more striking dimensions the simple lîwân scheme, of which Hatra offers the earliest monumental example.The lîwân at Ctesiphon is covered by a vault spanning 25·80 metres, a dimension which was not exceeded in Rome itself. On either side of the lîwân five vaulted chambers were set at right angles; rising in stories their vaults abutted the main vault, as at Firûzâbâd and Ukhaiḍir. The side chambers had an independent entrance in the façade, a system which was first employed at Hatra. The masonry is of brick, chained with wooden beams as at Ukhaiḍir; but at Ctesiphon the beams are placed parallel with the coursing of the masonry, whereas at Ukhaiḍir they are inserted at right angles into the walls.

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