GENESIS OF THE EARLY MOHAMMADAN PALACE
The palace of Ukhaiḍir is not an isolated phenomenon. It belongs to a
group of buildings which exhibit in varying proportions the
characteristic features of the fortress and of the pleasure-house of
princes. These buildings are scattered over the western frontiers of the
Syrian desert; Ukhaiḍir is as yet the sole example of the type which has
been discovered upon the eastern side. They are a logical outcome of the
period of cultural transition during which they arose, the difficult and
distasteful passage from nomadic to settled life; they attest the
abiding call of the open wilderness, to which the poets and chroniclers
of the first century after the Hidjrah are faithful witnesses. To the
Arab the desert is more than a habitation; it is the guardian of
traditions older and more deeply rooted than those of Islâm; of
traditions which are sacred to his race; of his purest speech, and of
his finest chivalry. It is for him the natural theatre of his actions,
and there is no other stage on which he can play out his part. To this
day I have heard the Beduin speak of themselves as the Ahl al-Ba’îr, the
People of the Camel, just as they spoke of themselves in the early
centuries as Ahl al-Ḍar’, People of the Udder.[49] The authority of the
Prophet was powerless to stay the current of his race. ‘Periodically the
Arabs succumbed to the allurement of the camel, to the need to drink of
its milk. The Prophet himself was not exempt, since he prayed God to
preserve him from it. For his nation, said he, he dreaded the diet of
milk. When his companions expressed their astonishment at his fears, he
replied: “The passion for milk will lead you to abandon the centres of
reunion and to return to nomad existence.”‘[50] His immediate successors
followed the example set by him, but the national inclination was not to
be restrained, and the Umayyad khalifs returned to the habits of their
forefathers. Their capital was Damascus, but their residence was the
Syrian desert. They escaped to the bâdiyah, the spring pasturage in the
rolling steppes, where the tents of the Ṣukhûr still cover the plain
when the winter rains are past; they transported their courts to the
ḥîrah, the palace camp.
The word ‘ḥair’ denotes a camp, a castle, or a villa.[51] The original
signification does not seem to have implied solid constructions, but
rather the headquarters of a desert princeling and his retainers. Such
an assemblage must necessarily have been mobile. The exigencies of
pasturage and the uncertainties inherent in tribal predominance, where
the limits of authority cannot be expressed in terms of geographic
definition, were alike unfavourable to stable residence. Joshua the
Stylite[52] talks of the ḥertâ of Nu’mân ibn Mundhir as having withdrawn
into the inner desert before the attack of the Tha’labites--it must
therefore have been a movable camp; on the western borders there is no
certain evidence that the Ghassânid princes possessed either fenced
cities or garrisoned fortresses.[53] But before the dawn of the
Mohammadan era the ḥîrah had begun to change its character, and the
nomad encampment to develop into the standing camp and even into the
city. The Ghassânids must have had a fixed establishment in the
Djaulân,[54] and some of the existing ruins on the eastern frontiers of
the Ḥaurân may date from their time. At Khirbet al-Baiḍâ, for example, I
could find no certain trace of Roman handiwork. The plan might date from
the age of Diocletian, but the decorations betray a different
origin.[55] Yet I cannot place them as late as the Umayyad period.
Djebel Sais I have not seen.[56] The plan of the bath recalls the
arrangement of the chambers at Qṣair ‘Amrah, and it may therefore be
Mohammadan. At Qaṣr al-Azraq, Dussaud found a dedication to the emperors
Diocletian and Maximian, but the fortress would seem to have been
rebuilt in the thirteenth century A.D.[57]
Similarly upon the eastern side of the desert, the Lakhmid camp had
grown into an important town, which absorbed the generic title and was
known as al-Ḥîrah, the standing camp _par excellence_, the capital of
Persian Arabia. But no sooner did the Lakhmid princes find themselves
enclosed within the walls of a city than they threw out fresh ḥîrahs
into the desert: palaces, the magnificence of which haunted the
imagination of Beduin poets of the Days of Ignorance and gave birth to
legendary tales and to moral aphorisms which were recorded with pious,
if uncritical, exactitude by the historians of Islâm. We know the site
of the most famous of these pleasaunces, Khawarnaq.[58] Ibn Baṭûṭah, in
the fourteenth century A.D., saw the remains of its immense domes on the
edge of a canal which was fed by the Hindiyyeh branch of the Euphrates.
In his day it was still inhabited. The existing ruin mounds, standing
upon the brink of the Sea of Nedjef, are covered with the sherds of
mediaeval pottery. The canal has now silted up and the Sea of Nedjef is
dry. I was told at Nedjef that thirty or forty years ago the lake was
full of water, and that the climate of the town, never very much to
boast of, had been considerably affected for the worse by the change.
Below the town, the bed of the lake is occupied by palm-gardens and
cornfields, watered by a canal recently constructed. What was its
condition in Sasanian times I do not know. The lake was dry in the
Middle Ages,[59] but ‘Adi ibn Zaid speaks of the Nu’mânid lord of
Khawarnaq as having looked from his palace walls and rejoiced at the
sight of the sea.[60] It is difficult to imagine that any one could have
rejoiced in the Baḥr Nedjef if it had worn its present aspect. The
extent of the mounds of Khawarnaq is not large, though my impression is
that part of the steep earth cliff overhanging the Baḥr Nedjef has
fallen away and carried the castle walls with it. The ancient canal from
the Hindiyyeh lies about a quarter of a mile to the north of the mounds.
Legend has been busy in accounting for the origin of the castle. It is
said to have been built by Nu’mân ibn Imra’ al-Qais, by order of the
Sasanian king Yazdegerd I, who desired that his son, Bahrâm V Gûr,
should be brought up in the salubrious air of the desert above Ḥîrah.
This would place its foundation in the early part of the fifth century
A.D.[61] The architect was a certain Sinimmâr, a Byzantine (Rûmi)
according to some authorities,[62] nor need this assertion excite
surprise. A century later Justinian lent workmen to Khusrau I, when the
latter was engaged in building the new Antioch near Ctesiphon. Other
Lakhmid ḥîrahs are mentioned besides Khawarnaq, but they are to us
nothing but a name. Al-Sadîr stood in the desert ‘that lies between
al-Ḥîrah and Syria’,[63] presumably not far from Khawarnaq, since the
two castles are frequently mentioned together. We hear also of
al-Ṣinnîn, where ‘Adi ibn Zaid was imprisoned.[64] Of greater importance
was al-Anbâr on the Euphrates, which was rebuilt by Shapûr II in the
early part of the fourth century.[65] None of the Lakhmid ḥîrahs in the
desert, except Khawarnaq, have been identified. In 1911 I rode out
across the Baḥr Nedjef from Khan Muṣallâ to see a ruin called al-Ruḥbân,
which was reputed to be ancient, but found nothing except a mud-built
wall erected by the Bani Ḥasan. A few palm-trees had been planted near
it. My guide, a sheikh of the tribe, was much distressed when I denied
to Ruḥbân the antiquity which had been claimed for it. ‘Mistress,’ he
expostulated, ‘before my beard was grown, I saw it here.’ His age I
should judge to have been no greater than my own, and Ruḥbân may have
had the advantage of us by a decade. After this disappointment I
declined to visit other quṣûr of the Bani Ḥasan (qaṣr = fort, is the
name which is applied to any walled village or palm-garden) though he
mentioned a considerable number. Subsequently a mullah of the Nedjef
mosque told me that there were ancient remains at Ḥiyyadhiyyeh, which
lies somewhere between the Baḥr Nedjef and Ukhaiḍir, to the south of the
line across the desert which I had followed. Ḥiyyadhiyyeh is mentioned
by Niebuhr in his itinerary from Baṣrah to Aleppo by the desert
road--Meshed ‘Ali, el Tukteqâne or el Heiadîe, el Hossian, el Chader
(Ukhaiḍir) Ras el ‘Ain.[66] I doubt whether there is much to be found on
the surface at Ḥiyyadhiyyeh, for the Bani Ḥasan have planted palm-groves
there, and in so doing, they have probably destroyed most of what was
old, but the mullah asserted that a Lakhmid castle had stood at that
spot and another at Ruḥbeh, which he said was identical with
Qâdisiyyeh.[67] I give his opinion for what it is worth, which is very
little. There are, however, no doubt old ruins at Ruḥbeh, whether
Lakhmid or of a later time, if it occupies the site of Qâdisiyyeh--a
very possible hypothesis. It was a large village in A.D. 635, when the
Mohammadan invaders defeated the Persians close to its walls. Muqaddasi
knew it as a walled town on the pilgrimage road. Mustaufi (fourteenth
century) describes it as mostly in ruins, while Ibn Baṭûṭah speaks of it
as a large village.[68] The Sâl Nâmeh of the Vilâyet of Baghdâd mentions
a ruined qaṣr at Ruḥbeh.[69] The sheikh of the Bani Ḥasan gave me the
names of ‘Izziyyeh,[70] and ‘Atiyyah as quṣûr of his tribe, but he did
not think that there were ruins at either place.
To our scanty information concerning the pre-Mohammadan ḥîrahs one other
item is to be added. Mas’ûdi gives an account in the following terms of
a palace built at Sâmarrâ by the khalif Mutawakkil (A.D. 847-861) in
imitation of a Lakhmid ḥî ah: ‘Mutawakkil in his days raised a building
such as no man knew, it is that which is called the _ḥîri_ and the two
wings (literally sleeves) and the porticoes (_arûqah_). And that was
because a companion of his vigils related to him upon a certain night
that one of the kings of Ḥîrah, a Nu’mânid of the Bani Naṣr, erected an
edifice in his capital, which was al-Ḥîrah, after the model of an army
in battle. (The word I have translated by _army in battle_ is _ḥarb_ =
war or campaign; Dr. Herzfeld suggests that it must be taken here to
mean military camp--a somewhat hypothetical emendation)[71]. For such
was his infatuation for war and his love of it; so that the memory of it
might never vanish from him under any condition. In this edifice the
portico was the audience chamber of the king, and this was the centre
(literally the _breast_); and the two wings (_sleeves_) lay to right and
left. In the two dwellings which formed the wings lodged those who stood
nearest to him among his courtiers. In the right wing was the wardrobe,
and in the left wing was kept such wine as was needed. The open court of
the portico was common to the centre and to the two wings. The doors,
three in number, led to the portico. To this day this building (i.e.
Mutawakkil’s copy) is called the _ḥîri_ and the two wings in allusion to
al-Ḥîrah. And the people followed Mutawakkil, imitating his creation,
which is famous to the present time.’[72] The word _riwâq_, which I have
translated ‘portico’, does not necessarily imply the existence of
columns, though it is used for the porticoes which surround the court of
a mosque. Its primary signification is a roof in front of a tent,
supported by a single pole in the middle.[73] I shall have occasion to
return later to this important passage (see below, p. 86).
But if we have little knowledge of the Lakhmid ḥîrahs which were the
precursors of Ukhaiḍir on the eastern frontiers of the desert, we have
another and a richer source of information in the Sasanian palaces. The
Lakhmid princes stood in close relations with the Sasanian empire. Among
the officials of the Persian court there was an Arab secretary whose
special duty it was to conduct the correspondence with ‘the land of the
Arabs’. Moreover, it is related that the Arab phylarch paid a yearly
visit to the court of the Chosroës.[74] To a Lakhmid the education of a
Persian prince was entrusted, and Lakhmid armies placed Bahrâm V upon a
contested throne. The Christians of Ḥîrah belonged to the Nestorian
church, the church of Assyria; we hear of one, the poet ‘Adi ibn Zaid,
who was Arab secretary and enjoyed great influence with Khusrau Parwêz.
Half allies, half vassals, the Lakhmid phylarchs fought side by side
with the Persians against Rome;[75] they were sufficiently independent
to receive an embassy from the Byzantine emperor, and sufficiently
important to warrant an attempt on his part to buy them over from the
Sasanians. Finally, at the beginning of the seventh century, Khusrau
Parwêz set the Lakhmid dynasty aside and established in place of Nu’mân
III an Arab of the Ṭayy, who lived and held his court at ‘Ain al-Tamr
near Ukhaiḍir. Possibly the huge walls of Qaṣr Sham’ûn, on the outskirts
of the oasis,[76] may date from the time when ‘Ain al-Tamr was the
residence of the phylarch. But he was no longer an independent ruler; a
Persian adviser was appointed to assist him, and a few years later the
state was converted into a province of the Sasanian empire under a
Persian regent. Independent or subject, the civilization of Ḥîrah must
have been modelled upon that of Ctesiphon; Persian influence must have
been predominant in its arts and its architecture, and the Lakhmid
ḥîrahs must have reflected the glories of Sasanian palaces. It is to
these palaces that we should look first for an explanation of the
architectural scheme of Ukhaiḍir. One reservation must, however, be
made. It is true that Ukhaiḍir cannot be regarded as primarily a
fortress. The absence of any sufficient provision of water would have
been a fatal weakness in time of siege. No cistern exists within the
palace; no ancient well has been found, and if the conditions were the
same of old as they are now (which is, however, by no means a safe
assumption), any water within the palace would have been too brackish to
drink, as is the case in the modern well in the palace yard. Moreover,
the outer ring of walls, which encloses the northern annex, was
obviously too weak for defence; it is more like the garden wall of a
pleasure-ground. Nevertheless, considerable care has been lavished upon
the defences of the main building. They were, and they are to this day,
adequate for the spasmodic warfare of the Arab tribes. In the very act
of construction the architect seems to have bethought him that such
protection was necessary and to have added a strong girdle to his palace
plan. On the other hand, the Sasanian palaces, so far as they are known
to us, are either unfortified, or they stand within a fortified park,
the walls and towers of which are not in direct structural relation with
the residential buildings. At the same time Sasanian military works,
where they have been examined, do not differ materially from those of
Ukhaiḍir; the fortress of Qala’-i-Khusrau at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn is an
excellent case in point (Plate 73, Fig. 1). It is a rectangular
enclosure, about the size of Ukhaiḍir (roughly 180 metres square),
surrounded by a wall which is strengthened by rounded towers. The towers
are somewhat differently disposed from those of Ukhaiḍir; they are
larger and they are set twice as far apart, but the scheme is the same
in both places. The interior buildings are much ruined. A row of
chambers, or more probably, from the width of the ruin heaps, a row of
small courts with chambers grouped round them, adjoined the inner side
of the walls, leaving a central court which was partly filled by a large
building, rectangular in plan. The town wall of Dastadjird was also
furnished with rounded towers.[77]
Almost without exception the plan of the Sasanian palaces is a
development of the lîwân type, the origin of which is to be sought in
the southern Hittite sphere, northern Syria and the mountain lands north
of the Mesopotamian plain. The architecture of this region is known to
us best through the excavations at Zindjirli, where the evolution of the
southern Hittite palace can be traced over a period of close upon a
thousand years.[78] It is an evolution which is dominated
[Illustration: FIG. 5. Zindjirli. (From _Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli_,
by kind permission of the D. Orient-Gesellschaft.)]
from the first to last by the monumental gateway. At Zindjirli the type
appears in its earliest and simplest form in the gateways of the inner
city wall, which Professor Koldewey places approximately in the
thirteenth century before our era.[79] A doorway set back between a pair
of solid towers leads into a narrow
[Illustration: FIG. 6. Pasargadae. (From _Iranische Felsreliefs_, by
kind permission of the authors.)]
court, placed latitudinally, with a second doorway opposite to the first
(Fig. 5, D). Three hundred years later this structure is adapted, in the
earliest khilâni palace, to residential purposes (Fig. 5, G).[80] The
solid towers remain, but the space between them has been converted into
a covered portico, or lîwân, and the inner latitudinal court has become
a latitudinal hall with a small chamber at either end. The further
development is characterized by the multiplication of chambers and the
disappearance of features proper to the fortress. In the khilâni palace
erected after Asarhaddon’s destruction of the city in the first half of
the seventh century (it appears in Fig. 5 to the north-west of G), the
arrangement of the subsidiary chambers is conceived on freer lines, the
walls are thinner, the flanking towers of the lîwân have disappeared,
and in their stead are set tower chambers; in short the fortress towers
have given place to a purely decorative motive, the towered façade,
which was destined to have a long and honourable history in Christian
architecture.[81] That the Hittite khilâni was imitated by the Assyrians
during the eighth and the seventh centuries we know both from
inscriptions and from excavations.[82] To it the Assyrian builders owed
the introduction of the column, which was foreign to their architecture.
At Pasargadae the khilâni reappears in a form which bears testimony to
its Hittite parentage.[83] The façade towers, the columned lîwân, the
orthostatic construction, and more significant still, the latitudinal
disposition of the chambers, are all to be found in the Pasargadae
palaces, but the greater depth which was given to the principal room
necessitated the introduction of a double line of columns to support the
roof (Fig. 6). At Persepolis and at Susa the same scheme is carried out
in colossal dimensions. It is found alike in the gigantic apadanas and
in the palaces, in the one case adapted to the ceremonial magnificence
of the Persian king of kings, in the other to the requirements of the
dwelling-house. In the apadana, the lîwân was deepened and a second row
of columns was added to the first; the hall of audience was magnified
into a huge quadrangular chamber, the roof of which was supported by a
forest of columns; solid towers of unburnt brick flanked the lîwân, and
subsidiary lîwâns occupied the space behind them on either side of the
audience hall (Fig. 7). In the palaces the towers were hollowed out into
rooms correspondingly in depth with the lîwân, and the audience hall was
flanked by side chambers. Where space permitted, as in the palace of
Darius at Persepolis, additional rooms were disposed round a courtyard
at the back of the edifice. So constituted, the Achaemenid palace
reproduced the traits of the later khilânis at Zindjirli in a form
adapted to new requirements (Fig. 8).
[Illustration: FIG. 7. Persepolis, Apadana of Xerxes. (From _Iranische
Felsreliefs_, by kind permission of the authors.)]
Before the khilâni palace was taken up again by Persian hands, an
immense revolution had swept over western Asia. Alexander’s invasion is
a turning-point
[Illustration: FIG. 8. Persepolis, Palace of Darius.
(From _L’Art antique de la Perse_, by kind permission of M. Dieulafoy.)]
in history. The Mesopotamian arts emerged from the period of Greek rule
profoundly modified by direct intercourse with the West; for the
Seleucid kingdom, with one capital on the Tigris and another on the
Orontes, had bridged the gulf between Babylonia and the Mediterranean
coast-lands. Greek culture, Greek artistic conceptions were carried
across Asia by the invaders; but the further they penetrated, the less
they overmastered local tradition. Babylonia, Assyria and Persia were
never Hellenized in the sense in which Syria was Hellenized. The ancient
East, with 3,000 years and more of a highly elaborated civilization
behind her, assimilated what was brought to her, but she used it after
her own fashion. She turned the Greek kings into oriental despots, and
translated Greek ideas into her own forms of expression. The
architectural remains of this period are as yet scanty. Seleucia and
Antioch are unexplored, and except for the Greek theatre at Babylon, the
excavation of Mesopotamian sites has yielded little but fragments.[84]
But if the Seleucid era is comparatively unknown, the new elements which
the Greek conquest had introduced into oriental architecture stand out
with an amazing vividness in Parthian buildings. Loftus, whose
excavations at Warka were the first to reveal a great Parthian
settlement on a Babylonian mound, was not slow to appreciate the
significance of his discoveries.[85] Together with capitals which bore
an obvious relationship to the Ionic, and walls enriched with Ionic
half-fluted engaged columns, he found plaster ornaments and fragments of
wall-surface decoration covered with continuous geometric patterns in
which he recognized an art that was essentially oriental. The Chaldaean
monuments at Warka were covered with mosaics set in geometric designs
which are the prototypes of the Parthian coloured reliefs.[86]
Hellenistic houses of the Parthian period have been unearthed in the
Amrân mound at Babylon. The small Parthian palace at Niffer, with its
columned hall of audience, opening through an anteroom, which is in the
nature of a closed lîwân, into a square peristyle, resembles a Greek
dwelling-house seen through a Babylonian medium[87] (Fig. 9). At Assur,
together with a temple (if temple it were) which is almost
peripteral,[88] and a stoa,[89] we have a palace on a lîwân plan, with
ionicizing capitals and a façade of stucco mock-architecture
[Illustration: FIG. 9. Parthian palace at Niffer. (By kind permission of
Messrs. Holman.)]
which indicates the road that led from the Hellenistic façade in two
orders[90] to the stucco façades of Ctesiphon and Ukhaiḍir.[91] At Hatra
a building which looks like the Parthian conception of a temple in antis
stands in the court of a monumental lîwân palace,[92] but so far as can
be judged without excavation the Hellenistic house is conspicuous by its
absence. Not only the royal palace (Fig. 10) but also such of the
smaller palaces as are known to us through the admirable publication of
the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, show a strongly characterized lîwân
plan. To the Parthian interpretation of the venerable khilâni scheme the
Moslem East has remained unswervingly true. The lîwân, as it is to be
seen at Hatra, dominated the fancy of the Sasanian and of the early
Mohammadan architects, and it continues to be an indispensable part of
the modern house of Damascus or Baghdâd--except indeed the post-modern,
which are wretched imitations of the worst European styles, but these
are found more often in ultra-civilized Syria than in Mesopotamia. The
huge Parthian lîwân was possibly a result of the introduction of the
vault. The great hall, in which, no matter what its size, the interior
space was unbroken by pier or column, was a setting for princely state
which could not be enhanced by any
[Illustration: FIG. 10. Hatra palace. (From _Hatra_, by kind permission
of the D. Orient-Gesellschaft.)]
architectural device. Portico and audience chamber were blended
together, and the columns of the one served to enrich the walls which
flanked the monumental archway of the other.
The vault itself was not a new feature. It was well known to Babylonian
and to Assyrian builders, by whom it was used to cover spaces of narrow
span.[93] Vaulted drains and tombs are of frequent occurrence, and Place
found a barrel vault with a span of 4 metres in the gateways of Sargon’s
palace at Khorsâbâd.[94] But though the principles of vault construction
were familiar, the vault does not seem to have been developed to any
notable extent before the second Babylonian empire at the earliest.
Félix Thomas claims to have found the remains of monumental vaults in
Sargon’s palace, but the proofs which he adduces are not convincing.
There is no direct evidence for the domes which Place reconstructs over
the rectangular chambers adjoining the temples, the area of the palace
which was known in his days as the Harâm.[95] Layard found no trace of
monumental vaults in his excavations of Assyrian palaces,[96] nor have
any been discovered by the German excavators at Assur. Professor
Koldewey is of opinion that the great hall at Babylon was vaulted,
since, in the absence of all trace of columns, no other way of covering
it is conceivable; and though direct evidence is not forthcoming, there
is a strong likelihood that the proportions of the vault may have been
greatly increased, and its structural value much more fully realized
towards the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century
before Christ.[97] There are no data for its employment in Mesopotamia
during the Hellenistic period, but it may safely be assumed that the
absence of vaulted buildings in the eastern parts of the Seleucid
kingdom is fortuitous. From the fourth century B.C. onwards western Asia
shows a continuous series of cut stone vaults of small span,[98] many of
which exhibit traits which point to their derivation from the sun-dried
brick vaults of Assyria or from the cut stone vaults of the Saitic
period in Egypt, themselves a derivation from sun-dried brick
construction. In the second half of the third century, vaults with
similar characteristics appear under Hellenistic influence in central
Italy, where, after the middle of the second century, they underwent a
development to which the Hellenistic East can offer no parallel.[99] At
the end of the second century, while Latin builders threw their stone
vaults securely over a span of 14·50 metres, as in the Ponte di Cecco in
the Via Salaria, and even of 18·50 metres, as in the Pons Mulvius,[100]
the Greeks of Asia Minor did not venture upon a span wider than 7·10
metres,[101] and confined themselves as a rule to vaults under 4 metres
in span. It was now the part of the East to learn from Imperial Rome.
Western Asia took back its own creation from the hands of Roman builders
in the vast proportions which the proficiency of the latter had given to
it, and over the whole of the Roman Empire the monumental vault sprang
into being. The earliest extant examples on Mesopotamian soil are the
great vaults of the palace at Hatra.[102] Throughout the city, so far as
our knowledge goes, the vault is systematically used, and for the first
time it is constructed of dressed stone, not of brick. For it must be
borne in mind that the expansion in Asia of the Roman Imperial stone and
mortar vaulted architecture encountered a similar expansion of brick
vaulted architecture in which both material and structure point to an
ancient oriental tradition and an independent Asiatic origin.[103] If
Hatra is the oldest example of the systematic use of the vault in a
monumental building, the very presence there of a method so fully
developed postulates a long evolution. That this evolution was oriental
is suggested by the fact that the forms which the vault assumes at Hatra
can be traced back, almost without exception, to Asiatic brickwork,
while the systematic employment of the vault is foreshadowed in hollow
substructures which date from the Hellenistic era, and even from earlier
times.[104] In Babylon such substructures, several stories high, roofed
with stone slabs, would seem to have been devised before Alexander’s
conquest, while Strabo’s description, which probably applies to a
Hellenistic reconstruction, mentions terraces in which the vaults rested
on cube-shaped piers, vaults and piers being built of burnt brick with a
mortar of asphalt. Moreover, Strabo notes that in Seleucia, the capital
of the Hellenistic kingdom on the Tigris, all the houses were vaulted on
account of the want of timber.[105] That these vaults were of brick goes
without saying; stone was even more difficult to obtain at Seleucia
than wood. In this connexion the possibility that Nebuchadnezzar’s great
hall at Babylon may have been covered with a vault should not be
overlooked.
The vaults of Hatra fall into five groups.
1. A primitive vault, composed of oversailing horizontal courses of
stone is found in the small chambers of tombs (_Hatra_, ii, Figs. 93,
111, 155). Sometimes the walls incline smoothly inwards from base to
summit until the space between them is narrowed sufficiently to admit of
the imposition of a covering slab (_Hatra_, ii, Figs. 99, 118, 120, 155.
In Fig. 155 the slope begins in the fourth course above the base). The
vault built of oversailing horizontal courses was an obvious expedient
for the roofing of narrow spaces, and it is, as might have been
expected, widely distributed.[106] There is one instance at Hatra of a
dome constructed in the same manner. It covers a rectangular chamber,
1·50 × 1·70 metres, and it is the solitary known example of an attempt
on the part of Parthian builders to solve the problem of a circular
vault over a rectangular substructure (_Hatra_, ii, Fig. 93).
2. The true vault oversailing the wall occurs in numerous tomb chambers
(_Hatra_, ii, Figs. 100, 105, 125, 130, 144, 145, 149, 152, 163), as
well as in most of the smaller rooms of the inner palace (_Hatra_, ii,
Figs. 225, 226, 237, and Plate 8) (Plate 74, Fig. 2). It is a form which
originated in brick building. It is found in Assyrian brick tombs,[107]
but never, so far as my knowledge goes, in any dressed stone vaults save
in those of Hatra. It appears at Ctesiphon in the side vaults,[108] and
in the rough stonework of Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn (Plate 52, Fig. 2, and Plate 68,
Fig. 1). It is constant at Ukhaiḍir and in early Mohammadan
architecture,[109] and it is used invariably in the brick vaulted
constructions of Mesopotamia at the present day. It is perhaps the
triumphant survival of the old brick vault of horizontal oversailing
courses, represented by Mughair, and it bears, at Hatra and elsewhere,
another indubitable mark of its brick origin in the horizontal or almost
horizontal joints of its lower courses.[110]
3. The vault springing flush with the walls is used in tombs (_Hatra_,
ii, Figs. 103, 118, 128, 139, 159), in the southern and in the northern
lîwâns of the main palace and in the two lîwâns which were added at the
northern end (_Hatra_, ii, Plate 8), in the western annex, the so-called
temple (_Hatra_, ii, Plate 9), and in building B (_Hatra_, ii, Fig.
183). The moulded cornice, which usually divides this vault from the
walls below, is absent in most of the tombs. The high stilt formed by
the horizontal lower courses, which is especially remarkable in the
larger of these vaults, differentiates them from western Hellenistic
vaulting and connects them more closely with brick forms. In one of the
smaller palaces there is a striking example of the survival of brick
building methods (_Hatra_, ii, Fig. 74). The stone vault is composed,
almost to its whole height, of horizontal courses, and only the very top
of the arch is filled in with radiating voussoirs. Nor is the elliptical
vault, which is the form naturally assumed by oriental uncentered
brickwork[111] wanting at Hatra (_Hatra_, ii, Figs. 108 and 162, Fig.
162 being a primitive example, where the vault is carried down to the
floor of the chamber).
4. One room on the upper floor of the palace shows a fuller
comprehension of the thrust and buttressing of the vault (room No. 12,
_Hatra_, ii, Plate 10 and Fig. 226). The space to be covered is
diminished by placing two arched niches on either side, a system which
points the way to the breaking up of the wall into buttressing piers.
This principle was carried out yet further by Sasanian builders. In the
palace of Sarvistân the lower portion of the piers was detached from the
body of the wall and further lightened by being divided into two small
columns,[112] while angle piers terminating in a single detached column
bore the dome of a chamber situated at the back of the palace (Plate 74,
Fig. 1). The advance in structural knowledge thus gained was carried
little further in these regions; indeed it is curious to observe that
Ukhaiḍir exhibits a movement in the opposite direction. Although in
rooms 33 and 40 the vaults are set upon columns which stand absolutely
free, the vault of the great hall rests upon arched niches whereof the
piers are connected with the wall, and the principle of the detached
column is recalled only by the engaged columns which form part of the
pier. The arcade on free standing columns with a vaulted corridor behind
it is of frequent occurrence, but the fact that in all the palace only
one, and that one the shortest, of these arcades remains standing (No.
20) shows that the skill of the builders was at fault. Again, in the
church of Mâr Ṭahmâsgerd at Kerkûk the engaged columns are present, as
in the great hall of Ukhaiḍir, but in the same manner they are
structurally one with the piers behind them[113] (Plate 75, Fig. 1); and
in the churches of northern Mesopotamia, where deep niches under the
vault are a constant feature, the engaged pier of Hatra returns in all
its primitive simplicity.[114] Whether the data afforded by extant
monuments in Mesopotamia and Persia are conclusive would be hard to
determine. The setting of arch, vault, and dome on free standing
supports would seem to have been a conception deeply rooted in
Hellenistic art, but for actual examples we can adduce only the evidence
of relief architecture or the disposition of rock-cut tombs and
temples. The blind order under the vault of the men’s caldarium near the
forum at Pompeii,[115] the rock-cut dome on engaged columns of the
Hellenistic tomb of Akeldama at Jerusalem[116] exhibit a motive to which
the architecture of a later age was to give fully developed plastic
execution. Yet more explicit are the indications afforded by the
rock-cut monuments of Egypt and of India. At Memphis one of the graves
of the Persian period shows a vaulted nave resting on piers,[117] and
the rock-cut temples of Hellenistic India, with their long vaulted naves
resting on columns,[118] point to similar achievements in the Seleucid
architecture of Mesopotamia from which they are derived. The existence
of an underlying desire to solve statical problems which were of the
highest importance to the spatial interior is attested by the sporadic
survival of such buildings as the Praetorium at Musmiyyeh and a room in
the Golden House of Nero,[119] where the four-sided and the round dome
were placed respectively on piers and on columns; but the final mastery
was reserved for early Christian builders of the Hellenistic
coast-lands, or developed in the same age in Rome out of methods which
were specifically Roman, such as the intersecting barrel vault and
construction in concrete. In Rome also the original impulse may have
come from the East.[120]
5. In three of the upper rooms in the palace (Nos. 13, 15, and 16,
_Hatra_, ii, Figs. 227 and 228, and Plate 10) the roof is formed by
means of transverse arches (respectively five, three, and one in number)
carrying stone slabs which cover the space between them. This type of
roof was universally employed in Syria from Nabataean times until the
Mohammadan invasion.[121] It was a simple and a satisfactory method of
roofing in stone in a country where centering beams, sufficiently
massive to sustain a stone vault, were difficult to obtain. I know no
other Mesopotamian example of it in stone, but it was copied in Sasanian
brickwork, where the stone slab was replaced by a brick vault running at
right angles to the main axis.[122] In this form it finds a place at
Ukhaiḍir in room 32, and it continued to be used by Mohammadan builders
in the Middle Ages, the most renowned example being that of Khân Orthma,
at Baghdâd.[123]
The absence of the dome at Hatra is significant. The small square
chambers of the palace were well suited to dome construction, yet
nothing but the barrel vault is present. Moreover, it is the barrel
vault in its simplest expression; not even an intersection is
attempted. In the vaulted passage surrounding the central chamber of the
western annex, the ‘temple’, one end of the vault terminates on each of
the four sides against a transverse arch, whereby the insuperable
difficulty of intersection was avoided[124] (Plate 75, Fig. 2).
Hellenistic builders had attacked the problem as early as the second
century B.C. in Asia Minor,[125] and yet more boldly in Rome.[126] I
know no single example of the intersection of barrel vaults in Sasanian
buildings; even at Ukhaiḍir the system is sparingly used, and never
without careful abutment. Where two barrel vaults meet at right angles,
they are either joined together diagonally, without intersection, as in
the chemin de ronde, or they terminate against transverse arches, and
not infrequently in the rectangular space thus formed, a semi-dome takes
the place of the intersecting vault, as in the mosque and in the upper
gallery No. 134. The rock-cut temples of India exhibit a similar
termination of the barrel vault in a semi-dome.[127] The dome, though it
is at Ukhaiḍir of frequent occurrence, the chambers of the chemin de
ronde in all the round towers being domed as well as the two chambers
north and south of the great hall, Nos. 4 and 27, is never placed over a
span wider than 3·10 metres. The square rooms, Nos. 30 and 141, behind
the two lîwâns 29 and 140, where, on the analogy of the Sasanian palaces
(see below, pp. 74, 76 and 78) a dome might be expected, are covered in
one case by a barrel vault, and in the other case by a groined vault.
There was no question here of a dome on free standing columns; where the
opportunity occurred, in rooms 33 and 40, it was set aside in favour of
parallel barrel vaults. The domed chambers in the towers have a circular
ground-plan, and when the problem presented by the rectangular
substructure arose, it was met in a fashion which is applicable only to
very small edifices. The dome in No. 4, and all the calottes over
rectangular niches, are set over the angles upon horizontal brackets of
masonry. On the octagon, or half-octagon, thus formed, a circle or
segment of a circle of small diameter could be placed without any
difficulty. It was an expedient which had been adopted by early dome
builders both in Syria and Asia Minor,[128] but it was inadequate when
the space to be covered assumed larger dimensions and, before the date
of Ukhaiḍir, Byzantine and Sasanian architects had elaborated solutions
of the problem. In the West the great dome of Santa Sofia had already
been placed securely upon stone pendentives; in Persia the use of the
arched angle niche, or squinch, had enabled Sasanian builders to throw
their domes over a span of 16 metres. The three domes of Firûzâbâd, the
earliest of the Sasanian palaces, have a diameter of 13·30 metres; the
larger of the two domes at Sarvistân is about 12 metres across, the
dome in the smaller palace at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn covered a chamber 16·15
metres square.[129] If the audience chamber in the larger palace at
Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn was domed, as I suspect, it covered an area about 16
metres square. Under this dome, at each angle, at a distance of 2·90
metres from the walls stands a corner pier 1·40 metres square,
terminating on the two inner sides in an engaged column 1 metre in
length. The distance between the piers is thus about 16 metres, that is
to say that the dome would have been no larger in diameter than that
which covered the principal chamber in the neighbouring palace. The
walls there are 3·90 metres thick, whereas the side walls of the chamber
in the palace of Khusrau are never more than 2 metres thick, but in the
one case the wall was the only support, whereas in the other the thrust
would have been taken first by the angle supports and by them
transferred to the outer wall. Moreover, the walls themselves were
buttressed by vaulted rooms. The piers are buried about 1 metre in the
ruins with which the hall is filled (the ruin heaps lie deepest along
the walls and reach almost to the height of a doorway arch which remains
in place on the south side); the best preserved of the four piers
projects less than 1 metre out of the present surface; that is to say
that its whole height is at present under 2 metres. It is conceivable
that the piers may at no time have been carried very much higher. Like
the columns under the small dome at Sarvistân, they may have been bound
into the wall at that level by arches carrying a barrel vault, which
would in this instance have had a span of 5·20 metres, and the dome
placed upon the square substructure thus formed would reproduce the
Sarvistân dome in magnified proportions.[130] It is clear that Ukhaiḍir
shows a retrogression in the art of dome building, both in point of span
and in point of distribution of thrusts, nor is the fact surprising. The
desert ḥîrah of an early Mohammadan prince need not be expected to rival
in architectural achievement the summer palace of the Sasanian king of
kings, situated upon one of the high roads of his empire.
Firûzâbâd affords the earliest extant example of the dome in Persia. In
Babylonia and Assyria no dome is standing which can be dated earlier
than Ukhaiḍir. Possibly the Lakhmid ḥîrahs would have provided us with
other instances, but the tentative nature of dome building at Ukhaiḍir
throws doubt upon the proficiency of Lakhmid construction in this
respect.[131] In the Babylonian cultural sphere the dome does not seem
to have played an important part in monumental building until a late
period, and in my opinion too much significance has been attached to the
celebrated relief exhibiting domed buildings which Layard found at
Quyundjik.[132] We have here a representation of village architecture,
and it is natural to suppose that the domes were of small dimensions.
They are to be found to this day in the village architecture of northern
Syria and northern Mesopotamia, indeed no other form of roof exists; and
they take the shapes depicted upon the relief. They are built of
sun-dried brick held together by a mortar of clay. The high ovoid domes
which appear upon the relief and in modern villages are built of
oversailing rings, like the solitary dome at Hatra. I imagine that the
summit of the round domes is constructed over a light centering, but I
have not actually seen them in process of being built. The difficulties
presented by these methods are practically nil, owing to the light and
malleable material and the smallness of the span. The translation of
this primitive dome into larger diameters was a very different matter,
and there is no evidence for the belief that this step was taken in
Mesopotamia in an early age.
The Sasanian conquerors came out of lands on which Hellenism had made an
impression less deep than on Mesopotamia, lands where Rome had never
penetrated; and they came of a stock more tenacious of its own
traditions and less eclectic than the Parthians. To a large extent they
re-orientalized the territories which they occupied. No doubt there was
less for them to copy, for in the interval of some 300 years during
which the Parthians were predominant, Seleucid monuments must have
disappeared, and the blurred Arsacid copy of Greek or Roman models had
taken their place. The Sasanians created an art of their own, less
dependent than that of Parthia on Western forms, and more potent to
influence those who came into contact with it, not excluding the
Byzantines. In the earliest of their palaces, so strongly marked is the
reversion to Achaemenid types that Dieulafoy relegated it unhesitatingly
to the earlier Persian period. In its general characteristics the plan
of Firûzâbâd differs little from that of an Achaemenid khilâni palace
(Plate 73, Fig. 2). The lîwân has deepened, and the employment of the
vault has enabled the builder to dispense, as at Hatra, with the columns
that sustained its roof. The greater depth of the lîwân, combined with a
desire to keep the vaulting span within moderate bounds, have led to the
breaking up of the tower room on either side into two narrow chambers.
In order to counteract more effectually the thrust of the main vault
(13·30 metres wide) the side chambers are placed at right angles to the
lîwân, a principle which was not adopted at Hatra, but which rules at
Ctesiphon, and at Ukhaiḍir. The towers themselves have disappeared, and
though their place remains in the plan, in the elevation it is probable
that the façade presented an unbroken line. The audience hall of the
khilâni palace is reduced to a domed chamber, and the clumsy
construction of the dome makes it evident that the builder would not
have ventured to stretch its diameter further. Finally, round the
posterior courtyard are grouped, besides the living-rooms, two smaller
lîwâns, placed, like those in the Ukhaiḍir courts, so that they may
serve respectively for winter and for summer.
The resemblances in detail between the Achaemenid palaces and Firûzâbâd
are no less striking. The high fluted gorge and narrow torus of stone
which cover the doorways and niches of the one are repeated in the
plaster-work of the other. The plain fillets which surround the openings
at Persepolis reappear at Firûzâbâd, but in the latter case all the
openings are arched, and the moulded archivolt is set within the
rectangle formed by the fillets. The ṭâqchah niches, which, so far as my
knowledge goes, are found for the first time in the palace of Darius,
are present also at Firûzâbâd,[133] and henceforth assume a permanent
place in Persian architecture, from which they were borrowed by
Mohammadan builders.
The building material at Firûzâbâd is undressed stone, very roughly
coursed and set in a bed of mortar. In the domes the stones are cut
thinner, more carefully coursed and provided at intervals with a bonding
course; in the vaults the thin slabs are laid vertically, parallel with
the main axis of the chamber. Exactly the same principles are observed
at Ukhaiḍir. Nor do the resemblances end here. Tubes are not absent from
the vaulting system,[134] and most of the archways are set back from the
jambs to facilitate the placing of centering.[135] The arches are
semicircular as at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn. In the vault of the big lîwân
centering would seem to have been used, for it is set back from the face
of the walls, doubtless in order to leave a convenient ledge for the
centering beams. The vaults and domes here and in all other Sasanian
buildings have the ovoid shape common to Ukhaiḍir and to subsequent
Mohammadan work in Mesopotamia. It is the old Mesopotamian vault
contour. The exterior walls of Firûzâbâd are broken into a continuous
series of recessed and arched blind niches divided by engaged columns
carrying an entablature of modest proportions.[136] The appearance of
this decoration is to my eyes so entirely un-Hellenistic that I have
difficulty in connecting it with any classical influence, and in point
of fact an arched niche from one of the reliefs from Quyundjik, in the
British Museum (Fig. 11), is nearer akin to it than such
[Illustration: FIG. 11. Relief from Quyundjik.
(From _L’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 the courtyard 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 and three 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 intended for 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 court F
are 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 courts B, C, H, and G can 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 of the towers,
which, according to the suggestion of the authors of _Ocheïdir_, were
probably closets. In two of the courts, B and H, 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 in C and G, 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.
[Illustration: FIG. 12. Modern Ṭarmah houses.
(From _Das Wohnhaus in Bagdad_, by kind permission of Dr. Reuther.)]
In court E the 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
court E was 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 level O, Q, and S. 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 court P, R, and T. 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 isolation of the baits of Ukhaiḍir is a new feature. In courts K
and M the 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 courts C and G there is a group of rooms to the side, and
court G is without the shallow eastern lîwân group in its forecourt, but
possesses it on the west side of its posterior court. Neither courts E
nor I have the small lîwâns. All the courts communicate with one another
(except perhaps courts I and H) 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
[Illustration: FIG. 13. Balkuwârâ. (From _Erster 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 in _Amurath 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 same relation 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.
[Illustration: FIG. 14. Scheme of Pompeiian house.
(From Mau’s _Pompeii_, 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
century B.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 the Hellenistic 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 courts B and H
are 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.