permission of the General Director of the K. Museen in Berlin.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 16. Priene, house 24. (From _Priene_.)]
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]
[Illustration: FIG. 17. Palace at Pergamon.
(From Durm’s _Baukunst 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 encompassing wall, 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
[Illustration: FIG. 18. Small palace at Hatra. (From _Hatra_, 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 numbered E on 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, G and H,
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. Court I has
chambers on three sides; those on the south side resembling a lîwân
group with a ṭarmah. Court J has on the south side a latitudinal
chamber, with a ṭarmah on the north side, and a passage communicating
with the entrance court, A. Court K has 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. Courts I and K alone, 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 of G in 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 Western influences (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). Courts XXVII and XXX in the temple area, courts
XVIII, XIX, XX, and XXII in the domestic quarters, exhibit an
unsymmetrical grouping of latitudinal and longitudinal chambers very
much akin to that of the courts of Chehâr Qapû. In court XVI we have a
foreshadowing of the ṭarmah scheme. (Place believes the rooms in court
XVI to 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.
[Illustration: FIG. 19. Ctesiphon. (From _L’Acropole de Suse_, by kind
permission of M. Dieulafoy.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 20. Karkh. (From _L’Art antique de la Perse_, by
kind permission of M. Dieulafoy.)]
The second building is at Karkh, the town known in Syriac as Karkhâ de
Lâdan. It was founded by Shapûr II (309--379)[181] when he rebuilt Susa,
from which it is not far removed. Of this palace we have nothing but a
fragment, possibly a monumental entrance (Fig. 20). The central chamber
is covered by a dome which was set over squinches upon four wide
archways.[182] The cutting away of the walls under a dome is thus very
highly developed at Karkh. Four transverse arches span each of the
wings, and the space between the arches is covered by a vault. In
connexion with Ukhaiḍir this scheme of the wings at Karkh is of special
interest because it is repeated in room 32, where even the windows under
the vaults are reproduced by blind niches. The material used at Karkh is
brick, and it may here be noticed that at Susa and in Babylonia, where
brick was the only available local material, it is invariably used by
Sasanian architects; in Fars and in the Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn district, where
stone was more easy to obtain than brick, they constructed in unsquared
stones, roughly coursed, using brick only for the larger vaults and
domes and for those portions of the walls which were finely finished.
The latter system was employed at Ukhaiḍir. Vault construction in stone
was facilitated there by the fact that the stone broke naturally into
thin slabs and could be made to assume more or less the proportions of
brick tiles. For this reason stone vaults could be built without the use
of centering. At Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn this was not the case. The stones are
smooth rounded blocks like large pebbles; it would have been impossible
to use them for vaults unless the cement in which they were laid had
been peculiarly strong, and the vaults thus formed are of the rudest
kind. Coursed and undressed stone held together by a clay mortar was
used for vaulting purposes as early as Lydian times; a vault of that
character covers the tomb chamber of the tumulus of Alyattes near
Sardis. The same masonry is found in the terrace of the
Takht-i-Mâder-i-Suleimân at Pasargadae (fifth century B.C.), and is
still in common use in Asia Minor.[183] Masonry of dressed and undressed
stones set in a mortar of clay or pitch has been found in Assyrian
buildings,[184] but gypsum mortar was not known in Mesopotamia till the
seventh century. Its earliest appearance was in the palace of
Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon. In Egypt it is of much earlier occurrence,
and the use of mortar in the Aegean region during the second millennium
B.C. (Mycenae, Argos) was probably due to Egyptian influence.[185] Hatra
is the earliest Mesopotamian monumental building in dressed stone and
mortar; it was an example which was not followed by Sasanian architects.
The method was foreign to local tradition; native workmen returned to
their own systems and continued to construct wall, vault, and dome of
brick or of undressed stone.
A survey of Sasanian buildings leads to the conclusion that a singular
want of technical skill was displayed in their vaulting system. The
vault and the dome may have been born in Mesopotamia, but they lingered
there in a state of immaturity. The barrel vault, the vault on
transverse arches, the dome on Persian squinches, or in smaller
dimensions on the horizontal bracket, these were the only forms which
were employed. If an inclined plane was to be covered, the barrel vault
was split up into sections and raised in steps; if the barrel vaults met
at right angles, they were carefully separated from one another. At
Ukhaiḍir the groined vault is added to this slender stock of forms, but
it is not used in many places where it might be expected to appear, and
when it is employed, it is only with the utmost precaution. As far as
the invention shown in the Mesopotamian regions is concerned, we might
to-day be obliged to content ourselves with the barrel vault and the
dome poised carefully upon four walls (or little better); but the Greek
builders of the Mediterranean coast-lands stepped into the breach, and
it is primarily to them that we owe the development of the elementary
principles of oriental vaulting.
I have already alluded to a series of early Mohammadan buildings which
are of the utmost importance to the study of Ukhaiḍir, the Umayyad
ḥîrahs which stand upon the frontiers of Syria. On the western side of
the desert the authority of the khalifs had been preceded by the
authority of Imperial Rome. Lands which were occupied by Roman armies
were endowed with a solid heritage, more enduring than any political
domination has proved to be. To this day the traveller to Petra has the
paved Roman road under his feet for many a mile; he can reckon his
journey by Roman milestones, and daily he will pass by shattered wall
and piles of ruin which mark the site of Roman watch-tower and Roman
fortified camp. After the lapse of eighteen hundred years these massive
structures still offer a meagre shelter to the Beduin shepherds and
their flocks, and in the seventh century, when the Umayyad khalifs fled
from their cities to the beautiful solitudes of the Syrian desert, most
of the castles of the Roman limes, which had been re-occupied by the
Ghassânid allies of Byzantium, were standing in all their towered
strength. Here indeed was an inheritance for those who loved the
wilderness; where the Roman legionaries had languished in interminable
exile, the children of the desert held their court.
The Arabian limes did not differ in its system of military defence from
the limites of Europe, but whereas the European camps were originally
laid down as stockaded earthworks and were not systematically clothed in
stone till the time of Hadrian,[186] on the Syrian frontier the camps
and forts were from the first built of solid stone masonry. The
comparatively late date of the oriental defences was no doubt partially
responsible for this peculiarity, but it must also be borne in mind that
fortification by means of earthworks was foreign to the regions through
which the Arabian limes ran. As early as the time of Vespasian, the
camps of Flavius Silva at Masada, near the Dead Sea, were surrounded by
walls of rudely piled stones,[187] while in the Flavian period the
European camps were still fortified by earthworks and stockades. The
Roman province of Arabia Petraea was created in A.D. 105, and the
fortification of the first limes dates therefore from the time of
Trajan. On this inner limes one great camp stands in ruins, the camp of
Odhruḥ.
Archaeological research on the Roman frontiers in Germany, Austria, and
Britain, as well as in North Africa, has made us familiar with the
general disposition of the legionary camps; moreover, we have two
literary sources of information. Polybius, writing in 150 B.C., has left
a description of the camp in his day, and Hyginus, writing not earlier
than a period shortly before the time of Hadrian, has given an accurate
account of the camp as he knew it.[188] Architecturally there is no
fundamental difference between the two. The camp of Hyginus was a
rectangular enclosure, with a length one-third greater than its width.
It had four gateways, the Porta Praetoria and the Porta Decumana in the
centre of each of the short sides, the Porta Principalis Sinistra in one
of the long sides, but not in the centre, and the Porta Principalis
Dextra opposite to it in the other. Round the interior of the walls lay
an open space, the Intervallum. The interior area was divided by
thoroughfares placed in a regular order. Between the Porta Principalis
Dextra and the Porta Principalis Sinistra ran a cross street, the Via
Principalis. At right angles to it, the Via Praetoria ran up to the
Porta Praetoria. These two were the most important of the roads; they
were wider than the others, and in the later stone-built camps they were
sometimes flanked by colonnades, while at their point of junction was
set a tetrapylon. The colonnades and the tetrapylon are common in cities
which were laid out on the Roman camp plan.[189] Opposite the point of
junction of the two streets, the centre of the camp was occupied by
official and public buildings. Here lay the Forum and the Praetorium,
with the Sacellum wherein the eagles of legion and cohort were
deposited. Behind the Praetorium, the Via Quintana crossed the camp from
side to side, while numerous small roads at right angles to it gave
access to the lodgings of the troops; the Via Sagularis, within and
parallel to the Intervallum, was carried round the whole rectangle. To
this general scheme the camps which have been excavated conform, with
little divergence.[190] I give as an example the fort at Housesteads,
on the Roman Wall (Fig. 21). The sanctuary, X, which is here
rectangular, is not infrequently apsed.[191] As a rule not much remains
of the interior buildings except the Praetorium and a few large public
edifices, such as granaries and armouries. The Praetorium varies
considerably in detail, but in general disposition it resembles the
Greek peristyle house. A typical, well-preserved example is to be found
at Wiesbaden.[192]
[Illustration: FIG. 21. Roman fort at Housesteads. (By kind permission
of Professor Haverfield.)]
One of the most imposing of Praetoria is that of Lambaesis[193] in
northern Africa, where a stone-built camp was constructed about the same
date as Odhruḥ to replace the older earthwork. The development of the
Praetorium varies with the size and importance of the station. As
regards the outer fortifications the four gateways were flanked by
towers which projected inwards, from the inner face of the wall, and not
uncommonly had a slight salience upon the exterior also.[194] There are
one or two examples in which the gate towers are rounded upon the
outside and have a more considerable projection.[195] Towers are usually
placed at the rounded corners of the wall, and sometimes at intervals
along the wall; they have no salience upon the exterior.[196] The
barracks, which were as a rule roughly built huts, were more solidly
constructed in some of the great permanent camps, and the whole interior
plan has been traced at Carnuntum and at Novaesium. The barracks in
these camps consisted of long double rows of small chambers, more or
less regularly disposed and standing back to back. A street or court,
open at either end, unless it happened to terminate against one of the
larger official buildings, separated each row from the row opposite. The
Intervallum was left open, that free access might be given to the walls;
at Carnuntum only, part of the west side was occupied by buildings.
[Illustration: FIG. 22. Odhruḥ. (From _Provincia Arabia_, by kind
permission of Professor Brünnow.)]
In the Trajanic camp at Odhruḥ (Fig. 22) no trace of the interior
buildings remains except a small apsed Sacellum, placed precisely in
the position in which it would be found in a camp on the European
frontiers. Since the four gateways compare equally well with those of
the European camps, we may conclude that the interior arrangement of
Odhruḥ was normal. But the fortifications are not normal. Rounded towers
project some ten metres from the outer face of the wall and the angles
are strengthened by circular towers of still greater salience. Thus in
the earliest camp of the Arabian limes we encounter a developed system
of flanking towers which is completely absent in Europe.
[Illustration: FIG. 23. Ledjdjûn. (From _Provincia Arabia_, by kind
permission of Professor Brünnow.)]
The second or outer limes cannot be much later in date, and in all
probability it belonged to the time which saw the fortification of the
road from Palmyra to Damascus. Ḍumair (Plate 78, Fig. 2), the second of
the chain of forts that extended from Damascus to the desert
capital,[197] is dated by an inscription in the year A.D. 162; it bears
a close resemblance both to Trajan’s camp at
[Illustration: FIG. 24. Da’djaniyyeh. (From _Provincia Arabia_, by kind
permission of Professor Brünnow.)]
Odhruḥ and to Ledjdjûn, a camp on the outer Arabian limes. The salient,
rounded, intermediate towers and circular angle towers of Odhruḥ are
repeated at Ḍumair with unimportant variations in detail. No part of the
Praetorium is standing, but there are traces of some of the rows of huts
in the Praetentura, and according to Domaszewski’s plan they extended,
on one side at least, over the Intervallum to the wall.[198] In the
Retentura one ruined building remains, which the learned archaeologist
believes to have been the Armamentarium. In the camp of Ledjdjûn the
walls and towers are an exact copy of those of Odhruḥ (Fig. 23). The
interior buildings belong to two periods. The greater part of the
Praetorium, and a small apsed structure to the north of it, belong to
the first period; and to the same date, Domaszewski assigns certain
buildings placed along the walls between the towers, the largest of
which he takes to have been a Horreum. The rows of barracks which fill
the eastern half and a part of the western half of the camp are of
later date and belong probably to the time of Diocletian.
No other legionary camps of the size of these three exist along the
Arabian limes; the other fortresses which have been examined and planned
are smaller, different in character, and later in date. Of these there
are three which I propose to consider, Da’djaniyyeh, Bshair, and Qasṭal.
Da’djaniyyeh is undated, but from its plan I should judge it to be
earlier than the other two. Bshair is dated by an inscription in the
time of Diocletian; for Qasṭal there is no epigraphic evidence, but the
capital found among the ruins of the Sacellum can scarcely be earlier
than the fifth century.[199] That the towers in the fortress of
Da’djaniyyeh should be rectangular and set à cheval upon the walls, is
not of any significance (Fig. 24). Round and square towers are commonly
found at one and the same time, though the round tower, which is
strategically an improvement upon the rectangular tower, is in fact
later in origin (see below, p. 108). It is worth noting that the details
of construction in the walls and towers of Da’djaniyyeh are exactly
reproduced at Qasṭal, a fort which diverges much more than Da’djaniyyeh
from the Roman camp scheme, but even at Qasṭal the stairs and approaches
to the towers are copied from the Odhruḥ prototype. The remarkable
feature at Da’djaniyyeh is that the Roman camp plan is obscured and
almost lost. The greater part of the Intervallum is filled in with
buildings; stables, horrea, and armamentaria are linked to the
encompassing wall in a manner which recalls the ancient oriental system,
a system which is perhaps foreshadowed at Ḍumair and Ledjdjûn.[200] In a
wall set round with chambers there is no room for gates; the suppression
of gateways is therefore a necessary corollary of the change of scheme,
and at Da’djaniyyeh the Portae Praetoria and Decumana have disappeared.
The postern in the south-east wall is not a survival of the Porta
Praetoria; its existence is due to the fact that the main water-supply
of the fort was a cistern lying outside the walls at this point. Apart
from these striking innovations the interior preserves the Roman plan.
The Praetorium and Sacellum stand in their accustomed place, but the Via
Praetoria, besides having no independent gate, is no longer laid quite
symmetrically with regard to the Praetorium. Something like the same
combination of camp and oriental fortress can be seen in the Byzantine
citadel at ‘Abdeh, but the features of the Roman camp are more
completely obliterated and the Praetorium is probably represented by a
large ruined building, placed unsymmetrically against one of the
walls.[201] At Bshair the orientalizing process is carried a long step
further (Fig. 25). The chambers are placed symmetrically round the
enclosing wall; there is but
[Illustration: FIG. 25. Bshair. (From _Provincia Arabia_, by kind
permission of Professor Brünnow.)]
one gate, and the Sacellum itself (k) is set against the wall, leaving
the central court clear. Bshair is no longer a Roman limes fortress, it
is a military caravanserai. The same definition applies to the undated
fort at Qasṭal (Fig. 26). Again, the interior buildings are set round
the encompassing wall, but they are not single chambers; they are the
baits of the Mesopotamian palaces, minus the lîwân. Each unit is
composed of a small open court with rooms on either side (this is the
normal arrangement, though three of the baits at Qasṭal have rooms upon
one side only), and in the interior of the complex a court is left over.
There is no room in this scheme for a Praetorium and accordingly it is
given a place outside the walls,[202] but fragments of carved ornament
found in the principal court make it probable that a small Sacellum
occupied the centre. This principle is retained in the caravanserai
fortresses of other parts of Syria. At Dair al-Kafh (A.D. 306) a small
temple, which was subsequently converted
[Illustration: FIG. 26. Qasṭal. (From _Provincia Arabia_, by kind
permission of Professor Brünnow.)]
into a chapel, stood in the centre of the court;[203] in the barracks at
Anderîn (A.D. 558) a chapel is similarly placed,[204] and at Qaṣr ibn
Wardân (A.D. 561) a building, the uses of which have not been
determined, stands in the barrack yard.[205] Beyond this small
resemblance, the divergence of Qasṭal from the Roman camp type is
complete. All the more noticeable is its likeness to the only Sasanian
castrum of which we have any sufficient record. Qasṭal belongs to the
same family as the fort at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn (Plate 73, Fig. 1). The towered
walls, the single gate, the chambers or baits placed round the interior
of the walls so as to leave a central court over, all these are
characteristic of the older building; but at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn the lodging
of the commandant is placed inside the court, whereas at Qasṭal it is
outside.[206] In the Zohâb district there is another building of a
somewhat similar type, but it looks more like the ordinary caravanserai
than like a fortress.[207]
The caravanserai type, when once it had established itself on the
Arabian limes, was not to be ousted, but its later application is not
only to fortress and barrack, but to genuine lodgings for caravans. In
the Roman or Byzantine caravanserai of Khân al-Zebîb enough remains to
show that the interior buildings were placed round the encompassing
wall.[208] At Umm al-Walîd this interior arrangement is clearly
preserved;[209] at Umm al-Rasâs baits, not unlike those of Qasṭal, are
linked to the wall,[210] and the plan of a later building at Khân
al-Zebîb (it is probably Moslem) differs not at all from that of a small
modern caravanserai.[211] Khirbet al-Baiḍâ (see above, p. 56) belongs to
the same group, but from its geographical position it must be regarded
as a military station rather than as a true caravanserai, though it may
have served both purposes. To what cause is the singularly rapid change
from Roman camp to Asiatic caravanserai to be attributed? The answer is
obvious. On the Arabian limes the builders were brought into contact
with a strong Asiatic tradition; they were probably themselves local
workmen, and they orientalized the Roman scheme. They applied from the
first their own system of flanking towers to the defences; they grafted
an injunctive plan on to the Roman camp plan, and they ended by
discarding the latter in favour of the former.
The covering of dead ground by means of flanking towers and crémaillères
goes back in western Asia to the earliest times. The plan of the
acropolis of Gudea, drawn upon a tablet which is placed in the lap of a
statue of the patesi of Lagash, exhibits, in the middle of the third
millennium B.C., a system of fortification so fully developed that
scarcely a dead angle exists in the whole circuit of the walls (Fig.
27). In the science of military engineering even Egypt would seem to
have lagged behind Chaldaea, for the advantage of flanking towers was
not understood there until the Asiatic expeditions of the Eighteenth
Dynasty had taught the Pharaohs how to correct the defects in the
unbroken lines of their massive defences.[212] In the Assyrian reliefs,
double and triple rings of walls set thick with towers surround the
towns; towered walls are represented in the ground-plans,[213] and
excavation has proved the existence of rectangular towers in the walls
of Khorsâbâd and of Assur.[214] A chemin de ronde, loopholes, and
machicolations have been found _in situ_ in the walls of Assur, together
with traces of crenellation,[215] and all these features, as well as
hourds projecting from the battlements, and the ladders and
battering-rams which they were intended to counteract, are familiar upon
Assyrian reliefs. Rounded towers have not been revealed by Babylonian or
Assyrian excavations. They belonged to a later age or perhaps to a
different sphere of culture, the Hittite or Syrian. But Dieulafoy
observed them on the Achaemenid fortifications of Susa;[216] and at
Hatra, while the inner walls of the town were flanked by rectangular
towers, solid or casemated, and casemated bastions, on the outer wall a
rounded tower has been recorded, and Dr. Andrae conjectures that it was
one of many.[217] In this particular, as in the approximately circular
outline assumed by its walls, Hatra may exhibit traits borrowed from the
civilization of the southern Hittites. There are rounded and rectangular
towers in the larger Parthian palace at Niffer.[218] In Sasanian
fortifications the rounded tower seems practically to have displaced the
rectangular.[219]
[Illustration: FIG. 27. Lagash. (From _L’Acropole de Suse_, by kind
permission of M. Dieulafoy.)]
Flanking towers strengthened the walls of Hittite cities. At Zindjirli
the gradual development of more scientific methods can be traced in the
successive walls which encompassed the town and the acropolis. The inner
city wall, which was the first in date (it was probably built in the
thirteenth century), is provided with rectangular towers which have a
salience of 2 metres. The outer acropolis wall (Fig. 5), built about 900
B.C., has semicircular towers with a salience of 3½ metres; the
strategic disadvantages of rectangular towers had been realized and
corrected. A further improvement was effected in the inner cross wall,
behind the main gate of the acropolis. The wall is built in retreating
angles, and set with towers alternately rounded and rectangular; the
rectangular towers project 1·80 metres from the face of the wall, while
the rounded towers cover them with a projection of 4·50 metres. The
outer city wall was built after the destruction of the city by
Asarhaddon in 681 B.C. and is no more than a copy of the earliest wall,
but at the same period casemates were added to the walls of the
acropolis.[220] The Hittite capital of Qadesh on the Orontes, as
depicted in the frescoes at Abû Simbel, a temple built by Rameses II
(1388-1322), was protected by a wall with towers, the height of which
must be due partly to the imagination of the Egyptian craftsman.[221]
These towers have the appearance of being round, but the absence of
architectural records of round towers at so early a date throws doubt
upon the matter. In Asia Minor rectangular towers have been found upon
the outer and the inner walls of Boghâz Keui;[222] they do not as a rule
exceed a projection of 2½ metres. At Troy the earliest walls had
towers 3 metres wide, and 2 metres salient; the curtain wall was in some
places not longer than 10 metres, and the city gates were flanked by
deep bastions. In the walls of the third period at Troy three towers
were uncovered on the south-east side; they are 3·20 metres wide, 2·35
salient, and are separated from one another by a distance of only 6·40
metres.[223] But on the Greek mainland, at Tiryns, and at Mycenae, the
fortifications are characterized by crémaillères and by deep bastions
rather than by towers.[224] Much more lavish is the use of towers in the
pre-Hellenic cities of Asia Minor, other than Troy. The very ancient
acropolis on the Yamanlar Dâgh above Smyrna possessed rectangular
towers.[225] In Caria the fortification known as the Wall of the Leleges
opposite Iassos had rounded towers and crémaillères,[226] and the walls
of Alinda rectangular towers à cheval.[227] The Lycian towns depicted
upon the bas-reliefs in the tombs at Pinara, discovered by Benndorf and
Niemann, exhibit salient rectangular towers,[228] while fortified towers
of the same character are depicted on the monument of the Nereids at
Xanthos,[229] and we have a plan of the ancient walled town of Pydnai in
which the features portrayed on the reliefs are clearly to be
recognized.[230] Nor must the towns of the Phoenicians be forgotten, the
towered walls of Mount Eryx in Sicily, of the acropolis of Lixos in
Mauritania Tingitana, of Thapsus, of Carthage, and of Tyre.[231]
With such a wide development of fortifications by means of flanking
towers, extending from the cultural spheres of the Babylonians and the
Hittites over all the western parts of Asia, and carried by the
Phoenicians into the furthest limits of the Mediterranean, it is not
surprising that the fortifications of Greek towns in the fifth century
should exhibit the same features. Assos, the finest example of this
period, carries on the tradition in the crémaillères and rectangular
towers of its walls;[232] and Messene, with its rounded and rectangular
towers, shows in the succeeding century a yet more complete
understanding of military architecture.[233] The acropolis of Selinus,
with semicircular towers, bears witness at a like age to the carrying
over of the Greek system of defences into Sicily.[234] The walls of
Ephesus, built by Lysimachus towards the close of the third century,
‘one of the greatest monuments of fortification which have been left to
us by antiquity,’[235] show the towered wall of the Hellenistic age,
while Mantineia, with its circular outer wall, is like an isolated
reversion to the round cities of Hittite lands.[236] Philon of Byzantium
formulated the laws which governed Greek fortification in the
Alexandrian age. Towers, crémaillères, and casemated walls combined to
make a system of defence all the elements of which had been familiar to
the Hittites and to the Assyrians, and the methods of attack which he
sought to counter were the same as those which can be seen on the
Assyrian reliefs.[237] Vitruvius advocates the flanking of walls by
round or polygonal rather than by rectangular towers, but his words
should be taken as a counsel of perfection, not as representing the
practice of his day, for the systematic use of rounded towers by Roman
engineers is later than Augustan times and polygonal towers are unusual
before the age of Diocletian. At Aosta, which was fortified soon after
25 B.C., the towers are rectangular,[238] but at Fréjus and at Autun,
both of which were fortified in the Augustan age, we have two of the
rare instances of circular or semicircular towers.[239] As Schultze has
pointed out, the planning of towers varies with time and place, but not
infrequently rounded and rectangular towers can be seen on buildings of
the same date.[240] As at Zindjirli the rounded tower denotes a
technical advance, though the rectangular tower is not necessarily
displaced by it. The typically Roman conception of frontier defences,
the fortified limes, was definitely abandoned in Europe about the year
A.D. 360, but a century earlier the invasion of Gaul and Spain by the
Franks had proved that the long line of strongholds was powerless to
check the inrush of barbarian hordes, and in the last half of the third
century the fortified town was virtually substituted for the fortified
frontier. Towered walls sprang up about the cities of Roman Gaul, and
the work of fortification begun by Probus was carried on by
Diocletian.[241] The same process can be observed throughout the empire
during the course of the third century, and almost without exception
these later fortifications were strengthened by circular or semicircular
towers.
But if the walls of Roman cities can claim to have inherited, through
Greece and the civilizations of the Aegean, the formulae of the ancient
East, the fortified camp was essentially the creation of Rome herself.
The stockaded earthwork, with rounded corners and lines devoid of
flanking defences, determined the plan of the stone wall which replaced
it in Europe and in Africa,[242] and it was not until the Romans applied
their system to lands which had seen the birth and development of a
science of warfare different from their own that they modified their
design. The difference was fundamental. The Roman camp was intended
primarily for purposes of attack. It was the camp of an army on the
march, indispensable, in the eyes of commanders as wary as they were
daring, to a halt that lasted no longer than a single night, but in its
essence impermanent. The oriental fortress displays a contrary
intention. It was defensive and abiding, a stronghold provided with few
exits (since the gateway is the weakest point of a fortified position),
but with high walls, heavily flanked by towers which would give the
garrison every advantage against the besiegers.
By the time of Diocletian the transition upon the Arabian limes from
camp to fortress had been completed. The Umayyad khalifs, when they in
turn strewed the fringes of the Syrian desert with the creations of
their architects, copied, not the Roman plan which had been imported
under Trajan and had survived, in broad outline at any rate, at least,
as late as the year A.D. 162 (the date of Ḍumair), they copied its
oriental counterpart, adapting it to the use of princes by methods
borrowed from Byzantium and from Persia. We know that the Umayyads, like
the Ghassânids before them, repaired and re-occupied the Roman
fortresses. Hamza al-Iṣfahâni believed that Qasṭal and Odhruh had been
built by Djabala ibn al-Ḥârith;[243] Yâqût mentions that Yazîd ibn ‘Abd
al-malik (Yazîd II) lived at Muwaqqar, and judging from the existing
remains it is probable that he either built or rebuilt it.[244] His son
Walîd occupied Qastṭal and Azraq.[245] But princes whose passion for
magnificent construction was so great that the subjects of Yazîd III
could see cause for exacting from him, when he came to the throne, a
promise that he would not lay stone to stone or brick to brick,[246]
were not likely to content themselves with the forts of the Roman limes.
The poets, who were welcome guests at their palaces in the wilderness,
have left descriptions of the luxury of their surroundings,[247] and the
picture has been completed by the discovery of some of the buildings
themselves. None of the ruins which have been examined are mentioned by
contemporary writers under the name by which they are known to the
Beduin, but a palace or palaces are recorded in the Wâdi Ghadaf, and it
is in that district that Ṭûbah, Kharâneh, and Qṣair ‘Amrah stand.[248]
Mshattâ, which was the first to be visited by archaeologists, bears a
name which is probably modern.
Qṣair ‘Amrah lies somewhat outside the architectural type to which the
other three buildings belong. It is a small unfortified pleasure-palace
with a reception hall and throne-room on a basilical plan, and a bath.
Very closely related to it is the early Mohammadan ruin of Ḥammâm
al-Ṣarakh, discovered by the Princeton Expedition.[249] The bath at
Djebel Sais is not dissimilar, but in the light of our present knowledge
it requires re-examination.[250] Both at Qṣair ‘Amrah and at Ḥammâm
al-Ṣarakh there is a small dome over a square chamber. At Ḥammâm
al-Ṣarakh this chamber is 2·15 metres square; the dome is set on
pendentives and lighted by windows. It is laid up in gores with
projecting ribs constructed of long, thin, wedge-shaped bits of shale,
entirely undressed and completely covered by plaster. When intact it
must have presented an appearance not unlike that of the ribbed dome at
Ukhaiḍir, except that the ribs were set wider apart and the pendentive
substituted for the primitive bracket. Concerning the structural
features of the dome at Qṣair ‘Amrah, the publication of the Viennese
Academy, which leaves much to be desired, is not explicit. Dr. Musil,
who is always the best guide in matters architectural and
archaeological, describes it as being set on pendentives and lighted by
windows in the dome.[251] Here and at Ḥammâm al-Ṣarakh two semi-domed
niches are placed opposite to one another, one at either end of the
domed chamber, and a room (3·30 metres square at Ḥammâm al-Ṣarakh) next
to the domed chamber is roofed with a groined vault. We have a similar
use of the groined vault in the east annex at Ukhaiḍir. At Ḥammâm
al-Ṣarakh some of the doors are covered by straight lintels, others
(together with all the windows) by semicircular arches. Some of the
wider arches are slightly pointed, but the vaults and transverse arches
in the reception-room are semicircular. At Qṣair ‘Amrah straight lintels
are the rule for doors and windows, but over the architrave of the wide
door leading into the audience chamber there is a shallow relieving
arch. The three parallel barrel vaults of the audience chamber are
visible upon the exterior, and the absence of the flat roof obviates the
need of tubes between the vaults. In both of these bâdiyahs the walls
were decorated with frescoes. Qṣair ‘Amrah was built between the years
711 and 750, when the house of Umayyah came to an end, the earlier date
being determined by the presence among the frescoes of a representation
of Roderick, the last king of the West Goths, who came first into
contact with the Arabs at the battle of Xeres in 711.[252]
To the same group belong a small ruined bath at ‘Abdeh[253] and the bath
at Rḥaibeh,[254] the first being possibly Byzantine. At ‘Abdeh the dome
placed between two semi-domed niches is set on horizontal brackets. In
the palace of Qaṣr ibn Wardân the dome between two semi-domed niches is
the basis of the plan, but it is further elaborated by the placing of a
semi-domed chamber on the alternate sides. These two chambers are not,
however, an integral part of the domed chamber, for they are separated
from it by solid walls broken only by doorways. Fortunately we are not
reduced here to conjecture concerning the date. On the lintel of the
south gate an inscription gives the year A.D. 564.[255] It is clear,
therefore, that the dome between semi-domed niches is an architectural
scheme which was taken over by the builders of the Mohammadan age from
their Byzantine predecessors, and all the evidence points to the
conclusion that in both periods the artificers were Syrians.
Al-Ṭûbah is the southernmost of the Wâdi Ghadaf palaces[256] (Fig. 28).
Its plan is that of Qasṭal repeated three times, with the addition of
projecting rectangular chambers on either side of the gates. When the
three main courts adjoin one another the side chambers against the
dividing walls are omitted. The individual baits are very similar to
those of Qasṭal, but only one row of chambers is interposed between each
of the small courts. Thus at first sight it looks as if the Ṭûbah bait
consisted of a court with rooms on one side only, except in the
north-east and north-west angles, where the courts have chambers on both
sides, that the corner spaces may be filled in. Actually, however, the
[Illustration: FIG. 28. Ṭûbah. (From _Qṣeir ‘Amra_, by kind permission
of the Akad. der Wiss. in Vienna.)]
bait centres round each alternate court, which communicates with the two
chambers on either side, and the intermediate court is merely a yard
common to two baits. The bait of Ṭûbah is therefore the same as the
typical bait of Qasṭal. The enclosing walls and the foundation of all
other walls are of stone, the rest of the building is constructed of
brick tiles. The western end of the palace, and most of the northern
side were completed; the eastern and south-eastern parts were never
carried above the foundations. The doorways are covered by brick and
stone arches, but a stone or wood lintel was placed under the arch.
Where the lintel is of stone its outer side is adorned with an
interesting early Mohammadan pattern, which has affinities with the
carving on the eastern end of the façade at Mshattâ. The stone lintels
are not carried through to the inner side of the arch. The arches, which
are round, are built of stone, as is the wall below them. The wooden
lintels have rotted away or have been removed by the Arabs. They were
laid in brick walls and covered by brick relieving arches composed of
two rings of brick tiles. In the inner ring the bricks are set
vertically, parallel to the main axis of the arch, with the broad side
outwards; in the outer ring they are laid horizontally, at right angles
to the main axis, with the narrow end outwards. It is the principle on
which many of the smaller arches at Ukhaiḍir are constructed. The brick
arches at Ṭûbah are a stilted, slightly pointed oval; that is to say
that the transition from the ovoid to the pointed arch is illustrated
here in much the same manner as at Ukhaiḍir.
[Illustration: FIG. 29. Kharâneh, upper floor. (From _Qṣeir ‘Amra_, by
kind permission of the Akad. der Wiss. in Vienna.)]
Kharâneh lies a few hours to the west of Qṣair ‘Amrah[257] (Fig. 29). It
is two stories high and about 35 metres square, and it consists of baits
grouped round a central court (Plate 79, Fig. 1). A rounded tower is set
at each of the four corners, a semicircular tower in the middle of each
of three sides, and in the fourth side stands a gate between
semicircular towers, which are cut away on the interior face, like the
towers on the south, east, and west gateways of Ukhaiḍir (Plate 79, Fig.
2). The rooms on the ground floor are ill lighted, and were probably
intended for stables, storehouses, and guard-rooms. The court was
surrounded by a cloister, the roof of which rested on arches springing
from angle piers. On the upper floor this roof, which was constructed of
stone slabs, provided a passage or gallery into which the baits of the
first floor opened (Plate 80, Fig. 1). The rooms on the upper floor
correspond with those below, but in some of the larger chambers (three,
according to Musil’s plan) the vault is divided into sections by means
of transverse arches borne on slender engaged columns in groups of three
(Plate 80, Fig. 2). The column groups recall with singular fidelity the
triple reed-columns on the façade of Sarvistân. Beyond the evidence
afforded by Dr. Moritz’s photograph, we have no information regarding
structural details, though they must be well worth a careful study. The
vaults and transverse arches seem to belong to the same family as those
of room 32 at Ukhaiḍir. The end of the chamber at Kharâneh is closed by
a semi-dome reaching from the back wall to the first transverse
arch--the same arrangement as has been described in the mosque and in
gallery No. 134 at Ukhaiḍir. It is also extremely significant that the
semi-dome at Kharâneh should be carried over the angles of the walls on
squinch arches. The arches spring over the angle instead of being filled
in with a small semi-dome. The fillets round the arches and round the
rectangular windows must be compared with the fillets round the arched
niches in room 32 and round the archivolts of squinch and niche at
Chehâr Qapû. Another very important point is mentioned by Dr. Moritz. To
the right of the audience chamber, which he photographed, and connected
with it by a door, is a small rectangular room, beyond which lies
another rectangular room of about the same size. Round this last room
runs a moulding, above which stand circular plaques of stucco decorated
with formal plant-motives in Sasanian style, and with late Syrian
leaf-motives. One of the plaques Dr. Moritz detached from the wall, and
it can be seen standing upon the floor in his photograph (Plate 80, Fig.
2), and is now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. It is more than
a coincidence that to the right of an audience hall there should be
found both at Ukhaiḍir and at Kharâneh a chamber, the elaborate
ornamentation of which points to its having some special ceremonial
significance. At Ukhaiḍir this side chamber is carried through to the
audience hall, at Kharâneh it is divided from it by an interposed room,
but the principle is the same in both cases, and in both cases it must
be connected with laws of etiquette of the Umayyad courts with which we
are unacquainted. Over the above-named doorway, leading from the
audience hall into the first right-hand chamber, Dr. Moritz found a
graffito inscription in which a date corresponding with November, A.D.
710, is mentioned. Kharâneh, therefore, must have been standing at that
time. The archway he describes as an ordinary round arch; in the
photograph the door appears to be set within a niche, whereof the arch
oversails the wall, like the larger archways at Ukhaiḍir. The door
itself is covered by a lintel, and a lintel of solid stone covers the
door of the main entrance (Plate 79, Fig. 2). In his section Dr. Musil
represents some of the doors as round-arched and some with a lintel and
a relieving arch above it; the latter follow a scheme which is common to
most of the buildings in the west side of the Syrian desert and exists
at Ctesiphon, but is unknown at Ukhaiḍir and unusual in the later
Mohammadan buildings of Mesopotamia. Of the loophole windows in the
outer wall at Kharâneh, those on the ground floor are finished in
precisely the same manner as the loopholes in the towers at Ukhaiḍir,
the opening is filled in with an upright stone against which two bricks
are placed diagonally. On the upper floor the loopholes show the same
method somewhat simplified. There is but one main door, as in the
original scheme of Ukhaiḍir. The masonry is of undressed stones set in
mortar, with an occasional bonding course as at Ukhaiḍir. All round the
castle, between the two upper rows of loopholes, runs a decoration
consisting of two horizontal courses of brick with a brick zigzag
between. On the towers this band of ornamental brickwork is repeated
lower down. The presence of brick used decoratively leads one to suspect
that it may be used also in the finer vaults, but like all the technical
questions at Kharâneh, this cannot be answered without further
observation. Over this main gate there appears to have been some kind of
hourd, corresponding in level with the upper story; above it the wall
between the towers is decorated with five perpendicular bands of late
Syrian leaf-motives. Dr. Musil’s reconstruction of the gate[258] cannot
be correct; it does not take into account the horizontal floor-line
below the opening which gave access to the hourd, and it covers the
bands of ornament. The Kharâneh gateway must be reconstructed in much
the same fashion as the three gates in the outer wall at Ukhaiḍir. A
vaulted chemin de ronde seems to have crowned the walls.
The rooms of the upper story are grouped into five baits. Over the
entrance an additional chamber is interposed between two baits (compare
the courts at Ṭûbah which are common to two baits) and on the opposite
side there are two extra rooms to fill up the angles. These two
additional rooms communicate with the baits on either side, and the
gate-house chamber communicates with either bait; otherwise the baits
are kept distinct from one another. The scheme is in fact that of Ṭûbah
or Da’djaniyyeh, but with the small courts vaulted over and turned into
audience halls or big living-rooms, and here we may seek the explanation
of the difference between the baits of the palaces on the eastern side
and of those on the western side of the Syrian desert. The normal bait
on the Mesopotamian side consists of two lîwân groups with a court
between, and the lîwân is derived, as has been shown, from the khilâni.
The domestic arrangements of the East, where the women are lodged apart
from the men, and if possible the several wives apart from each other,
make the bait system in some form indispensable to every dwelling-house,
but in Syria the khilâni plan was adopted only for monumental façades,
such as that of Solomon’s temple, and from it, through temples of the
pagan era, to Christian churches. The normal bait on the Syrian side has
therefore no connexion with the khilâni; the lîwân is absent. The group
of chambers consists of two pairs of rooms with an intervening court, or
in complexes more closely knit together, an intervening hall. The group
thus formed is the half of a new unit, and may either share a central
court with other half-baits, as at Kharâneh, or be provided with a small
court of its own and another half-bait, as at Mshattâ. This distinction
apart--it is a distinction which is due to local custom and local
architectural tradition--the close relationship which exists between
Kharâneh and Ukhaiḍir cannot be insisted upon too strongly, for it helps
to determine the date of Ukhaiḍir.
Mshattâ lies a few hours to the west of Kharâneh (Plate 81).[259] It is
the best known of the Syrian ḥîrahs, and its magnificent carved façade
is now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum. All that concerns me here,
however, is its place in the architectural group of which Ukhaiḍir is
the eastern representative. It was perhaps built by Yazîd II,[260] and
it was left unfinished at his death. It may therefore be a little later
than Kharâneh, for Yazîd died in A.D. 724. As at Ṭûbah and Ukhaiḍir, the
materials used in it are brick and stone. It is surrounded by a wall set
with towers, of which, as at Ukhaiḍir, more than the half-circle
projects. The towers on either side of the main gateway are octagonal.
Of the buildings immediately within the gate we have nothing but the
ground-plan. Roughly speaking they correspond to the three-storied block
at Ukhaiḍir, and as Dr. Herzfeld has pointed out,[261] a further
correspondence lies in the fact that the oblong court to the right of
the gate-house group, with a niche in the qiblah wall, was probably a
mosque. The mosque at Ukhaiḍir occupies much the same position with
regard to the gate, but since the orientation of the two buildings is
different, the qiblah niche at Mshattâ is hollowed out of the main outer
wall, while the niche at Ukhaiḍir is hollowed out of an opposite wall.
(It must be noted that the big mosque in the palace of Balkuwârâ
occupies the same position relatively to the gate.) The conclusion which
Dr. Herzfeld reaches, namely that neither palace was a copy of the
other, but that both were reproductions by different hands of the same
general scheme, is borne out in all other particulars. Beyond the
gate-house block lies the central court; beyond the court the hall of
audience. At Mshattâ, where the lîwân was unknown, its place was taken
by an aisled hall on a basilical plan. Instead of the simple apse there
is a trifoliate chamber covered by a dome. The most renowned example of
the trifoliate apse is in the church at Bethlehem. The learned disagree
as to whether that apse was built by Constantine or by Justinian, but in
either case it was earlier than Mshattâ. For the rest, the trifoliate or
quadrifoliate chamber covered by a dome is a familiar Hellenistic motive
which occurs frequently in palaces and in the baptisteries of early
Christian churches. At Ukhaiḍir we have, in the same position as the
trifoliate chamber, the quadrangular room No. 30. The throne-room, if I
may so term it, at Mshattâ bears comparison with the throne-room at
Qṣair ‘Amrah, where two small apsed rooms correspond to the apsed side
niches. On either side of the ceremonial chambers of Mshattâ lies a
bait, the unit, now complete, which was foreshadowed at Kharâneh and at
Qasṭal. Such is the arrangement of the central part of the palace. The
two wings (to return to Mas’ûdi’s definition) were never built.
Schultz’s ingenious reconstruction gives in each wing a row of baits,
all adhering more or less closely to the norm, with subsidiary courts,
and chambers at either end to fill up the space. When we come to
structural details, the materials are sadly lacking. Either the
buildings are too much ruined to afford the necessary information, or
the photographs which have been taken are insufficient.[262] Those given
by Brünnow and Domaszewski are the best. From them, and from the
reconstruction of Schultz, it is possible to see that the vaults
oversail the walls[263] and that they are built of a double slice of
tiles laid vertically, parallel to the main axis, so as to dispense with
centering. The only photograph of a doorway which has been
published[264] shows a relieving arch constructed of the same double
slice of tiles, with place for a lintel below it. Schultz was able to
determine that the lintel was composed of a wooden beam carrying a
straight arch of stones. The straight arch occurs at Ukhaiḍir, but
without the support of a lintel. The relieving arch has the form of the
brick arches at Ṭûbah, a stilted and slightly pointed oval, and from the
photograph it would seem that it was set back from the face of the jambs
below the lintel, but Schultz in his reconstructions gives it the same
width as the door opening.[265] Brünnow and Domaszewski reconstruct the
doorways in the domed chamber without lintels, and the doorways in the
small chambers of one of the baits without arches--that is to say, they
are arch-shaped, but the arch is merely cut out of the solid wall.
Schultz places lintels and relieving arches over all the doors. _Kim
belir?_ The windows are small and round-arched. The closets were in the
towers as at Ukhaiḍir, and Schultz in one of his drawings[266] places
over the niche a fluted semi-dome. We know no more.
It now remains to sum up the conclusions reached with regard to the
origin of ḥîrah and bâdiyah on either side of the desert. And first it
is clear that Ukhaiḍir stands in the closest relations to the Syrian
group, not only in general conception, but in details of construction.
But Ukhaiḍir reflects the older Lakhmid ḥîrahs, those palaces that were
supposed to represent an army in battle with two wings, and through them
it re-echoes the Sasanian palaces which were contemporary with them.
These too, as we know from the palace of Khusrau at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn, were
composed of a centre and two wings. Again, allowance must be made for
Byzantine influence in the Sasanian palaces and the Lakhmid ḥîrahs.
Justinian lent artificers to Khusrau I; Khawarnaq was built by a Greek.
The intercourse, friendly and unfriendly, between the Sasanian and the
Byzantine empires was unbroken. When it was friendly it took the form of
commerce, and architects were among the exchangeable commodities; when
it was unfriendly it took the form of prisoners of war. Khusrau I must
have captured a large and varied selection of artificers when he removed
the whole population of Antioch to Seleucia. It is improbable that they
should have sat idle in their new abode. They exercised their crafts,
and they exercised them in their own manner. It may well have become the
fashion among the citizens of Ctesiphon to shop in the Greek Bazaar,
just as the citizens of Damascus shop in the Greek Bazaar of their own
town. Greek influence, as we know, did not begin with Justinian. It
began with a mightier figure than that of the imperial lawgiver--with
the mightiest of all, with Alexander. I have already shown that the
Mohammadan lîwân took to itself a part of the Greek peristyle and uses
it still under the name of ṭarmah. Who can tell when this process began?
The Greek peristyle exists in a Parthian palace at Niffer and in
Parthian houses at Babylon. Hatra fronts the desert with a Hellenistic
façade; so does Ctesiphon; it adorns the central court of Ukhaiḍir. But
that Byzantine or earlier Western influence affected in any fundamental
manner the plan of palace or ḥîrah is not borne out by this evidence. No
fundamental change can be observed at any time, but on the contrary a
steady, continuous growth of oriental methods, on oriental lines, and a
steady development based on developing needs, ceremonial and social.
From the days of the Hittites the palace was composed of a centre and
two wings. The khilâni palaces of Zindjirli were laid out on a small
scale; the khilâni palaces of Pasargadae and Persepolis covered a wide
area, but provided little better accommodation; for the courtiers and
guards were lodged elsewhere, in buildings of a less permanent
character. Persepolis was the capital of an empire; all the needs of the
time were fulfilled there. But this is not the case at Firûzâbâd and
Sarvistân. Of the capital seats of the Sasanian kings we know but two,
in any real sense, Ctesiphon and Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn, and at Ctesiphon we know
only the great hall of audience--together with a fairly accurate guess
at its flanking chambers. Before we can say that the extensive wings,
which at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn were added to the khilâni palace, were not a
natural development (and they are planned on principles which are
entirely oriental) we must have a clear conception of that which lay
about the great hall at Ctesiphon, of the palace at Dastadjird which
Heraclius committed to the flames, and of the palaces in the Zohâb
district. The oriental palace, in the form which it had received from
Chosroës and Nu’mânid, laid a strong hold upon the imagination of the
East. In the Days of Ignorance the Arab of the desert entered its courts
with praise; in the days of conquest he divided its spoils with his
fellow soldiers, and sent a part to Mekkah, glorying in the God-given
strength which had dispossessed the kings of the earth. Not by literary
evidence alone can the deep impression which it created be measured. It
gave birth to the Syrian ḥîrahs and to the stupendous residences of the
Abbâsids.
On the Syrian side of the desert there is another element to be
considered, the Roman legionary camp, and this too had a centre and two
wings. The truth is that any complex of buildings laid out on an ordered
plan falls almost inevitably into this disposition. The palace of the
Flavians on the Palatine had a centre and two wings, yet it was not for
that reason derived from the khilâni or related to the oriental palaces.
Its ancestor was the Greek peristyle house which goes back in turn to
the megaron palaces of Mycenae and Tiryns and Troy. Neither were
Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn and its offspring in the Syrian desert derived from the
limes camp. Gradually but surely, while Rome still held the Syrian
frontier, or rather while Rûm--the Hellenistic, the Byzantine Rome,
itself half-orientalized--held it, the ancient Asiatic scheme invaded
the limes fortress, pushed out the Praetorium, or pushed it back against
the encompassing wall, which had become an indispensable requisite, and
having grouped its baits after its own fashion, left a court over. The
union of both sides of the desert under the hand of a single ruler
quickened the process. Neither the Roman Qasṭal nor the Umayyad Ṭûbah
are palaces on the Persian ḥîrah plan; then suddenly Kharâneh and
Mshattâ spring into being, uniting the oriental traditions of the
Mesopotamian side of the desert with oriental traditions which had
developed independently from the same root on the Syrian side. The
Syrian architects were masters of a more scientific technique, for they
had been trained in a Graeco-Roman school. They taught their
Mesopotamian brothers, and even the builders of remote Ukhaiḍir had
learnt how to lay a cross vault.
But if the legionary camp is powerless to affect the ancient palace
plan, it did not wither away, unnoticed, like a plant upon uncongenial
soil. It bloomed again in the cities of the eastern Roman empire, in
Boṣrâ, in Damascus, in Apamea. Towns such as Diyârbekr, where not one
Roman stone remains upon another, still betray a Roman origin in their
crossed thoroughfares and quadruple gateways.[267] And therewith it
returned, remodelled, to the West. The palace at Antioch was built on
the plan of the Roman limes camp. Diocletian copied it at Spalato, and
Constantine’s palace in his new capital was in some respects an echo of
that of Diocletian, though the true oriental palace was not without
effect upon Constantinople.[268] The imperial residence, stereotyped by
him, went on into other phases, too complex, and often too obscure, to
be followed here, but it is curious to note that five hundred years
later, Theophilus, himself an Asiatic, since his father, Michael II, was
a Phrygian by birth, built for himself a palace on the Bithynian coast
which was modelled avowedly on the palace of the khalifs at
Baghdâd.[269] A few years later Mutawakkil laid out Balkuwârâ--what
sister _ḥîri_ with two sleeves stood at Bryas, on the shores of Marmora?
One other point remains. The palace of Ukhaiḍir is contained within a
towered wall which is wholly distinct from it. This is not the
encompassing wall of the ancient East, the primary condition of the
structure. It has the four gateways of the Roman camp, though the
unneeded cross-roads have dropped away. Here at last Imperial Rome has
come to her own. For all its oriental system of fortification, its
towers and its hourds, its machicolations and its loopholes, its
casemates and its crenellations, this wall is perhaps no other than the
wall which surrounded the legionary camp. But I doubt whether the camp
itself, which made so fleeting an apparition on the Asiatic frontiers,
was the deciding factor. The camp lived on in the city and made a far
deeper impression through the city than through the limes fortresses.
The scheme is repeated at Sâmarrâ. Balkuwârâ forms part of a great
enclosure similarly disposed, with three gates, like the gates of
Ukhaiḍir, the palace taking the place of the fourth.[270] The area
covered by the enclosure is so extensive that it resembles a town rather
than a royal dwelling, and through this town run the crossed
thoroughfares which were once the Via Principalis and the Via
Praetoria.