Like the palace of Khusrau, Chehâr Qapû faces east. It covers a rectangular area 134 metres from east to west, and 82·60 metres from north to south (Plate 64). The building materials are the same as those used in the larger palace. The principal entrance is in the east end; I saw nothing of the great portico which M. de Morgan places on the south side, and as the outer wall at that point is entirely ruined, it is impossible to say whether there were a door there or no. The eastern gateway is much ruined (Plate 65, Fig. 1),[47] but the transverse arch between chambers 1 and 2 is standing. To north and south lie a series of courts and small chambers, occupying a width from east to west similar to that of the gateway buildings and apparently appertaining in some way to the entrance, since they do not communicate with the interior of the palace. The eastern wall both of the gateway and of the outer courts has fallen, so that the architectural scheme of the façade cannot be determined. It is certain, however, that it was not symmetrical, for the courts are not symmetrically disposed, nor is the north wing equal in length to the south wing. To the south of the central gate lie two courts, A and B, 10·10 metres from north to south, and 9·35 metres from east to west. Court A is provided with a pair of small rectangular chambers on either side; in court B there are two rooms upon the south side only. There are slight variations in size between these chambers, but they average about 4·10 metres square. They communicated with the court, but not with one another. They have all been covered by conical domes set over the angles on squinch arches. I give an example from No. 6 which will serve to illustrate the construction in every case (Plate 65, Fig. 3). Many of the rooms had a small niche in one wall (Plate 65, Fig. 2), the ṭâqchah, which is to be seen in all Persian houses; it appears again in numerous rooms in the body of the building. In No. 6 the niche is unusually large and, though it has broken through, the plaster decorations on the archivolt are preserved (Plate 66, Fig. 1). They consist of three fillets, and above the archivolt the small oversailing band of plaster which marks the springing of the dome is lifted so as to form a rectangular label. As can be seen from the photographs, most of the plaster has fallen from the walls; where it remains it is usually decorated with an insignificant striated motive consisting of narrow vertical and horizontal bands of five lines each, which look like the impress of some coarse matting on the wet plaster. To the north of the central gate there are two rooms, 9 and 10, communicating with one another. Further north lies a large court, C, 14·10 metres long, with two rooms at either end. Nos. 11 and 12 differ from the usual arrangement. No. 11 measures 6·20 by 4·05 metres and has a niche in the east wall. The north wall, which contained the door into the court, has fallen. No. 12, 1·65 × 4·20 metres, opens into the court by a narrow door in the north-west corner, part of the wall having been cut away to allow space for it. Nos. 13 and 14 are domed rooms of the customary type. In No. 14 the north-west squinch is particularly well preserved, part of the plaster fillets over the archivolt being still in place (Plate 66, Fig. 2).
The central gateway opens into court D, 31·50 × 13·30 metres. At the western end of the south wall of this court there are faint traces of plaster decoration, shallow arched niches separated by engaged colonnettes. The court terminates in a second vaulted gateway (15), which is so much ruined that the details of its structure cannot be made out (Plate 67). On either side of this gate a low archway leads into the vaulted passages 16 and 17. At the eastern end of court D a door gives access to a chamber (18) 27 × 4·20 metres, which forms the east side of court E and opens into that court by two wide doorways. To north and south of court E lie chambers 19 and 20, 12·40 × 4·20 metres and 12·40 × 4·20 metres, which open into the court by three arches carried on masonry piers varying from 2·50 to 2·80 metres in length. On the west side of the court, No. 21 corresponds with No. 18, but the greater part of its walls have fallen. Court F is flanked to the south by No. 23, 11·50 × 4·20 metres, a closed chamber with a single door, and to the north by No. 22, which is only 9·10 metres long in order to allow space for a door leading into No. 24 (11·40 × 4·40 metres). The west side of court F is partly occupied by the vaulted passage (16) and partly by No. 25, a room which no doubt communicated with the court by a door. A door leads from it into No. 26, whence a pair of doorways give access to court G. No. 27 lies to the north of court G and communicates with No. 28, to the north of court H. No. 28 in turn communicates with No. 29, lying parallel with Nos. 30 and 31, two rooms that open out of the west side of court H. Back to back with Nos. 29, 30, and 31 lie Nos. 32, 33, and 34, with doorways opening west. The vaults of these six chambers are well preserved. Plate 68, Fig. 1, shows the interior of No. 31 with an arched ṭâqchah in the wall. The vault is ovoid and oversails the wall.
The courts in the south wing of the palace correspond neither in size nor in disposition with those of the north wing. Opposite to the door of No. 18 a door leads into No. 35, which is an isolated chamber with a deep niche at the south end. Court I can be approached from court D only by a circuitous route through passages 17 and 45. Upon the east side of court I lie the two rooms 36 and 37, 4·40 metres wide and respectively 7·85 and 8 metres long. On the south side there is a group of rooms preceded by an antechamber, of which nothing is standing but a return at the east end of the wall or arcade. Three doors lead out of the antechamber into rooms 39, 40, and 41. In the central chamber (39) there is an arched niche at either end leaving a space 4·15 metres square which was covered by a dome set on squinches (Plate 68, Fig. 2). To east and west, the dome rested upon the arches of the doors leading into Nos. 40 and 41. Beyond 41 there is another room, 42, which was accessible from 41 only. On the north side of court I are two small rooms, 43 and 44, about 4·15 metres square and much ruined. Further west is the entrance to corridor 45. Court I is separated from court J by a wall which is ruined to its foundations. On the south side there is a single long chamber (47) with an antechamber; the north side is occupied by corridor 45, which is accessible from court J by a door in the north-west corner of the court. Corridor 45 communicates with corridor 17, a transverse arch separating the two. I call attention to the fact that the vault builders were always careful to avoid intersection; when two barrel vaults meet at right angles, the one is always divided from the other by a transverse arch. This is very noticeable in corridor 17, where the vault is standing. In the eastern arm of the corridor, opening out of court D, the east and west vault terminates against a transverse arch so as to allow the north and south vault of the western arm to run straight through to the head wall at the northern end.
The western arm of corridor 17 opens into court K. The north and west sides of this court are completely ruined and represented only by grass-grown heaps of stones. On the south side there is a true lîwân group (49, 50, 51) with an antechamber, the lîwân (49) opening into the antechamber through a wide archway, the side chambers (50 and 51) by means of doors. To the west of these chambers there is an open space with no buildings standing upon it; even the outer wall is completely ruined. It is here that the south gate is placed in the French plan. Some 19 to 20 metres west of No. 50, two chambers (52 and 53) with an antechamber are partially preserved. A mound of stones and grass runs northward, continuing the west wall of Nos. 51 and 53. East of this mound, at any rate at its northern end, there were ruin heaps indicating chambers, but I was not able to discern their exact form or extent, nor yet their relation to the hall 54. This hall is a chamber 16·15 metres square, with walls 3·90 metres thick which carried a dome set upon squinch arches (Plate 69, Fig. 1). No part of this dome is standing, but it is safe to conjecture that it was built of brick.[48] The method of constructing the squinches can be seen best at the south-west angle (Plate 69, Fig. 2). An archway, 5·70 metres wide, breaks the centre of each wall. The round arches were built of brick, but on the south side only is any considerable portion of the brickwork preserved (Plate 70, Figs. 1 and 2). The bricks are laid horizontally, not vertically, i.e. with the narrow face outward. Above each archway there is a small round-headed window. On the exterior the face of the walls has perished to a considerable extent. Between the top of the archways and the bottom of the windows the wall would seem to have been recessed back slightly (Plate 71), and at this level the corners of the building appear to have been sliced off, thus reducing the mass of masonry behind the squinches. This effect may, however, be produced merely by the decay of the masonry, for the lower part of the walls also has invariably broken away at the angles. At the north-east and north-west corners I noticed some brickwork embedded in the stone masonry. No. 54 stands 9 metres from the western outer wall, of which at this point nothing but foundations remain. At the north-west angle there are ruins of four chambers (55, 56, 57, 58) placed two deep, and to the south four chambers (59, 60, 61, 62) lie parallel to one another along the wall. No. 62 breaks off abruptly with a high peak of masonry (Plate 72), possibly part of an upper story. I saw no trace of any building further to the west.
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
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
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).
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
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
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
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