CHEHÂR QAPÛ
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.
CHAPTER IV
GENESIS OF THE EARLY MOHAMMADAN PALACE
The palace of Ukhaiḍir is not an isolated phenomenon. It belongs to a group of buildings which exhibit in varying proportions the characteristic features of the fortress and of the pleasure-house of princes. These buildings are scattered over the western frontiers of the Syrian desert; Ukhaiḍir is as yet the sole example of the type which has been discovered upon the eastern side. They are a logical outcome of the period of cultural transition during which they arose, the difficult and distasteful passage from nomadic to settled life; they attest the abiding call of the open wilderness, to which the poets and chroniclers of the first century after the Hidjrah are faithful witnesses. To the Arab the desert is more than a habitation; it is the guardian of traditions older and more deeply rooted than those of Islâm; of traditions which are sacred to his race; of his purest speech, and of his finest chivalry. It is for him the natural theatre of his actions, and there is no other stage on which he can play out his part. To this day I have heard the Beduin speak of themselves as the Ahl al-Ba’îr, the People of the Camel, just as they spoke of themselves in the early centuries as Ahl al-Ḍar’, People of the Udder.[49] The authority of the Prophet was powerless to stay the current of his race. ‘Periodically the Arabs succumbed to the allurement of the camel, to the need to drink of its milk. The Prophet himself was not exempt, since he prayed God to preserve him from it. For his nation, said he, he dreaded the diet of milk. When his companions expressed their astonishment at his fears, he replied: “The passion for milk will lead you to abandon the centres of reunion and to return to nomad existence.”‘[50] His immediate successors followed the example set by him, but the national inclination was not to be restrained, and the Umayyad khalifs returned to the habits of their forefathers. Their capital was Damascus, but their residence was the Syrian desert. They escaped to the bâdiyah, the spring pasturage in the rolling steppes, where the tents of the Ṣukhûr still cover the plain when the winter rains are past; they transported their courts to the ḥîrah, the palace camp.
The word ‘ḥair’ denotes a camp, a castle, or a villa.[51] The original signification does not seem to have implied solid constructions, but rather the headquarters of a desert princeling and his retainers. Such an assemblage must necessarily have been mobile. The exigencies of pasturage and the uncertainties inherent in tribal predominance, where the limits of authority cannot be expressed in terms of geographic definition, were alike unfavourable to stable residence. Joshua the Stylite[52] talks of the ḥertâ of Nu’mân ibn Mundhir as having withdrawn into the inner desert before the attack of the Tha’labites—it must therefore have been a movable camp; on the western borders there is no certain evidence that the Ghassânid princes possessed either fenced cities or garrisoned fortresses.[53] But before the dawn of the Mohammadan era the ḥîrah had begun to change its character, and the nomad encampment to develop into the standing camp and even into the city. The Ghassânids must have had a fixed establishment in the Djaulân,[54] and some of the existing ruins on the eastern frontiers of the Ḥaurân may date from their time. At Khirbet al-Baiḍâ, for example, I could find no certain trace of Roman handiwork. The plan might date from the age of Diocletian, but the decorations betray a different origin.[55] Yet I cannot place them as late as the Umayyad period. Djebel Sais I have not seen.[56] The plan of the bath recalls the arrangement of the chambers at Qṣair ‘Amrah, and it may therefore be Mohammadan. At Qaṣr al-Azraq, Dussaud found a dedication to the emperors Diocletian and Maximian, but the fortress would seem to have been rebuilt in the thirteenth century A.D.[57]
Similarly upon the eastern side of the desert, the Lakhmid camp had grown into an important town, which absorbed the generic title and was known as al-Ḥîrah, the standing camp par excellence, the capital of Persian Arabia. But no sooner did the Lakhmid princes find themselves enclosed within the walls of a city than they threw out fresh ḥîrahs into the desert: palaces, the magnificence of which haunted the imagination of Beduin poets of the Days of Ignorance and gave birth to legendary tales and to moral aphorisms which were recorded with pious, if uncritical, exactitude by the historians of Islâm. We know the site of the most famous of these pleasaunces, Khawarnaq.[58] Ibn Baṭûṭah, in the fourteenth century A.D., saw the remains of its immense domes on the edge of a canal which was fed by the Hindiyyeh branch of the Euphrates. In his day it was still inhabited. The existing ruin mounds, standing upon the brink of the Sea of Nedjef, are covered with the sherds of mediaeval pottery. The canal has now silted up and the Sea of Nedjef is dry. I was told at Nedjef that thirty or forty years ago the lake was full of water, and that the climate of the town, never very much to boast of, had been considerably affected for the worse by the change. Below the town, the bed of the lake is occupied by palm-gardens and cornfields, watered by a canal recently constructed. What was its condition in Sasanian times I do not know. The lake was dry in the Middle Ages,[59] but ‘Adi ibn Zaid speaks of the Nu’mânid lord of Khawarnaq as having looked from his palace walls and rejoiced at the sight of the sea.[60] It is difficult to imagine that any one could have rejoiced in the Baḥr Nedjef if it had worn its present aspect. The extent of the mounds of Khawarnaq is not large, though my impression is that part of the steep earth cliff overhanging the Baḥr Nedjef has fallen away and carried the castle walls with it. The ancient canal from the Hindiyyeh lies about a quarter of a mile to the north of the mounds. Legend has been busy in accounting for the origin of the castle. It is said to have been built by Nu’mân ibn Imra’ al-Qais, by order of the Sasanian king Yazdegerd I, who desired that his son, Bahrâm V Gûr, should be brought up in the salubrious air of the desert above Ḥîrah. This would place its foundation in the early part of the fifth century A.D.[61] The architect was a certain Sinimmâr, a Byzantine (Rûmi) according to some authorities,[62] nor need this assertion excite surprise. A century later Justinian lent workmen to Khusrau I, when the latter was engaged in building the new Antioch near Ctesiphon. Other Lakhmid ḥîrahs are mentioned besides Khawarnaq, but they are to us nothing but a name. Al-Sadîr stood in the desert ‘that lies between al-Ḥîrah and Syria’,[63] presumably not far from Khawarnaq, since the two castles are frequently mentioned together. We hear also of al-Ṣinnîn, where ‘Adi ibn Zaid was imprisoned.[64] Of greater importance was al-Anbâr on the Euphrates, which was rebuilt by Shapûr II in the early part of the fourth century.[65] None of the Lakhmid ḥîrahs in the desert, except Khawarnaq, have been identified. In 1911 I rode out across the Baḥr Nedjef from Khan Muṣallâ to see a ruin called al-Ruḥbân, which was reputed to be ancient, but found nothing except a mud-built wall erected by the Bani Ḥasan. A few palm-trees had been planted near it. My guide, a sheikh of the tribe, was much distressed when I denied to Ruḥbân the antiquity which had been claimed for it. ‘Mistress,’ he expostulated, ‘before my beard was grown, I saw it here.’ His age I should judge to have been no greater than my own, and Ruḥbân may have had the advantage of us by a decade. After this disappointment I declined to visit other quṣûr of the Bani Ḥasan (qaṣr = fort, is the name which is applied to any walled village or palm-garden) though he mentioned a considerable number. Subsequently a mullah of the Nedjef mosque told me that there were ancient remains at Ḥiyyadhiyyeh, which lies somewhere between the Baḥr Nedjef and Ukhaiḍir, to the south of the line across the desert which I had followed. Ḥiyyadhiyyeh is mentioned by Niebuhr in his itinerary from Baṣrah to Aleppo by the desert road—Meshed ‘Ali, el Tukteqâne or el Heiadîe, el Hossian, el Chader (Ukhaiḍir) Ras el ‘Ain.[66] I doubt whether there is much to be found on the surface at Ḥiyyadhiyyeh, for the Bani Ḥasan have planted palm-groves there, and in so doing, they have probably destroyed most of what was old, but the mullah asserted that a Lakhmid castle had stood at that spot and another at Ruḥbeh, which he said was identical with Qâdisiyyeh.[67] I give his opinion for what it is worth, which is very little. There are, however, no doubt old ruins at Ruḥbeh, whether Lakhmid or of a later time, if it occupies the site of Qâdisiyyeh—a very possible hypothesis. It was a large village in A.D. 635, when the Mohammadan invaders defeated the Persians close to its walls. Muqaddasi knew it as a walled town on the pilgrimage road. Mustaufi (fourteenth century) describes it as mostly in ruins, while Ibn Baṭûṭah speaks of it as a large village.[68] The Sâl Nâmeh of the Vilâyet of Baghdâd mentions a ruined qaṣr at Ruḥbeh.[69] The sheikh of the Bani Ḥasan gave me the names of ‘Izziyyeh,[70] and ‘Atiyyah as quṣûr of his tribe, but he did not think that there were ruins at either place.
To our scanty information concerning the pre-Mohammadan ḥîrahs one other item is to be added. Mas’ûdi gives an account in the following terms of a palace built at Sâmarrâ by the khalif Mutawakkil (A.D. 847-861) in imitation of a Lakhmid ḥî ah: ‘Mutawakkil in his days raised a building such as no man knew, it is that which is called the ḥîri and the two wings (literally sleeves) and the porticoes (arûqah). And that was because a companion of his vigils related to him upon a certain night that one of the kings of Ḥîrah, a Nu’mânid of the Bani Naṣr, erected an edifice in his capital, which was al-Ḥîrah, after the model of an army in battle. (The word I have translated by army in battle is ḥarb = war or campaign; Dr. Herzfeld suggests that it must be taken here to mean military camp—a somewhat hypothetical emendation)[71]. For such was his infatuation for war and his love of it; so that the memory of it might never vanish from him under any condition. In this edifice the portico was the audience chamber of the king, and this was the centre (literally the breast); and the two wings (sleeves) lay to right and left. In the two dwellings which formed the wings lodged those who stood nearest to him among his courtiers. In the right wing was the wardrobe, and in the left wing was kept such wine as was needed. The open court of the portico was common to the centre and to the two wings. The doors, three in number, led to the portico. To this day this building (i.e. Mutawakkil’s copy) is called the ḥîri and the two wings in allusion to al-Ḥîrah. And the people followed Mutawakkil, imitating his creation, which is famous to the present time.’[72] The word riwâq, which I have translated ‘portico’, does not necessarily imply the existence of columns, though it is used for the porticoes which surround the court of a mosque. Its primary signification is a roof in front of a tent, supported by a single pole in the middle.[73] I shall have occasion to return later to this important passage (see below, [p. 86]).