Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture

by Gertrude Lowthian Bell

The first great distinction, then, between the second-century façades of Petra and the third-century façade of Ctesiphon is that the mock architecture at Petra is organically coherent, whereas at Ctesiphon it is incoherent, i.e. it is a pattern covering the wall-face rather than a simulation of plastic construction. The second great distinction is the systematic use of the archivolt at Ctesiphon for all the secondary intercolumniations in the wings. It is perhaps not without importance to observe that the same change from architrave to archivolt took place, though at a rather later date, in the stone-building regions of western Asia. In Syria, for example, the arched window almost entirely replaced the rectangular window in the course of the fifth century.[347] In the lower and central zones of Ctesiphon the arches are framed by groups in a rectangle composed of engaged piers and architraves; in the upper zone this system is abandoned. The principle of the arched niche within a rectangular frame appears, as has been seen, as early as Assyrian stelae, but for the use of the motive in a continuous series upon the façade there is, so far as I am aware, no example earlier than the Tabularium.[348] In the Augustan age it is found upon the Porta Praetoria at Aosta,[349] and thenceforward it governs the decorative scheme of Roman city gateways. Whether it was derived from Hellenistic Alexandria, together with the whole city gateway type, as Schultze surmises;[350] or whether it was evolved out of such wooden superstructures as gave birth to the decoration upon the Etruscan gates at Perugia;[351] or whether it was a specifically Roman (Stadtrömisch) conception, it is impossible to say. Nor does it signify. We know it as Roman, not only in the gateways, but also in the theatres and amphitheatres of the Roman empire, and I cannot doubt that the perfected Roman scheme is at least as directly responsible for Mesopotamian wall-surface decoration as is the western Asiatic development of Hellenistic façades. The gateway at Aosta, the Storied tomb at Petra, may well be taken as representing the immediate progenitors of Ctesiphon.

Five hundred years later, in round figures, comes Ukhaiḍir—five hundred years of architectural growth and of fairly continuous intercourse with the West. The architrave has vanished from the principal orders; it is retained only to form the old rectangular framework for the small niches at the top of the wall. Symmetry and organic cohesion rule over the two lower zones. But in the details of its composition there is nothing at Ukhaiḍir which might not have been foretold from the façade of Ctesiphon.

The lower zone of the north façade forms part of the decorative scheme of the central court as a whole. The central court resembles, as has been observed by Dr. Reuther, a Greek peristyle with engaged columns in place of free standing columns; the southern side is, however, treated as a separate façade, the façade of the lîwân. The principal feature was necessarily the wide arched opening of the lîwân itself. There is nothing new here; we have it at Ctesiphon, combined with Hellenistic wings; we have it at Firûzâbâd, without side doors, and at Sarvistân and at Hatra.

Hatra, though in plan it is no less purely oriental than Ctesiphon, shows direct Western influence far more strongly than the southern Mesopotamian or the Persian palaces. Dr. Herzfeld has compared its triple-arched façade, wherein the central arch surpasses the flanking arches in height and width, with that of the triumphal arch,[352] and the comparison is apt. So far as my knowledge goes, the triple-arched scheme appears for the first time in the Assyro-Persian cultural sphere at Hatra, and it is accompanied there by strongly Hellenized details of decoration, which distinguish it from the older oriental palaces to which it is related in plan. This Hellenized decoration is present in all other Parthian ruins, and it is not surprising that it should be so. The Parthians wrested their empire from a Greek dynasty. The Mesopotamia which they conquered was a part of Asiatic Greece; it was more closely linked to Greek culture than it had ever been linked before, or was ever to be linked again. The Hellenistic triple-arched scheme fitted the lîwân plan admirably, inasmuch as it provided the great opening which was essential to the lîwân hall. But it implied the placing of doors in the two flanking chambers, and this was done for the first time at Hatra. The side doors were an innovation which was not accepted without hesitation. It was not adopted in the façade of Firûzâbâd, where Hellenistic influence is almost entirely lacking. To a great extent the Sasanians stand for a reaction against Hellenism. A fresh wave of orientalism flows back into Mesopotamia with their conquest, and they went far to complete the severance with the West which the Parthians had begun when they overthrew the Seleucids. But the Greek domination, together with the fitful occupation of parts of northern Mesopotamia by Roman armies, left an indelible mark. Moreover, the Sasanian frontiers marched with those of Rome, and the interpenetration of the two civilizations was inevitable. It is felt in the façade of Ctesiphon. Though the triple-arched scheme is not present there, the provision of independent doors to the side chambers was a convenience; it was used at Firûzâbâd in the lîwân group at the back of the posterior façade; it was used at Ctesiphon, and thereafter it was not to disappear. With it the triple-arched façade came into favour. It formed part of the truly oriental façade of Sarvistân; no doubt it existed at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn; it exists at Ukhaiḍir, but it is there completely re-orientalized. The ṭarmah-lîwâns bear a faint resemblance to the Hellenistic motive; in the lîwâns of courts C and G the likeness fades; in the south façade of the central court it is gone altogether and the side doors are no more necessary to the scheme than they were at Ctesiphon. In place of the triumphal arch façade we have the lîwân façade which dominates the architecture of Persia and of India. The central hall is raised above the flanking vaults and this raised vault implies a lifting of the central part of the façade. Dr. Reuther conjectures that a rectangular frame was given to the central arch, and since that is the stereotyped form of the lîwân façade of a later date, I have adopted his view. Moreover, some such device must have been used at Hatra. There, too, the vault of the lîwân rises above the flanking vaults, and Dr. Andrae, in his reconstruction of the façade, has given it a rectangular frame ([Fig. 31]). But at Hatra the arched opening of the lîwân was considerably lower than its vault and need not necessarily have broken the horizontal lines of the façade. It must, however, be borne in mind that something very like the later lîwân façade must have existed at Hatra, as it existed at Ukhaiḍir. Flandin and Coste, in their restorations of Sarvistân (Voyage en Perse, Plate 29), give a true lîwân façade to the principal entrance and to the side lîwân, and indeed their section indicates the vault of the side lîwân as springing so high that the façade must have been raised to correspond. The lîwân arch has been given in these restorations the same rectangular frame which has been conjectured to have existed at Hatra and at Ukhaiḍir. At Ukhaiḍir, as at Ctesiphon, the wings are decorated by blind arcades, two of which, for the sake of convenience, are broken by doors. The arcades are shallower than those which are carried round the other three sides of the court; the capitals of the columns, as Dr. Reuther has pointed out, must have been different from the other engaged capitals, since the shafts swell outwards towards the top;[353] and the calottes which cover the niches are adorned with Hazârbâf, the interwoven motive common in oriental woodwork.[354] The great arch of the lîwân is carried by pairs of engaged columns set in antis, and this is the arrangement which was usually adopted in the later lîwân façades. We have seen it in the tombs of Madâin Ṣâliḥ and of Petra. On either side there is a narrow arched niche which has the appearance of buttressing the central arch; beyond these follow three arched niches of wider span, the innermost on either side being slightly narrower than the others. The engaged column of the lîwân arch is joined to the quarter-column of the small flanking niche by a straight wall-face, on the same principle as that which is employed in the central supports of the ṭarmah-lîwâns of courts B and H. The result is in plan a double column, similar to the double columns which carry the arcades of every early Christian church in central Anatolia.[355] I saw one of these double columns in a graveyard at Raqqah, where it is used as a tomb-stone. They are foreshadowed in the Nabataean façade at Si’ in the Ḥaurân.[356]

Fig. 31. Hatra, façade of palace reconstructed.

(From Hatra, by kind permission of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft.)

The triple-arched façade must have been popular in the early Abbâsid period. It is found in the Bait al-Khalîfah at Sâmarrâ, where it is as pronounced as it was at Hatra. It was present in the two main façades of the audience chambers at Balkuwârâ.[357] But the single arched motive was to play an equally important part in Mohammadan architecture, a part of which an early (perhaps the earliest) indication is to be seen at Ukhaiḍir. On the north wall of the great hall the central feature is the great arch with its shallow calotte. Within this frame is set the smaller arched opening of the door. Here, as Fergusson has observed,[358] is the ‘perfectly satisfactory solution of a problem which has exercised the ingenuity of architects of all ages’. It has always been manifest ‘that to give a large building a door at all in proportion to its dimensions was, to say the least of it, very inconvenient. Men are only six feet high and they do not want portals through which elephants might march. It was left, however, for the Saracenic architects completely to get over the difficulty. They placed their portals—one or three, or five, of moderate dimensions—at the back of a semi-dome. This last feature thus became the porch or portico, and its dimensions became those of the portal, wholly irrespective of the size of the opening. No one, for instance, looking at this gateway (south gate of Akbar’s mosque at Fatehpur Sîkrî) can mistake that it is a doorway, and that only, and no one thinks of the size of the openings that are provided at its base. The semi-dome is the modulus of the design, and its scale that by which the imagination measures its magnificence’. The same principle rules over two of the smaller doorways of Ukhaiḍir, the doors at the outer ends of the corridor 5-6.

The arched niche, either blind or pierced with doors or windows, is used at Ukhaiḍir to complete the decoration of the north wall of the great hall. Blind niches with a rectangular frame stand on either side of the central calotte, while above it the three niches are pierced by windows. Here and in all other examples at Ukhaiḍir, the opening, simulated or real, is covered by a shallow calotte. In the central court the single niche at the south-east corner is potentially a doorway; it is covered by a fluted semi-dome (compare the doubtful example at Mshattâ, above, p. 118). In the same manner the niches on the two side walls of room 32 are potentially windows; at Karkh, where they are similarly placed, but in outer walls, they are actually pierced by window openings. The single niche motive is found in room 140, where, however, the niche is unusually shallow. That the form of such niches as those of the great hall and of rooms 31 and 32 is Hellenistic is not open to a moment’s doubt. Out of the countless classical parallels I may cite the aedicula upon the east façade of the basilica at Shaqqah.[359] The archivolt at Shaqqah is carried on colonnettes, the semi-dome is fluted, and the addition of a pediment, in the true Graeco-Roman style of Syria, involves the doubling of the colonnettes. The purely decorative character of the aedicula may well be compared with that of the niches on either side of the central calotte in the great hall. Dr. Reuther draws an apt parallel between the placing of the niches in the great hall and the placing of the niches in the building on the citadel at ‘Ammân,[360] and he calls attention to the fact that at ‘Ammân the colonnettes have neither capital nor bases and that the archivolts of one of the pairs of niches in room 32 are decorated with a zigzag ornament analogous to that of ‘Ammân. All these points help to prove the Mohammadan origin of the building on the citadel. It is not, however, strictly correct to describe the colonnettes either at ‘Ammân or at Ukhaiḍir as being without capitals. They are all provided with a small impost block. In room 32 a strikingly oriental motive is introduced into the niches on the side walls. The spear-shaped ornament in the centre of each niche was familiar to Assyrian decoration. Whether it had, or had not, its origin in the spear-shaped loopholes of fortified walls,[361] it is used for purely ornamental purposes in Assyrian decorative crenellations at Assur and in Parthian crenellations at Warka.[362] It was common in a similar position during the Achaemenid period,[363] and was carried on into later Mohammadan work, with the difference that the whole niche was given a spear-shaped or trifoliate heading[364] ([Plate 75], Fig. 1). Nor are the recessed rosettes of the stucco decoration at Ukhaiḍir connected with Hellenistic types; they have affinities with the rosette motives of Assyrian fresco and enamelled brick,[365] but the floret shape of the Assyrian rosette disappears with the perspective treatment. In a cruder form the rosette of Ukhaiḍir is used at Mâr Ṭahmâsgerd. Here it is not recessed but cut deeply into the wall, and its effect is produced solely by the resultant shadow. The crenellated motive of the stucco work in the mosque has its counterpart in the ornamental crenellations of Assyria and Persia, but it is used at Ukhaiḍir with singular freedom. The crenellations are combined so as to form recessed rhomboids; they are even applied to the archivolt in the two doorways of corridors 5 and 6.[366] Save for the rosettes, all the stucco decoration at Ukhaiḍir is of an architectural character—that is to say that it imitates plastic construction such as crenellations, arched and columned openings; or else it is an elaboration of structural details, such as the squinch or the transverse arch. Sometimes it is actually called into being by structural processes, as in the horizontal ridges of the vaults in the mosque and room 31. The motives placed on the summits of the vaults in rooms 31 and 32 are reminiscent of coffering, and I have little doubt that their origin is to be sought in the Hellenistic scheme of ceiling decoration. It is, however, interesting to note that Western forms are more obscured at Ukhaiḍir than in buildings of a later Mohammadan period. The stucco coffers of the vaults at Sâmarrâ stand very close to classical types,[367] whereas the coffers at Ukhaiḍir are employed in a manner foreign to classical conceptions. This must be largely due to the fact that in the great palaces at Sâmarrâ Western artificers were at work, while in the comparatively unimportant desert retreat oriental workmen and oriental ideas had the upper hand, yet I would suggest that the differences between Ukhaiḍir and Sâmarrâ indicate a considerable difference in date. In the ninth century Western influence was stronger in Mesopotamia than it was in the preceding age, when the arts were still held closely in the thrall of Sasanian tradition. Consequently we find at Sâmarrâ capitals inspired by the Corinthian acanthus capital, and among the wall decorations the Hellenistic vine motive plays a conspicuous part.[368] We have yet to learn that the flowing vine, so essential to Coptic decoration and to that of the Hellenistic coast-lands, was a feature of Sasanian architectural ornament. It occurs in monuments of the Umayyad period which were directly under the sway of Hellenistic Syria, such as Mshattâ and the miḥrâb of the Khâṣakî Djâmi’,[369] but except for sporadic examples in Parthian architecture, where the Hellenizing tendencies of the decorations are indisputable,[370] its systematic use on Babylonian soil begins (so far as the evidence goes) at Sâmarrâ in the middle of the ninth century, and there it was the artificers, not the work of their hands, which were imported. I do not deny that in comparison with the Sâmarrâ palaces Ukhaiḍir is a crude product of local workmanship, wherein it is natural to expect a closer adherence to local tradition; but it is important to point out how close that adherence is, and how well it corresponds with recorded examples of Mesopotamian and Persian decoration earlier than the Umayyads, whereas the decoration in the same regions, but at a later period, diverges widely from the older schemes. The divergence is due, in my estimation, to the diffusion of Western influence when the western and the eastern provinces of the khalifate were drawn together under the Abbâsids and all quarters of their empire contributed to their constructions. In the ninth century we find Mesopotamian architecture in Cairo and Coptic decoration in Sâmarrâ. I regard the oriental character of Ukhaiḍir as indicative not only of its isolated position, beyond the direct course of international civilization and arts, but also as typical of the primitive age during which it arose.