The want of timber has always been felt so much by the people of the two Gulphs, and of the Western coast of the Indian ocean, that a check on their supplies from the Malabar coast, which Brigadier-General Malcolm very seasonably suggested, will probably keep down the future growth of the pirate power. The fleet of the Soldan of Egypt, which was destined to relieve Diu, was formed of Dalmatian timber, transported overland to the arsenals of Suez;[57] and even some of the houses at Siraff, on the Gulph of Persia,[58] were formed of European wood. In the seventeenth century, the Arabs of Muscat, who subsequently formed connections on the Malabar coast to procure timber, obtained permission from the King of Pegu to build ships in the ports of his country.[59] If therefore the importation of foreign wood were cut off, the Arabs could hardly, without extreme difficulty, maintain a naval force.

SHAPOUR.

[p. 86.]

The city of Shapour derived its name from the monarch who founded it,[60] Sapor, the son of Artaxerxes, and the second Prince of the Sassanian family. In his reign it was probably one of the capitals of Persia; and for some ages continued to be the chief city of that district of Persis Proper, which was connected with his name, the Koureh Shapour of Ebn Haukal.[61] The great province in which it was included, had been particularly favoured by Cyrus, and his dynasty: it was their native seat, and contained their palaces, their treasures and their tombs. When their empire was overthrown, this portion was still administered by a race of native princes,[62] who, after an interval of five hundred years, revived their pretensions to the throne of Cyrus,[63] and re-established in their ancient seats, the religion and the empire of the Caianian Kings. The Princes of the house of Sassan, who thus came forth from it as from the cradle of their strength, regarded it as the original and favourite appanage of their crown; and marked their peculiar connection with it by imposing their names on its four districts,[64] a division which, amid all the revolutions of their dominions, is even yet recognized.[65] Here, therefore, the revival of the worship of fire, the great object of their dynasty, was established more generally and more permanently, than in other parts of their monarchy; for in the tenth century, when the Mahomedans had been three hundred years in possession of Persia, “no town or district of Fars was without a fire-temple;”[66] and the division of Shapour in particular, contained two at least of the four temples which Ebn Haukal has particularised in the province.[67]

In this district accordingly, which was connected with the house of Cyrus and of Sassan by so many ties, and in Susiana, which was alike the favourite of both dynasties, we may expect to find the most splendid remains of their greatness. Both provinces have been explored very imperfectly, as travellers have been confined to the regular road; and no European has enjoyed those opportunities of observation and enquiry, which a residence in the country alone can give. Persepolis itself might probably have been unknown, if it had not been passed in the line from Shiraz to Ispahan; but the ruins of Pasagardæ,[68] of Darabgherd,[69] and of Jawr,[70] in Fars; as well as those of Susa, of Ahwaz, and of Shooster, in Khuzistan, are almost unknown. The whole of the plain of Merdasht, the hollow Persis of the ancients, as well as the part more immediately surrounding Persepolis, contained, as Chardin believed, a continued succession of ruins; “Je southaiterois que quelque habile curieux allât passer un eté a Persepolis, à la decouverte de toutes les ruines de cette fameuse ville. Les gens du pays assurent que ces ruines s’etendent a plus de dix lieues à la ronde.”[71]

Shapour itself is an instance of the very limited knowledge of Persia which we possess, beyond the immediate line of a common route. It is situated only a very few miles from the road, yet it has been passed by every traveller from Tavernier and Thevenot, down to Scott Waring, without a suspicion of its present existence. It certainly retained a share at least, of its political importance after the fall of the house of Sassan. It contained a mosque as well as a fire-temple, in the time of Eban Haukal;[72] and probably like other great cities of the East, suffered less from the first violence of the Arabian invasion, than from the successive wars of native dynasties, and from the gradual decay to which the declining population and exhausted wealth of the empire consigned all the works of their former greatness. Still Shapour appears to have survived these causes of desolation, and to have deserved a place among the cities of Asia, at the end of the sixteenth century, for it occurs in a table of latitudes and longitudes in the Ayeen Acbaree.[73] From that time nothing more is known of it: its position indeed is marked in a map of the year 1672;[74] and its name, on the authority of Oriental geographers, is repeated by D’Anville as the capital of the district. But no European traveller had described its actual state, or alluded to its history; and the first account of those sculptures, which yet render it an object of interest, was conveyed to us in a short note, added by Sir Harford Jones from his own observations, to the second edition of Dr. Vincent’s Nearchus, p. 391.

The Eastern monarchs have often commemorated the great exploits of their reigns by the foundations of cities. Cyrus is thus said to have built Pasagardæ, to celebrate his overthrow of the Median empire; and Artaxerxes, on the spot where he had defeated Artabanus, the last King of the Parthians, raised the city of Jawr.[75] Succeeding princes of his house, as Baharam[76] and Shapour D’Hulactaf,[77] severally raised Kermanshah and Casvin, to immortalize particular acts of their history. It is probable therefore that Shapour the first, who is described by the Orientals as the founder of great cities,[78] and acknowledged by all to have built Shapour, imposed his own name upon that which he destined to record the most brilliant of his successes: and that the city of Shapour accordingly, was the memorial of the defeat, captivity, and servitude of the Emperor Valerian.

The architect of such a work would naturally select his ornaments from the subject in which his plan originated; and the sculptures at Shapour might therefore be supposed to contain some prominent allusions to the Roman war. The triumphs of that war are almost unremembered in the history or the traditions of the Orientals; and the only records of the victories of Sapor, which are left in Persia, are the sculptures on the rocks of Shapour and Nakshi Rustam: and though, like every other work, of which nothing is known, they are referred by the modern Persians to the fabulous exploits of Rustam the Hercules of their country, the internal evidence of their design is sufficient to appropriate them to their real and historical objects.

That in fact the triumphs of the house of Sassan, are represented both at Shapour and at Nakshi Rustam, can hardly be contested. That in one of the sculptures, the royal figure on horseback is Sapor himself, and that the Roman suppliant before him is the Emperor Valerian, is probable almost from the first view of the delineations; is strengthened by the history of the spot where they are found; and is confirmed by the identity of the principal figure here, with one bearing an inscription in the name of Sapor,[79] at Nakshi Rustam.