Sassanid art in pictures

The Sassanids ruled over Iran from 224 AD until the Arabs took over in the 7^th century AD. This is a far cry from the empire of Darius III that Alexander conquered. Yet, it is an interesting time frame altogether since the Sassanids drew their inspiration from the earlier Achaemenid rule (see: Sassanid reliefs tell a story of their own in Persia).

This era left its imprints all over Persia, as can be seen in the rock-carved reliefs of Naqs-i Rajab and Naqsh-i Rustam close to Persepolis, Tang-i Tchogan at Bishapur and Taq-iBostan near Kermanshah. Also, the temples of goddess Anahita, both in Bishapur and in Kangavar show a mixture of Sassanid and Hellenistic influences (see: The powerful goddess Anahita in Persia).

[Picture from Tehran Times]

Presently, the Italian University of Sapienza in Rome has worked together with the Anahita Temple National Center in Kangavar to exhibit photographs on arts and monuments, together with architectural works from across the province of Kermanshah in western Iran. The pictures include views of the ruins of the Anahita Temple in Kangavar as well as of the Palace of Khosrow Parviz in Qasr-e Shirin.

The Iranian collaboration with the Italian experts has centered on Anahita’s sanctuary in Kangavar as discussed earlier in my blog The powerful goddess Anahita in Persia.

Also highlighted is the Palace of the Sassanid King Ardashir in Firuzabad that displays the unique dome construction known as the squinch. This architectural feature consists of building a dome on top of a square base. It may well be the earliest surviving example and could indicate that the squinch was actually invented in Persia.

The imposing palace of Ctesiphon or Hatra (now in modern Iraq) is much better known because of a sizable vaulted arch. This city was built by the Parthians in the 2^nd century BC as the capital of their empire. Ctesiphon/Hatra was conquered by the Sassanids in 226 AD, who turned it into a true metropolis worthy to serve as their capital. I seem to remember that the arch or at least the human heads in the surrounding walls were attacked by IS fanatics, but I couldn’t find a confirmation to that end.

Little information about the Sassanid empire transpires beyond the borders of modern Iraq and Iran, despite the grand cities these kings built using their precious craftsmanship as metal workers and gem engravers. They also took care of translating much of the existing western and eastern literature into Pahlavi, the Sassanid language.

The damaged site of Hatra

The World Heritage Site of Hatra in modern Iraq definitely deserves our undivided attention!

We will remember the bone-chilling pictures of ISIS smashing and destroying so many features of this Parthian city that survived for two thousand years.

[Map from Mr Barton's AP World History]

As early as the 7^th century, Parthia occupied the land in modern northeast of Iraq but when a century later Cyrus the Great created his larger Persian empire, the territories of the Medes and the Parthians were automatically assimilated. This was the empire which the Achaemenids inherited and Alexander the Great conquered in 331 BC. After his death, this part of his realm fell into the hands of the Seleucids. Parthia soon established its own empire but remained the center of conflicts between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, and later on the Romans. Their empire was created in 247 BC and as an independent country they managed to survive for roughly five hundred years. Eventually they fell to Ardashir who became the first king of the Sassanid Empire in 224 AD.

Parthia was very much coveted as a prosperous center of trade and commerce, being located on the Silk Road between the Roman Empire and the rising Empire of the Han dynasty in China. Because of its strategic position, the country underwent the influences of both west and east, generally showing a combination of Achaemenid and Seleucid elements. Yet they added their own architectural features like for instance the vaulted iwans which they produced on monumental scale (the largest iwan has a span of 15 meters).

Overall, the surviving remains of Hatra date from the 1^st century BC but most buildings belong to the period between 117 and 150 AD.

Recently the ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiatives has published a highly interesting article by Jaimy O’Connell about the damaged relics of Hatra with great photographs of pre- and post-damaged buildings and features enhanced with pertinent comments. Please click on this link to see them all as I will show you only a select choice.

The temenos of Hatra in the center of the city counted almost twenty temples. This aerial view 

[An aerial photograph of the temenos of Hatra (Dr. Suzanne E. Bott, US State Department; October 16, 2009)]

as well as the plan tell a lot about the grandeur of that time.

This pre-damaged picture of the interior speaks for itself:

[A pre-damage photograph of the interior of room 12 of the Great Iwans (Dr. Suzanne E. Bott, US State Department; January 2010)]

The same goes for this splendid Hellenistic Temple before being damaged.

[A photograph of the colonnade of the Hellenistic Temple (from the southeast) showing damage from gunfire or mortars (Art Daily, April 27, 2017).]

The pictures of the recent barbarian destruction simply break my heart and I cannot include them in this precious reference to glorious times past but they are part of the article by the ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiatives and have been showed on several occasions in the media also.

Would it be asking too much to see that future generations will remember the beauty and the splendor of places like Hatra without having to relive the senseless destruction by these fanatics? Unfortunately, all wars over the centuries have destroyed precious relics out of pure stupidity and/or greed. It seems that mankind will never learn.

An Alexandria in Kurdistan - Iraq?

Two and a half thousand years after his death, the name of Alexander is still making good PR. As soon as some ruins or artifacts are being found somewhere near the presumed route the conqueror took during his campaign through Asia, there is a rush to connect them to Alexander. Maybe wrongly, maybe rightfully so – time will tell.

The lakeside site was discovered by a team of Iraqi and 

British archaeologists led by experts from the British Museum - From Phys.org.

The spot this time is situated in northern Iraq, actually in the Kurdish region near the city of Qalatga Darband which according to some daring researchers could be a city founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. Qalatga Darband is located a good one hundred kilometers east of the battlefield of Gaugamela, meaning that the assumption is not entirely improbable. Other theories link the site to the late Hellenistic era or even to the transition period from Hellenism to Parthian rule. The very name translates into Kurdish as “Castle of the Mountain Pass”, a strategic location where the Little  Zab River cuts through the mountain range to empty eventually into the Tigris River.

Qalatga Darband was discovered in 1973, but excavations in this troubled region started  first by the French in 2013 followed by the British in 2016 who used the terrain to train Iraqi archaeologists. Unfortunately the latest unrest after the Kurdish referendum for independence has forced the last foreign experts to leave.

The once so proud archaeological tradition in Iraq is in a very poor state after the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf War and more recently the invasion of IS. Many sites have been looted or simply bulldozed, meaning that history has been obliterated altogether. Others remain inaccessible and based on aerial and satellite surveys there are still many more to be explored. But the days of excavations by foreign nations are no longer acceptable and the Iraqis will have to do it themselves – hence the training mission of the British Museum that is set to run until 2020.

In the meantime, the discovery of two statues at Qalatga Darband seem to indicate that the site was once a thriving hub on the route from Greece to Mesopotamia and Persia – possibly linking it to Alexander because one of the unearthed statues could be his portrait (a second statue looks like Aphrodite). Of course, it will take far more research and excavations in order to confirm the link with Alexander as there are many gaps in the facts and figures that came to us.

The grass-grown walls of Qalatga Darband, running down to Lake Dokan. 

The fortifications defended the western border of the young Parthian Empire. In the foreground is one of the square towers under excavation. 

Photograph: Mary Shepperson/by permission of The British Museum - From The Guardian

The Kurdish region seems to be rich in archaeological sites as satellite images have found some 354 sites! One of the images taken near Qalatga Darband  and shared in the article from The Guardian shows an overgrown fortification wall interrupted every twenty meters or so by a square projecting tower – a very tempting project!

In the end, I’m afraid that Qalatga Darband is not high on the list of researchers and archaeologists as bigger names from history will claim priority once the staff is properly trained. After all, Iraq is home to rich historical sites like Nimrud, Ctesiphon, Nineveh, Ur, Uruk, Babylon, Borsippa, Hatra, and Seleucia-on-the-Tigris to name just a handful.

World Heritage Sites in Danger

The war in the Middle East, especially in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, is a terribly destructive one ( see: The War in Syria, what will happen to its heritage?; Loss of our Cultural Heritage in the Middle-Eastern Conflicts). Millions of people have been displaced, and the number of habitations that have been shot down and blown to pieces can no longer be counted. Among the damaged constructions are – inevitably – irreplaceable ancient sites that belong to human heritage. They are pages of our history that are torn and lost forever.

In Syria and Iraq alone, UNESCO lists ten World Heritage Sites, and of those ten, they say, nine are presently in danger. ISIS, although not the only destructive factor, is definitely the main culprit.

The majority of the sites are located in Syria:

The ancient city of Palmyra has been in the news repeatedly (see: The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra; The Temple of Bel at Palmyra – In Memoriam; The glorious days of Palmyra; In honor of Palmyra; Good news from Palmyra?; Open letter from Syrian Archaeologists about Palmyra;  Another Wave of Destruction hitting Palmyra). There is no need to develop the subject any further.

The well-preserved remains of Bosra on Syria’s southern border are less known but contain a great number of ancient buildings. Most famous is probably its Roman theater from the 2^nd century AD, when Bosra was the capital of the Province of Arabia. Yet there also are many testimonies from the days when the city was ruled by the Nabataeans, the Byzantine Empire, and the Umayyads. Bosra, however, was one of the first cities under siege and suffering from repeated shelling and bombing by ISIS (the theater was a choice location for the snipers).

Another sore spot is the ancient city of Aleppo, which, like Palmyra, was situated on antique trading routes (see: Tracking Alexander from Tyre to the Euphrates) and remained a major city in Syria. Since 2012, it has been divided alternately between rebels and government troops. Among the destroyed and damaged buildings is the Mosque of Aleppo and its Minaret from the 11^th century AD (see: Desperation of the Archaeologists).

Lesser known but certainly as important are the so-called Dead Cities with their precious villages and churches that flourished between the 1st and the 7^th centuries, ranging from antiquity to the end of the Byzantine era. Fighters and refugees alike sought shelter among these ruins, trying to accommodate the fragile remains to their needs.

From another time frame are the many Crusader Castles, the most renowned being the Crac-des-Chevaliers. They are unique because of their mixed architecture of European and Eastern influences. Here too, the Syrian army and the rebels occupied the premises in turn without any respect or consideration for the patrimony.

Last but not least, there is the damage done in Damascus, one of the most ancient cities in the world. Damascus was already a problem child because of a population decrease and people moving from older buildings to newer housing facilities. This left big gaps in some of the city’s neighborhoods. The fighting inside the Old City started as early as 2012 and caused more damage. UNESCO has counted as many as 125 protected monuments in Damascus, among which is the famous Umayyad Mosque, one of the largest mosques in the world.

UNESCO also lists a number of precious buildings in Iraq. Unfortunately, these are less known by the general public simply because traveling to Iraq was and is problematic.

The city of Hatra was one of the best surviving examples of a Parthian city founded in the 3^rd or 2^nd century BC. Most of its city walls and towers, as well as the sacred temenos of the Temple of Mrn, were still standing when ISIS arrived. As they did in nearby Nimrud a few days before, they hacked down the magnificent figures that decorated the arches and vaulted passages. The Great Temple was a rare example of combined Greek, Roman, Persian, and Arabian architectural styles.

The Assyrian city of Assur on the western bank of the River Tigris is another precious site, as it was the first capital of the Assyrian Empire. Assur existed for nearly four thousand years and was finally destroyed by the great Tamerlane. However, the stately Parthian Palace and Temple have survived into our 21^st century until they fell under threat of ISIS. The fate of Assur remains uncertain, for if the city is not destroyed by terrorists, it may become a victim of the dam project on the Tigris, which will flood whatever walls that are still standing.

Finally, there is the old Abbasid capital of Samarra, which is the only surviving Islamic capital to show its original layout, architecture, and decorations (including mosaics and carvings). It is home to the Great Shiite Mosque, which was in danger when the city was taken by ISIS and was caught up in the war between Shiites and Sunnites. It seems that the Iraqi government was able to push the invaders back.

Not very uplifting altogether. As to Afghanistan, where the situation is far more complicated, there is the Valley of Bamiyan, where the giant Buddhas were blown up in 2001, and the Minaret of Jam (see: The Minaret of Djam, an Excursion in Afghanistan by Freya Stark). Meanwhile, UNESCO has put the cities of Herat, the city founded by Alexander as Alexandria Ariana, and Balkh, or, as it was called in antiquity Bactra or Zariaspa (see: Alexander’s Prison?) on a tentative list.

[Picture of the Bamyan Valley is from Ancient Origins]

Although this is only a corner of our planet, there is more than enough to worry about!

[Picture of Hatra Temple is from Judith Weingarten. 
Picture of the Holy City of Samarra is from Al-Islam]