Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/426

 394 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part L mosques were derived from buildings of this class. The African mosques were enlargements of the atrice of Christian basilicas, and this form is never found there, but it is the key to all that was afterwards erected to the eastward. In the dearth of Sassanian buildings there is one other monument that it is worth wliile quoting before closing this chapter. It is an archway or grotto, which the same Chosroes cut in the rock at Takt- i-Bostan, near Kermanshah (Woodcut No. 267 on the previous page). Though so far removed from Byzantine influence it is nearly as classical as the palace at Mashita. The flying figures over the arch are evident copies of those adorning the triumphal arches of the Eomans, the mouldings are equally classical, and though the costumes of the principal personages, and of those engaged in the hunting scenes on either hand, partake more of Assyria than of Rome, the whole betrays the influence of his early education and the diffusion of Western arts at that time more than any otlier monument we know of. The statue of himself on his favorite black steed " Shubz diz," is original and interesting, and, with many of the details of this monu- ment, it has been introduced into the restoration of Mashita. This, it must be confessed, is but a meagre account of the archi- tecture of a great people. Perhaps it may be that the materials do not exist for making it more complete, but what is more likely is that they have not yet been looked for, but wall be found when attention is fairly directed to the subject. In the meanwhile what has been said regarding it will be much clearer and better understood wdien we come to speak of the Byzantine style, which overlapped the Sassanian, and was to some extent contemporary with it.