Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/196

 Vaulted Structures. to judge from the r6le assigned to the porch, twenty-eight metres in height, and continued in the interior of the building by a vaulted gallery twenty^two metres wide and thirty-five metres long, the plan could not gready differ from that of FerOz- Abad (Fig. 92). The dimensions of the KhosrQ are on a much larger scale, but the disposition is identical. The great vaulted doorway, opening in a massive front, remains to this day the most original feature of Persian architecture ; it occurs in the edifices erected in the reign of the national sovereigns, as well as in those that have risen since the Arab conquest A great arch is the sole relic of the Tagh-i-Bostan (Fig. 63) ; whilst the huge vaulted portal of the Tagh-i-Gherro * — ^respecting whose date no doubt exists — ^but for its look of decay, would not be singled out from amidst the surrounding buildings, mosques, houses, and caravanserais of modern Persia.' The plan of these edifices in some respects approaches the one we have just described, both in its rectangular shape and the rarity of its lateral openingfs. As at Feruz Abad and Mahista here also one entrance, in the shape of a large porch, opens on one of the small sides of the parallelogram.' If we turn to consider the elevation, we shall also be obliged to cite works of the last centuries of antiquity, in order to find types analogous to those of our edifices of Fars. The palace of El- Hadr (ancient Hatra), in Mesopotamia, is generally considered as contemporaneous with the Parthians, as the sole monument, perhaps, in which instances of their architecture have come down to us.* In it, however, the apartments have no cupolas, and the arrangement consists of a number of semi-circular vaults joined one to the other ; whereas the use of elliptic arches, such as we have found at Feruz- A bad, Sarvistan, and Ferash-Abad, is universal in the Sassanid edifices, whether at tlie Takht-i-KhosrQ, • Fi.ANDiN and Coste, Pene ancienne, Plates CCXIV., CCXV. • TfixiER, Description de lArmenie et de la Ftrse^ Plates XHI., XLUL, LVI., LXIX., LXX., etc ; for the mosques, Plate LXXIX., plan of Peraan house at Ispahan. ' Coste, Monuments tnodernes de la Perse, Plate LXV, In one of the edifices of this description noticed by Coste on the road leading from Teheran to Ispalian, the principal facade, with a unique archway, is decorated, as at I'cruzabad and the Khosril, by a series of blank arcatiires. • With regard to the ruins at Hatra, consult move particularly G. Rawlinson, The Sixth Great Monarchy {^o, London, Murray, 1883), pp. 372-389, cominled from the information furnished by Layard, Ross, and Ainswortb. Digitized by Google