"العراق والخليج الفارسي" [و‎‎٤‎٠‎٢] (٨٦٢/٨٠٦)

TEN HISTORICAL SITES
635
implies. Both wings of the facade survived until 1909, when the left wing
collapsed. The vault was open to the air at the eastern end and had royal
chambers on the west. This building was preserved because the Moslem
conquerors used it as a mosque. On the right or western bank the city
wall of Ctesiphon encloses an area of 1,000 acres and can be traced both
Fig. 96. Ukhaidhir. The three-storied block seen from inside
the central courtyard
in the mound called Sur and elsewhere. A Christian church, possibly of
the sixth century, has also been excavated in western Ctesiphon within
the little mound of Qasr Bint al Qadi; it is roofed by a barrel vault,
29 feet wide, supported on a pillared wall.
Hatra (photos. 25, 116)
The ruins of Hatra contain the only extensive buildings in Iraq of
Parthian date. The town itself only flourished for two or three centuries,
when it guarded the direct caravan route across the Jazira from Parthian
Ctesiphon to Roman Nisibis. After successfully defying the Roman
Emperor Trajan in a.d. 116 and Severus in 198, it was finally taken and
sacked after the end of the Parthian Empire by the Sassanid king Sapor I in
about a.d. 245. The town, roughly quadrilateral and protected by a thick
curving wall, with bastions every 170 yards, is over 3 miles in perimeter,
and has four gates, the main gate being on the east. In the centre the
ruined palace-temple of the Sun, itself fortified, consists of a range of
seven open-fronted liwan halls. The sanctuary is a square vaulted build
ing behind one of the halls, surrounded by a narrow vaulted passage and
lit only by the door. The town contains many small and closely packed
houses, which have been excavated, and many tombs.
Ukhaidhir (figs. 31, 96; photo. 122)
Al Ukhaidhir,‘the little green place’, built in the western desert, 28 miles
south-west of Karbala at a point where water collects and vegetation grows