'Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan, and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh; with Journal of a Voyage down the Tigris to Bagdad and an Account of a Visit to Shirauz and Persepolis.' [‎252] (287/450)

252
RUINS OF A SASSANIAN TOWN.
Sassanian town, as large as Ctesiphon—the walls
just in the same state and style—the area filled with
rubbish and ruins. It is just three quarteis of <111
hour from Shehraban, though its northern extremity
reaches much nearer that place, the south and ^ost
parts of the Avail, at the latter of which we entered,
are the most perfect, and exactly like those oi Se-
leucia and Ctesiphon. These ruins are called Eski
Bagdad, but are evidently much older than the time
of Islam. You will recollect I placed Dastagerd at
the Zendan. I was not far wrong; for I am now
rather inclined to think that at Eski Bagdad are the
remains of the royal city *. Going on we found
* Dastagerda was a favourite palace of Khosroo Parviz, King
of Persia, where he resided for many years, in preference to
Ctesiphon, which was the capital of his empire. Gibbon, whose
geographical descriptions are most masterly, and frequently
clearer and more correct than those of eye-witnesses, in his ac
count of the Emperor Heraclius's Third Campaign against Persia
in the year a.d. 621, thus points out the probable positiou of
Dastagerda, in his description of the march of the Roman army
towards Ctesiphon, after the battle of Nineveh. 41 Eastward of
the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mousul, the great Nineveh
had formerly been erected; the city, and even the ruins of the
city, had long disappeared ; the vacant space offered a spacious field
for the operations of the two armies... .The Persian cavalry stood
firm until the seventh hour of the night: about the eighth hour
they retired to their unrifled camp, collected their baggage, and
dispersed on all sides, from the want of orders rather than of reso
lution. The diligence of Ileraclius was not less admirable in the
use of victory ; by a march of forty-eight miles in four-and-twenty
hours, his vanguard occupied the bridges of the greater and the
lesser Zab ; and the cities and palaces of Assyria were open for the
first time to the Romans. By a just gradation of magnificent