'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎162r] (328/862)

SUMERIAN AND BABYLONIAN PERIOD 223
towns at route-centres and ports, ‘holy cities’ around notable shrines
such as Eridu and Nippur (like the Shia holy cities to-day), and
political capitals and fortresses like Lagash, Mari, Nineveh, and
Carchemish. Babylon, the largest of them all, was at once the holy
city of Marduk, a market centre, and an imperial capital (fig. 94).
In Assyria during the empire the headquarters of the army became
a great city and was shifted several times, from Ashur to Kalkhi
or Calah (Nimrud) and thence to Nineveh and to Dur Shurrukin
(Khorsabad), where Sargon built a new and short-lived city. After
the fall of Assyria these cities disappeared almost without trace except
Ashur, which had been a trading centre before it became a barrack
town.
The great towns, of which Babylon is the best known, consisted
of a huddle of flat-roofed, mud-brick houses built around the great
temples and royal palaces. The temples were of uniform pattern.
A great open courtyard, surrounded by offices, stores, and priests’
cells, led to the inner shrine containing the statue of the god. Adjoin
ing, sometimes in a separate courtyard, there was usually the stage-
tower or ziggurat. This was sometimes an immense tower of several
stories recessed one above the other, approached by staircases or
encircled by an outside passage which mounted from storey to storey.
The top storey was crowned by a shrine, and the whole may have
represented the abode of the god on a mountain peak. The biblical
story of the tower of Babel contains the memory of one of these great
z iggurats, the ruins of which survive at several places (photo. 96).
The royal palaces were vast complexes of halls, rooms, offices,
stores, and chapels built around one or more central courtyards.
Private houses were built likewise around a central yard, into which
all doors and windows opened. All these elements were of immense
antiquity, being little modified from Sumerian times down to Neo-
Babylonian, and were duly handed on through later ages to Abbasid
Iraq. There is kinship between the ground-plan of the Sumerian
temple and of the Islamic mosque. Even the ziggurat is the parent
of the minaret, the well known Malwiya tower of Samarra (ninth
century a.d.) being an intermediate form (photo. 120).
In the general layout of the towns there is a difference. Babylon
at least was built on a rectilinear plan of parallel roads crossing at
right angles, a scheme of town-planning unknown to Islamic times.
The building material was brick because there is no stone in the delta
south of Baghdad, whereas there is abundant clay ready for fashion
ing. The buildings were all very solidly and heavily built; during