FIRST PART

THE ART OF IRAN PREISLAMIC

SASANIDE ART

The figure of Ardashir

The Fars region, although part of the empire, managed to maintain an independent government in the era that preserved the Zoroastrian heritage and the Iranian tradition of the Achaemenids. In the last century of arsacid domination, the region was ruled by a certain Babak, who claimed descent from the great religious and political figure of Sasan, one of the survivors of the Achaemenid dynasty. He took charge of the political and religious leadership of the people of Fars, making Estakhr, near Persepolis, the seat of government. He began to coin money in his own name, remaining only formally tributary of the arsacid power. His son Ardashir, who in ancient Persian pronounced Artakhshir, gradually set up his own army, expanding the territory under his control, conquering the Kerman region and annexing all of southern Iran. On the death of his father, as religious head and king of the two great regions of Fars and Kerman, he moved the capital from Darabgerd, which at the time of his father was the center of Estakhr province, in Ghur, in the area of ​​current Firuzabad, making you build a large and magnificent palace as his residence. Artabanus, who according to tradition was the father of the bride of Ardashir, made it the object of reproach and wrote in a letter: "Or unfortunate, why did you dare build such a royal palace?" This disrespectful protest of Artaban led to the aggravation of 'enmity between the two and a war in which Artabanus was defeated and Ardashir inherited the throne. From this moment on, Ghur was called "The splendor of Ardashir". Ardashir in the 222 entered Ctesiphon, the arsacid capital on the banks of the Tigris, and here it was officially crowned. It is possible that this coronation took place after the victory over Artabanus at Naghsh-e Rajab, between Estakhr and Persepolis, and is the same portrayed in the majestic reliefs of the throat made by Ardashir and the successors of Shapur I.
In the years that followed, Ardashir conquered the Media by taking his armies to Armenia and Azerbaijan. After some initial failures, he managed to conquer the territories of Khorasan, Sistan, Marv and Khorasmia one after another. The king of Kushan, who ruled over Kabul and the Panjab, sent ambassadors to him, declaring himself ready to obey his orders. At that time, the territory under its jurisdiction encompassed all of today's Iran, Afghanistan, Baluchistan, the Marv and Khiva plains, as far as Transoxiana in the north, and Babylon and Iraq in the west. Thus, five and a half centuries after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, another empire emerged in the East, Iranian from all points of view, destined to clash with Byzantium, indeed to be the arch-enemy.
Ardashir, who united in himself political ability, military genius and religious faith, was a fearless and impetuous personality, as well as a great promoter of national religious and cultural traditions. Under him, Zoroastrianism established itself throughout the country as a national faith. The faithful of this religion had become increasingly influential in the arsacid era, so that Vologese had collected all the texts of the Avesta so far scattered, compiling the canon. Ardashir made of this faith the official religion, proclaiming himself chief. He sent in all the regions of the empire of the priests, political-religious representatives, who controlled the correctness of religious affairs and administered justice. Centralizing the political, military and bureaucratic administration, he tried to get Iran out of the condition of tribal fragmentation inherited from the Arsacids. The army passed directly under his command and the only occasions he appeared in public were general audiences on feast days. The sovereign appointed a prime minister who not only served as his advisor, but became regent during the military campaigns and the king's travels. After him, in the hierarchy there was the nobility and the priestly class. These had great authority and guarded the execution of the law and national religious provisions. They were always to stem the spread of ideas Manichaea and mazdakite.
The Sassanids were able to bring the boundaries of the kingdom back to those traced by the Achaemenid Cosroe Parviz. Moreover, they were the architects of a new splendid stage of Iranian art thanks to the architecture, the bas-relief, the seals, the silverware, the precious silks, which still today embellish churches and museums in the West, and the splendid royal palaces.
We have seen how the Arsacids, despite having been defined in the first years of their domination as friends of the Greeks, had committed themselves to constitute an artistic style with Iranian peculiarities. Although influenced by Rome (later Byzantium) and the west and by Buddhism to the east, they exercised more influence on these neighboring areas than they received. Above all in architecture, aside from the Hellenizing features of the beginnings, a peculiar Iranian style was revealed, characterized by the iwan, an element that was taken up and multiplied. The cities, in order to better be defended, were built with a circular plan and reinforced by bastions, according to a model that found continuity thereafter.

 Architecture

At the time when his father was the guardian of the temple of Anahita ad Estakhr and governed the Fars, Ardashir was appointed governor of the current Firuzabad. First of all, he had a solid fortress erected over a rocky ledge, in which he elected residence. Today the fortress is called Qaleh-ye Dokhtar (Fig. 16) and after it built a city that he called at the beginning Ghur-e Ardashir, name that changed to Shokuh-e Ardashir ('Splendor of Ardashir') after the victory over Artabanus. The city developed on an arsacid model, that is, a circular shape. Outside the city, near a fountain, Ardashir had an arsacid style palace built, but with reminiscences of Persepolis. The building is built with uncut stone bricks and lime mortar, covered with plaster. This type of construction technique, still used today in Fars, has local origins. Probably, the use of rough stone bricks instead of the cut stone was due to the scarcity of material resources of Ardashir, at the time simple governor on behalf of his father Babak, who was satrap of the Fars, and lacking the financial means to pay the stonecutters and other workers. On the other hand, Firuzabad is a dry region with very hot summers, and the lime is used to keep the interior of the buildings cool, which is why it is a solution still used today in the hot areas of the country. Formally, the building, although externally arsacide, has consciously achemenid elements. In particular, there are two elements of the Achaemenid art:

a) the apadana of Persepolis, whose perimeter porticos are transformed here into iwan arsacidi, with a dome that rises above the quadrangular hall; is
b) the actual residence of Ardashir, which includes rooms around a central courtyard, located behind the apadana.

The entrance iwan is very deep and on the two sides leads to four rooms with a rectangular plan covered by barrel vaults. Behind the rooms and the iwan there are three rooms with a square plan, whose side is as long as the length of the iwan, covered by three domes. The central hall ends with a smaller iwan that opens onto an outdoor courtyard; in the wing to the right of the iwan there is a small room connected to the second floor and to the roof by a staircase. In front of the iwan there is another one of the same length, but deeper; around the courtyard, on both sides of the iwan, rectangular rooms open, with one side about twice as long. The size of the building plan is a total of 55 meters for 104, while the walls have a thickness that reaches in some places the 4 meters. The monotony of the surface of the external walls is interrupted by quadrangular buttresses that sink into the wall; the same effect is obtained inside thanks to the niches of different shapes that open on the walls. The height of the entrance iwan, the side rooms and the domed hall was remarkable, and probably reached that of the two-story residences. The internal niches, some of which culminated in an arch, were decorated with a front similar to the cornices above the windows of the Persepolis palace. The decorations were stucco, and some have remained until today (Fig. 17).
This palace became a model for the later Sassanids, built in Sarvestan, Bishapur, Madain in other cities. Despite the changes required by the passing of the ages and the needs of the different places, the principle of the entry iwan and the apadana remained unchanged (Fig. 18).
Bishapur is a city founded by Shapur I in the vicinity of Kazerun - a place whose landscape resembles that of Firuzabad - in the Fars, after the victory over Valerian, ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Bishapur plant, unlike that of Firuzabad, is not circular, but rectangular like that of the Greco-Roman cities. On one side the city was protected by fortified bastions and ditches, and ended on the slopes of the mountain, defended by other small fortresses and by a system of fortified walls and bulwarks, while on the other side a river flowed. Bishapur means 'the beautiful city of Shapur', and was actually an imperial citadel that included palaces, fire temples and political, administrative and military buildings. The palace of Shapur in the city consisted of a hall composed of stones tied with lime, according to techniques and procedures that are typical of Iranian architecture. The appurtenances of the building are a smaller building, a temple of the royal fire and a side room with a rectangular base. A square space on the side of 22 meters forms the support for a dome from the height of 25 meters, around which four iwan with three rooms open. The space below the dome is roughly cruciform, and presents 64 ornamental limestone clad and decorative plant elements in stucco, colored bright red, green and black, which fill the entire space between the arches. It is possible that Roman and Byzantine craftsmen contributed to the construction, and especially the decoration, of the palace, since as we know, Shapur led home as prisoners Valeriano along with a large number of Romans (it is said 70.000). Some of the prisoners remained in Iran, and among them there were certainly artists, architects and potters. It is also possible that some of these artists spontaneously migrated to Persia to find better conditions for work or pay. In the eastern part of the hall there are three iwan with a large courtyard, paved with stone slabs, which had the margins decorated in mosaic: this style perhaps reproduced the designs of the carpets of the period and the mosaics represent scenes of banquets. The women of the court are placed softly on the cushions or standing with long dresses, crowns and bouquets in their hands, others are busy making wreaths and garlands. The clothes are Greco-Roman, as is the genre of the mosaic; in Iranian art it is rare for women to be represented, especially since the Zoroastrian creed had become an official religion of the empire.
Despite the Greek-Roman prevalence, Iranian artists also played a role in these works. For example: the posture of women (sitting as you still sit in Iran); or the shape of the fans, or curls, bear the mark of a peculiarly Iranian taste; or again, the somatic features, the hairstyles and some details in the clothes, all testify to Iranian influences. Certain faces with the elusive chin betray an inspiration from the representations of Siyalk and Luristan which, passing through the blanket of generations, reached the Parthians and then the Sassanids. The Arsacids were spreading these styles in the country, and they were then adopted by neighboring countries. For this reason, it is possible to affirm that the Syrian and Byzantine artists created an Iran-Roman art in Bishapur.
Next to the palace of the three iwan, there was another, whose excavations were not terminated due to the outbreak of World War II; two niches made according to the Achaemenid tradition were brought to light. The building, erected with cut stone bricks, in its rectangular form owes the niches of the palace of Darius and Xerxes. The remains of the bas-reliefs, full of gaps and missing parts, probably represent scenes of Shapur's victory over Valeriano.
A large cruciform palace is located near a temple that was probably dedicated to Anahita, goddess of water, fertility and abundance. The building, with a square plan on the side of 14 meters, has four openings around which 4 corridors extend in the middle of which running water channels ran. To enter the temple from the palace it is necessary to cross a long staircase. The walls are 14 meters high, made up of blocks of stone connected with dovetail hinges and crushed stone. The ceiling of the temple was supported by wooden beams resting on stone capitals in the shape of a buffalo bust, similar to the capitals of the columns of Persepolis - but without the grace and refinement of those. In the temple there was a stone brazier, whose pedestal was found in an Islamic building.
Bishapur, which was a royal city, had districts where the dignitaries of the country were staying. It was divided into four neighborhoods by means of two crossed roads perpendicularly. In the 266, the governor of the city had a memorial monument built in honor of Shapur at the intersection of the avenues, composed of a tripartite column, whose first two levels constituted a flight of steps on which two stone columns formed by a single block. The third level, which has only one step, was probably the point on which a statue of Shapur was hoisted. On the two sides were placed two other supports that probably served as braziers. This kind of double-column construction bore the mark of Romanity, and it is likely that those who designed it were a Roman from Syria, also in light of the inscription in Greek characters that can still be read on the stones of Bishapur. In spite of this, Bishapur can not be said to be a Roman city, having many specific Iranian characteristics, and even, to say it with Ghirshman, it bears a real mark of iranity, represented by the inscription on a column of the monument. Shapur I wanted to immortalize his victory over Valeriano with a trilingual inscription (pahlavi arsacide, pahlavi sasanide and greek) engraved on the "Kaba of Zarathustra". The same text was recorded in the vicinity of five bas-reliefs scattered on the rocks of the Fars, including also in Bishapur, to incite the population to war.
Shapur I erected in Ctesiphon, which was the capital of the Arsacids and was also the capital under Ardashir I, a palace that for its magnificence and greatness aroused the amazement of all. The Arabs, after having conquered the city, were struck by the splendor of the palace, and even today it is possible to see the amazement in the faces of the visitors. The palace, known as "Iain of Madain" is developed in length and is composed of 4 floors, the second and third high together as the first. The floors are decorated with blind arches delimited by half columns, and the inspiration is clearly derived from the Assyrian palace of the Arsacids. The large main iwan, taller than 27 meters, deep 49 and wide 26, presents architectural elements that recall it, like the smaller iwan or horizontal rows - larger in number than those of the Assur palace - which segment the façade , and the twin columns that intersperse the arches. In the arcsacid palaces, in any case, the dimensions of each floor are constant, while at Ctesiphon it is variable, and the progressive reduction of the height of the upper floors seems to make the building higher than it actually is. Each of these files constitutes an independent unit, presenting itself as a horizontal strip with no relation to the vertical elements of the façade. In this way, two rows of blind arches are delimited by an arch that does not rest on columns, but is placed in the corner of the wall, somehow defining it. This is another characteristic of Sasanian architecture that makes it possible to reach the rest of the building. The left side of the building is currently standing, while the right has collapsed due to the 1880 earthquake.
Ctesiphon's palace was a symmetrical complex, in the sense that in the back of the iwan a set of rooms could be reached both from the iwan itself and from the entrance door (the second arch on both sides) located on the façade. Behind the complex stood another iwan similar to the first one, whose use is still unclear, and which was slightly smaller, though of the same width. It is not clear which was actually the main hall, but we know from ancient historiographers that it was decorated with images that represented the scenes of the battle of Cosroe I in Antioch, and which had a large carpet embellished with hard stones and jewels, known as the "spring of Cosroe". It is said that when the Arabs conquered the city they tore the carpet apart, dividing it as war booty among the fighters. Some findings of the site were found in excavations carried out by German archaeologists, notably several cubes embedded in the upper part of the palace walls, covered with gold, while the lower parts were covered in multicolored marble slabs. The exterior façade, as in the other Sassanid and Bishapur palaces, were plastered with lime, as evidenced by the numerous fragments preserved in Western museums. The interior decorations of the rooms were similar to those of the Bishapur palace, having been built by Shapur I. Another remarkable building is that of Sarvestan, which is at the origin of Iran's Islamic architecture.
The Sarvestan palace dates back to the 5th century AD C., that is two centuries before Islam. Before describing this construction of bricks, it is necessary to remember that the Sassanids ceased to use the cut stone between the 3rd and 4th century AD. C. The construction material became the rough stone in the mountainous regions and the brick in the continental areas of the plateau. The construction technique of the dome and the vault also gave impetus to the development of the construction capabilities of the Sassanids, which took new roads and that even developed durably even outside the borders of the empire.
After the destruction of Susa during the Iran-Rome wars, Shapur II built a new imperial city 25 km further north on the banks of the Karkheh River: Iwan-e Karkheh. The plan of the city, like that of Bishapur, has nothing of arsacide, instead following the Roman model of thistle and decumanus, a rectangle of four kilometers for one. The royal palace has a quadrangular hall surmounted by a dome, with a long wing with a separate entrance, in addition to the doors opening onto the front iwan, the living room and the courtyard. The ceiling of the entrance hall is formed by barrel vaults, which together with the arches that flow from wall to wall to give greater strength to the building, divide it into five parts. A three-iwan kiosk stands in the royal quarters, whose walls were perhaps richly frescoed on the outer layer of plaster. In the period of Shapur II the fresco and stucco decoration enjoyed the same diffusion and equal consideration.
The Sarvestan palace has the same type of construction, but going back to the 5th century AD. C., the materials are made of stone and lime. The façade has three iwan facing outwards, the central one slightly higher and wider than the others and describes a rectangle formed by two squares, behind which a reception hall opens. This three-iwan façade became a pattern repeated successively throughout Iran; and even further, since the same theme will later be found in the French Gothic churches in the 13th century, and then spread from France to the rest of Europe.
The reception room has a square plan; on the western side of the square the entrance iwan of the front facade opens, on the opposite side (to the east) there is the courtyard of the residential part; on the north side opens another iwan, deeper and less wide than the entrance, while the southern one is adjacent to a tall and long hall. This has a door opening, before connecting to the iwan of the facade, on a quadrangular room leading first to the main iwan of the salon and then, on the opposite side, to the outside. The large northern iwan of the reception hall, in addition to the two entrances to the palace, has a door leading to a rectangular room (similar to the quadrangular vestibule of the fire temples), adjacent to the smaller iwan beside the main one. it is also connected by a door. Another door connects the large northern iwan to the long hall that belongs to the residential part of the building.
The novelty of this building resides in the hanging vaults of the narrow halls supported by court and massive columns. In this way, two large central corridors have been created which, thanks to lateral arches arranged between the columns and to the half-domed roof, appear even wider. Similar solutions have been used in the Sassanid palaces of Kish, in Mesopotamia. In the second palace of Kish, in fact, the same central corridor is wider, and leads to a court three times, supported by six columns aligned to the center. The interior decorations of the Sassanid buildings were in stucco and paint. We will talk about these decorations in the section dedicated to decorative arts.
The composition of the Sarvestan palace is actually similar to that of the Firuzabad palace, although with greater freedom and variety in details and decorative elements. The reception room, without taking into consideration the enclosed spaces, is a little narrow, while the large and majestic, though few, are the secondary halls. These have numerous doors that open outwards, which has left the archaeologists thinking that they were not residential premises. The width of the building is about a quarter of that of the Firuzabad palace. The historian Tabari says he is convinced that the palace belonged to Mir Narseh, a powerful minister of Bahram Gur, who would build it on land owned by him.
The dome of the palace, later taken up in Islamic architecture of Iran, unlike that of Firuzabad, is made of bricks, and was erected after the preparation of all components on the ground, so that it was perfectly circular. The building, in addition to the main dome, has two others, smaller; the first stands on the room facing the northern corner of the main facade, and the second covers the room on the opposite side on the diagonal.
The Sassanids built other palaces, which differ, from the architectural point of view, with those of Sarvestan, Firuzabad and Bishapur. Among these, the Damghan palace, brought to light only partially. The part of the building currently excavated has a large entrance iwan and a square hall covered by a dome, elements that give it importance and splendor. Unlike the hall surmounted by the dome of Firuzabad and Sarvestan, which has relatively small doors opening onto the iwan, the hall of Damghan is a real hall with four arches, and its dome is supported by four supports in which they open as many large portals. Even the arch of the iwan is not resting on walls, but on rows of columns arranged parallel to the walls. The building is probably from the period after the reign of Bahram Gur.
A large complex of ruins known as the "palace of Shirin" is located along the road that connected Mesopotamia to the plateau. According to ancient historians, especially Arabs, the site included 120 acres of gardens, kiosks and leisure areas, fountains and even parks with wild animals, and the water from the Helwan River was conducted by means of a system of canals. Today the complex is a pile of stones and ruins. Another palace that deserves to be described that known as the "Palace of Cosroe", which was located on a hill in the middle of a garden, reachable by means of a staircase similar to that of Persepolis. The palace, commissioned by Cosroe II "Anushirvan", was 372 meters long and 190 wide, and from the compositional point of view it was very similar to the palaces of Firuzabad and Sarvestan. The façade was 8 meters high and in front of it ran a waterway for 550 meters. The large colonnaded iwan recalls that of Damghan, and led to a square hall covered by a dome the diameter of 15 meters, on either side of which opened two long rooms with a barrel ceiling. Behind this area there was a garden, which was connected to the residential area and its appurtenances. The structure of the structure follows an ancient model, but did not provide for the presence of residences around the garden. The rooms opened around the courtyard and the quadrangular buildings were joined together by a parallel two rows separated by the walls of the courtyard by corridors. These interior gardens were connected to the main courtyard by a colonnaded iwan, which in turn led to the dome-shaped salon. The large main iwan was facing east and the whole building was oriented along the east-west axis. In its southern part there was a very large and long hall, of the same length as the three courtyards, with a vaulted ceiling which, like the iwan of Damghan's palace, stands on a double row of columns with more than 15 columns each.
In addition to the palaces and temples, such as those of Shiz or Takht-e Soleyman, it is useful to mention the temples of the domed fire, where the ritual of fire was officiated, and the Christian churches. Of the latter there are some remains that make it possible to draw a link between the Sassanid architecture and the subsequent churches of the West. In fact, Sassanid architectural elements have come to Western Gothic after having undergone metamorphoses and, although André Godard has denied this possibility in a prejudicial manner, the resemblance between Gothic gable and the facade of Sarvestan's palace is undeniable. Another type of building that is not of great architectural importance is the four-pillared pavilion, that is, a simple construction with a dome supported by four supports arranged on four corners, with the space below free. Many examples of this type of building remained, which was intended for the public ritual of fire.
The four-pillar pavilion is not so important from an architectural point of view, but given that it is the source of many post-Sassanid religious constructions of Islamic Iran, it is opportune to give it some attention. The temples of the fire were placed in line with the watchtower systems. The most important of these buildings was the first temple of fire of Takht-e Soleyman, which dates back to the Arsacid era, used until the end of the Sassanid era. As history books tell us, the eternal fire was kept there and served to light the fires of the other temples. This temple is famous in ancient texts as "temple of fire of Azar Goshasb".
Two small buildings similar to that of Takht-e Soleyman, with the same features but minor proportions, one of which is located in Fars, near Bishapur, now known as Emamzadeh Seyyed Hosein, and the other near Jareh, in the same region. The first is undoubtedly a temple of fire, the second was probably a church, although it does not differ much from the first as a structure. Both are composed, like the temple of Takht-e Soleyman, from a domed hall, a vestibule that surrounds it and other enclosed spaces.
Another small building is located in the Kuh-e Khajeh complex, and is listed among the temples of the fire, since a fire altar was found nearby, consisting of a square hall surrounded by a corridor. It is said that the name Kuh-e Khajeh derives from an ascetic descended from the prophet Abraham, called Khajeh Sarasarir, whose tomb is at the northern end of the hill, where the people of Sistan are gathered during the New Year period. It was Herzfeld who discovered the site, dating it to III. C., because the palace and the temple did not constitute a single architectural complex, but appeared as two separate buildings connected later. Probably the temple was annexed only when the arsacide palace was renovated. Thanks to the comparison, we can state that the model of the temple was the Achaemenid apadana, which then passed with evident modifications to Takht-e Soleyman in the Arsacid period, and finally arrived at the Sasanid period at the Emamzadeh of Hosein near Bishapur and the small building of Jareh. The texts of the Islamic era show that the temple of fire of Esfahan, which stood on an isolated hill and of which today only a supporting wall and the base, was administered by the father of Salman the Persian, and was probably the temple all the other minor altars of that area, which drew upon the sacred fire (like the temple of Hoseinkuh in the Fars, which dominated that of Persepolis and the other neighboring temples).
In the second century Pausanias wrote of the temples of fire: "In them there is a special room separated from the rest in which the eternal fire burns on an altar above the ashes." The fire of these temples burned in an inner room , devoid of openings, unlike the altar, which was placed outdoors, and which gained ever greater importance and size, until it was placed on a raised base, so that people could venerate it from afar. Later the fire was placed under a parasol, covered by a dome which then became the typical construction. Some of these buildings, half-ruined, are still found in Natanz, Kazerun and Firuzabad, while the complexes that stood around there have disappeared. As for the Firuzabd temple, erected, like Qaleh Dokhtar and the Firuzabad palace, by Ardashir I, Muslim historians such as Estakhri, Ibn al-Faqih, Masudi and even Ferdowsi, have written about it so much that - along with what is left - we would be able to rebuild it from the beginning. Among the verses of Ferdowsi it is inferred that the temple of Firuzabad was a large building with a square base another two meters above ground level, which stood in the shade of trees, and at the center of which stood a structure, still visible today. On the platform was the four-columned straight dome, under which there was a fire. Around the property were gardens and other temple fixtures, including a brazier, a storage area, and the lodges of the temple keepers. To the south, in the geometric center of the circular bastion of the ancient city of Ghur-e Ardashir (the current Firuzabad), there was a high tower above which the sacred fire was hoisted at the time of the ceremonies.
No complex of buildings like the one described has come down to us. Yet, in the twelfth century h., A temple similar to Baku was found, and another Islamic building called mosalla in Yazd. In the center of the courtyard of the Yazd temple, which was the place of the collective ritual, was the necessary for the ritual of fire under a parasol, and the rooms attached to the temple (a warehouse, the servants' dwelling) were around the courtyard. The mosalla of Yazd follows the same pattern.
Surely there were exceptions to the four-pillar dome structure, as in the case of Takht-e Soleyman, or the temple of Azar Goshasb in Azerbaijan, the Soleyman mosque in Khuzestan, Takht-e Rostam near Tehran. Takht-e Rostam consists of two stone platforms, one placed at a third and the second at the top of the hill, isolated in the middle of a esplanade. The platform at the top housed a signal fire, which could be seen from Tehran (at 40 km away) and even farther away. The other platform, that in the first third of the mountain, was the place where the objects of the ritual were kept and, judging by its breadth, it can be assumed that it was the place where the faithful gathered (part of the esplanade is artificial ). The place where the fire was kept was a small building covered by a Sasanid-style dome, from which the ceremonial fire was taken.
There were other buildings of the same topology that were not temples of fire, but bases for the collection and transmission of information, as they were along communication routes, isolated and without other buildings around (these buildings are located in Farash-band, Jareh , Tun-e sabz, all in the plain of Jareh, in Ateshkuh, near Delijan, in Niyasas, between Delijan and Kashan - all isolated domes resting on four columns). A similar structure, in Qaleh Dokhtar near Qom, has an intricate corridor that connects it to a fire altar. Another is located at an altitude of 3.000 meters above the city of Setanak in the Alborz chain, also called Qaleh Dokhtar; it does not have exactly the same structure as the others, but it is a square building with two rooms, one of which kept the fire and was connected to the other by a corridor. The rooms were not covered by a dome, and the corridors had a vaulted vaulted ceiling. These buildings that stood high up around the main communication routes had the dual function of signaling and blessing for travelers.
Three other buildings of the same kind should be added to this list. One is that of Izad-khast in Fars, located on a rise and gradually surrounded by houses. The actual structure is separated from the fertile surrounding land by means of vertical walls; it then became the local mosque, although today the complex is reduced to a disastrous ruin at risk of collapse. The complex was inhabited until the middle of the last century, but was abandoned when an earthquake rendered it completely uninhabitable. The second is that of Kheirabad, in Khuzestan, located one hundred meters from a bridge from the Sasanian era, and which indicated the riverbed from afar. The third is that of Barzu, near Qom, about 12 km from Ramjerd, on the road connecting Qom and Sultanabad-Arak. In all these cases, these are buildings from the Sassanid era that arise roughly all in the center and east of the plateau. There is another one to the northeast, halfway between Mashad and Torbat-and Heidariyeh, in Khorasan, to Bazhur. It is a building that is neither a normal signal station nor a religious building, but it is probably a pertinence of two fortresses called Qaleh Pesar and Qaleh Dokhtar, which in ancient times defended access to the valley. These simple constructions with their essential structures, were in the following years destined to have a great importance in determining the style of the mosque, which we will discuss in the part dedicated to Islamic art.

 Sculpture and statuary
The period of Ardashir I

With the birth of a new Sasanian architectural figure, evidently autochthonous and devoid of Greek and arsacid contaminations, under Ardashir I also emerged a Sassanid sculpture and statuary. From this period on, the Iranian artists tried to produce large stone compositions to enhance the rank of the new dynasty by bringing it closer to the greatness of the Achaemenids. The earliest works were the bas-reliefs of Ardashir I and his son Shapur in Naqsh-e Rajab and Naqsh-e Rostam. The production of bas-reliefs continued until the appearance of Islam in the 7th century (in Taq-e Bostan, for example). Among the works of the seventh century one perceives a certain Byzantine influence, as in the representation of the winged victory that adorns the largest cave of Taq-e Bostan. The previous works, on the other hand, are completely iranic in form and in spirit. Those elements typical of iranicity always emerged, even if sometimes obscured by various vicissitudes, with the emergence of favorable conditions. The best Sassanid sculpture dates back to the 3rd century. Some western iranists, and in particular the historian of architecture and archaeologist André Godard, are convinced that "the Iranian sculpture of the era should not be compared to the portrait, but to the works of art by artists like Verrocchio, Benvenuto Cellini and other great artists. exponents of the Italian Renaissance who were skilled goldsmiths ". For example, the Shapur horse, with its splendid shape and its powerful figure, an example of refined sculpture that seems almost to have been executed on polished bronze, is very similar to the works of Colleone da Venezia.
Undoubtedly behind the artists who produced those wonderful daggers and other bronze weapons that emerge from the tombs and temples of Luristan today, there is the work of an Iranian master. Looking outside the Iranian lands, the roots of these works are in vain; the ancient art of Iran derives from this splendor, which has been completely natural in the sculptures of Persepolis.
All Sasanian rock sculpture is located in their territory of origin, the Fars, with the exception of the reliefs of Salmas, east of Lake Rezaiyeh, and of Taq-e Bostan, near Kermanshah. Except for a single case in Naqsh-e Rostam, which represents one of the rulers of the dynasty, all the reliefs can be dated through the shape of the crown of the represented kings. Moreover, with the exception of Taq-e Bostan - whose bas-reliefs date back to the 388 - and of the cave sculptures by Cosroe Parviz, which date back roughly to 600, all the works belong to the period of Ardashir and Shapur.

André Godard has classified these works in three groups:

1) Four sculptures of Ardashir I (224-241), two in Firuzabad, one in Naqsh-e Rajab and one in Naqsh-e Rostam; 8 sculptures of Shapur I (241-272), two at Naqsh-e Rajab, two at Naqsh-e Rostam and four at Bishapur; a representation of Bahram I (273-276) in Bishapur; 5 of Bahram II (276-293), two of which in Naqsh-e Rostam, one in Naqsh-e Bahram, one in Bishapur, one in Sar-e Mashhad; a representation of Narses (293-302.) in Naqsh-e Rostam, and one of Hormozd II (302-309), in the same place.
2) A sculpture by Ardashir II (379-383) in Taq-e Bostan, the image of the small cave of Taq-e Bostan showing Shapur II (309-379) and his son.
3) Images of the cave of Cosroe Parviz (590-628) in Taq-e Bostan.
Two images of Ardashir I have been carved along the rocks that make the bank of the river Baraz. The river flowed into the plain where Ardashir, after the victory of Artabanus, built the city of Ghur-e Ardashir (today Firuzabad). One of these images bears witness to that victory, while the others, like those of Naqsh-e Rajab and Naqsh-e Rostam, represent Ardashir as he is chosen by Fravarti for the kingdom. Three of these sculptures are manifestations of the Sassanid sculpture, while the fourth is a true masterpiece of the era. The reliefs of Firuzabad, which rise next to the river Baraz, are among the most ancient and majestic Sassanid rock works; in them are represented three pairs of warriors fighting one in front of the other. Ardashir disarms Artabano with a long spear, behind him we see the eldest son Shapur I while overthrowing the prime minister plenipotentiary of the king arsacide, and basically a Persian nobleman who grabs a noble arsacid by the neck. There is no realism in this representation; the artist has represented each character only thanks to a meticulous decoration of the hair, clothes, weapons and harnesses of the horses. The lack of realism could derive from the ignorance on the part of the performers of the principles of portraiture, or from a precise desire to express stylistically the temporal universality of Iran's victory over the "friend of the foreigner".
In this work the face of Ardashir is portrayed in profile, compared to the body that is instead frontal. The hairstyle of the hair is typical of the sovereigns of the time: the hair gathered in mass over the head to form a bun and the curls that fall in two braids on the shoulders of the sovereign, while the ribbons of the crown, curled back, the pointed beard gathered around a ring and the pearl necklace are all traits that are related to the ancient Iranian style.
Horses, like in Achaemenian art, are fast quadrupeds far from any realism, just like the rest of the elements of representation. It is as if the artist wanted to fix for eternity the instant of victory, without paying particular attention to the minor and secondary elements of a complete portrait. It may be an effort towards abstraction, a lesson that the Persian artist has learned from Achaemenid works. That abstraction that will manifest itself later also in the Islamic period drawing producing real masterpieces.
This style was reproduced in the image of Gudarz II in Bisotun. Despite the great extent of the theme of representation, the inspiration that underlies it is the same, nor the technique used differs from the past. The flat reliefs of Firuzabad and Susa, only a few years earlier, are very similar. Here too the same staticity emerges: the portraits occupy most of the scene and the details, such as the heavy armor that cover the body of men and horses, are very detailed. The two-dimensional realization reveals how the relief was sculpted starting from a drawn base, and even though the artist tried to hide the particular arsacids, elements of the style of the previous dynasty were preserved.
A few hundred meters from the image of Ardashir in Firuzabad, there is another representation, which immortalizes the coronation of Ardashir by the hand of the Fravarti. The king and the Fravarti are placed on either side of an altar of fire, which although not found in other Sassanid sculptures, is depicted on all the coins of the dynasty. Ardashir holds the circle of the crown in his right hand, bending his left forefinger in a sign of respect. The Fravarti has a crenellated crown on its head, similar to the Achaemenid crown. The two characters are placed at the same height, while behind the sovereign a noble, placed lower down, holds a shovel in his hand. It is a typical feature of ancient art to indicate the rank of the characters by means of different sizes. Behind the noble are three court notables, probably the son and other family members.
To underline the idea of ​​continuity with the Achaemenids - and probably also to honor the sacredness of the area - Ardashir had the coronation scene also sculpted at Naqsh-e Rostam. In this sculptural work the sovereign and the Fravarti are both on horseback. At the foot of the Fravart horse there is an Ahriman with a disfigured face, while at the foot of Ardashir there is Artabano V. These are the novelties of the work: the Fravarti holds the barsom in the right hand, while the spherical crown of Ardashir, that should be on the head, it is in the hand. The horses appear more powerful, even if compared to the riders are smaller than normal, and the enemies are representatives on the ground, under the mounts. Above the ring that Ardashir and the Fravarti hold together, there is a circle in relief that is perhaps the symbol of the presence of Mithras. A trilingual inscription (pahlavi sasanide, pahlavi arsacide and greek) bears the name of the sovereign and Fravarti, continuing the Achaemenid tradition of trilingual inscriptions on stone.
These first sculptures, together with the first Sassanid buildings, show how the Sassanids tried to establish a continuity with the Achaemenids, following the artistic traditions of western Asia. To the extent that the influence of arsacid art, which links the Eastern Iranian tradition to the Achaemenids, remains in Sasanian art, even if with some changes, it can be said that Sasanian art is heir from the beginning of the Iranian tradition.
André Godard writes about these inscriptions: "In none of them is something that is foreign to Iranian art". On the other hand, the same static nature of the scene and the characters is also found in Achaemenid representations, as Hetzfeld confirms with regard to the lack of movement and participation of the characters: "This lack is normal in every young art and is possibly due to the technical shortage of the sculptors who were employed. The idea of ​​a complete symmetry that is one of the main characteristics is very present ". F. Sarre analyzes the image of the investiture of Ardashir: "Every time the artist wants to express resemblance and proportion, as in the two horses and in the lower part of the body of the king and the Fravarti, and also in the rest of the work, to match as much as possible ". The figure that appears under the horse of the Fravarti, in which one can easily recognize Ahriman, symbol of evil, corresponds and contrasts the figure of the last arsacide king Artabanus V, portrayed under the horse of the sovereign. At the Fravart's curl is the man's shovel, and in front of his stick (the barsom?) There is the hand in a worshiping position of the sovereign ".
Symmetrical compositions are used to express religious and mystical concepts. In a symmetrical composition the forces placed on the two parts are arranged along a vertical axis, by means of which the observer is somehow guided upwards. During the previous centuries, from prehistoric times to the birth of these great rock sculptures, this type of symmetry had always been used, above all in the case of the votive daggers of the Cassites, as an expression of a religious essence; the tradition continued until the end of the Sassanid era, even when it was a question of extolling the grandeur of the sovereign.

 The period of Shapur I

Ardashir I introduced his son Shapur in court and government affairs, entrusting them completely in the last years of his life.
Shapur I was intelligent, cultured, magnanimous and noble. He was a lover of culture, letters, art and philosophy, so much so that he ordered the translation into pahlavi of important foreign works. He showed himself open to Mani and his doctrines, counting him among his friends. He concluded victoriously the series of wars his father had waged against Rome, reconquering Antioch, a former Seleucid capital and an important Roman center of the East. In the 260 he defeated the Roman emperor Valeriano, leading him prisoner along with thousands of Roman soldiers, for whom he built a city near Susa, on the remains of a pre-existing military installation, called Gondi Shapur ('Shapur army'). Shapur immortalized his victories against the Romans Valeriano, Gordiano III and Filippo the Arab, on almost all the rock reliefs commissioned by him. This triple triumph is represented on the wall of the right bank of the Bishapur river. At the center of the scene Shapur is on horseback, and tramples on Gordian's body fallen to the ground. In front of him, Philip the Arab throws himself at his feet, in an act of submission and request for forgiveness. Valeriano is behind the victorious sovereign, who grabs him by the hand. This image is very significant and shows the way in which the emperor was taken prisoner, as confirmed by an engraving that is exhibited at the National Library of Paris. Two notable parties, standing in a respectful attitude, complete the composition. Above the depiction there is a small naked angel, wearing a diadem to the king, similar to the diadem seen in the coronation scenes by Fravarti, another indicator that we must interpret these images as angels or Fravarti and not as Ahura Mazda.
Perhaps this little naked angel is influenced by Greek iconology, but what is most important is that in Sasanian art abstract religious concepts are represented in a vivid way. The rigid and firm folds of the clothes lose their tightly tubular shape to become voluminous amplitudes under which the bodies come to life. This is the beginning of a new development of Sassanid sculpture, which will lead to the determination of a new style in Iranian statuary.
The Iranian artist of this period is not interested in realism which is a typical western element for recording events. The aim of the Iranian artist, on the contrary, is not the fixation of the event, of reality, but the representation of the "importance of the event", which does not need time or space. In other words, the exaltation of the victories of the Sassanid kings was used to incite the young Iranians to love the country and its defense and to love those superior virtues that can only be drawn with courage and faith. Unfortunately, Western orientalists, whose aesthetic criteria are focused on realism, have exchanged this movement towards the creation of an atemporal and aspacial image, in search of an abstract essentialism, due to the technical incapacity of the sculptors. Instead, the Iranian artist makes use of the historical event only as a starting point to characterize a metahistorical and metaspatic theme, which is located only in the mind and spirit of the observer.
If in some of these bas-reliefs rows of individuals overlap, instead of mingling in a crowd, they are located in separate sections. Differently from what Ghirshman assumes, according to which "this art is not yet able to represent groups of individuals", the model of representation focuses on the compositional equilibrium that underlies the order of nature, which has an eternal character. In this way, similarities and realities assume a symbolic character, for which symbols, data and thoughts are eternal.
A bas-relief on a rock opposite the previous one, on the other side of the river, has influences probably traceable in the friezes of the Trajan's Column related to the celebration of Trajan's victories, even if here the style is achemenid. In the central figure are again reproduced in detail the three victories of Shapur, while the 14 images that develop on both sides of the central image serve to give strength to the theme depicted in the center. On the left are the Iranian nobles arranged in tight rows, and on the right, in the same way, the Roman prisoners.
There is another image of Shapur that we should have commented before the others, that of his coronation at Naqsh-e Rajab. This is probably the first bas-relief of Shapur and even goes back to the time of his father Ardashir, as both he and Fravarti are on horseback, but Shapur reaches out to take the diadem that is slightly far away; perhaps the artist wanted to point out that Shapur is not yet king and Ardashir is alive. There is no trace of defeated enemies, and behind Shapur there are several standing men. The robes are in motion and the bands of the headgear are curled. From the technical point of view, this bas-relief is slightly less refined than the others, nor does it have the completeness and fullness of those of Bishapur and Naqsh-e Rostam. Nevertheless, the general analysis and light of images of Shapur I, it can be said that they are among the most representative of the Sasanian sculpture. Some of the compositions and their details show clear Achaemenid elements, but what is evident is that it is a purely and exquisitely Iranian art. As Herzfeld rightly states "we can not for any reason identify the intrusion of foreign elements, for example Romans, into these works".
In addition to the bas-relief, there is also a statue of Shapur I at the entrance of the so-called "Shapur cave", on a mountain near Bishapur, in a place hardly accessible. The statue is more than 7 meters tall and has been carved out of a rock pillar that connects the ceiling and the floor of the cave at the bottom of the feet, and above the crown of the statue. It is probable that the mouth of the cave was not very large and that Shapur, having chosen it as a place for his burial, ordered that it be widened, leaving a part standing up as a column and making it sculpt. The face of this statue emanates a superhuman grandeur and majesty; Ghirshman believes it is "impossible to conceive of an image that more than this inspires in the observer the greatness of Shapur I, King of Iran and Aniran". This statue creates in the observer a sense of tranquility, familiarity and purity that induces in the viewer a sense of submission and availability. Perhaps it is the same sentiment that has prompted the sculptor to strive with commitment, trust and tenacity, to give that pillar of rock the appearance of Shapur. This statue appears graceful and harmonious even keeping in mind its dimensions and proportions outside the municipality. Some historians believe that the statue was damaged during the invasion of the Arabs, who considered the statues to be like idols. Others, including Ghirshman, believe that the statue was damaged due to an earthquake, which caused the disappearance of the crown and a fracture at the ankle, too thin to carry weight. This theory is not compatible with the beliefs of the Zoroastrians and the Mazdais of Iran. In the Mazdean faith the sculptor does not have the right to separate the sculpture from its original substance, in this case the mountain, because in this case it should, on the day of the resurrection, be endowed with life. The statue was therefore attached to its substance to the head and feet, and it is unlikely that an earthquake could detach it from the mountain. The first hypothesis is preferable, also in consideration of the fact that the same operation was done against some images that emerged from the ground in Persepolis.
The statue, which had an arm to his side, and a bent and that seems to hold her hand in a royal scepter has been worked so very late. The creases of the dresses are sculpted with so much skill that it almost seems like a silk garment bathed in the humidity of the water. In the folds there is the same symmetry that is found in the folds of the Achaemenid robes, and it seems that the sculptor wanted to give a new style to the eternal sculpture, without place and without time, of his time. It is possible that Shapur's tomb was in this place. From the Coptic documents that emerged from the sands of Egypt, it can be deduced that Shapur was to be found in Shapur when he was seized by a deadly disease.
Other sculptures dating back to this era can be found on the walls of some stone or stucco ossuaries. The Zoroastrians deposited the corpses of their dead in so-called "towers of silence", ie towers or wells, built over a hill, so that the meat could be eaten by vultures. The bones were then laid in special urns and buried. In a field near Bishapur, a slightly damaged stone ossuary was found, whose four facades are all carved. The images depict respectively: two winged horses that drive a solar disk, or the god Mitra, since the god must descend from heaven to give again eternal life to man in the era of resurrection; the deity Zurvan, who in "Manichaeism" is "the time without end", the eternal being; the guardian god of the sacred fire; on the fourth side Anahita is portrayed, which we recognize from the coppad'acqua holding in the hand and from the fish. It is possible that this ossuary belonged to a nobleman of the court of Shapur.
The changes that occurred in the period of Shapur I were so great and significant that they also had a profound influence on the works of later eras. In all this artistic production, although some foreign influence is recognizable, it is the Iranian spirit that dominates, as is also admitted by all the historians of oriental art.
The bas-relief of Shapur, representing the coronation of Bahram I, son of Shapur, is the culmination of the bas-relief of the early centuries of the dynasty. The nobility and dignity with which he reaches out to grasp the diadem he is facing is similar to the nobility of the god who gives it to him. The features of the face, its spiritual aura, the compositional balance, the relief of the image and its being in harmony with the proportions of the horse, unitary and majestic, make this work an absolute masterpiece of Sassanid sculpture. The "asymmetric symmetry", so that the ribbons of the crown are curled in two opposite directions, give the idea of ​​the sacredness and religious solemnity associated with the coronation ceremony of the god. Other bas-relief depictions of Bahram portrayed in his royal life - from triumph to victory, to his enthronement, to moments of hunting and war - are among the highest moments of the Sassanid bas-relief and bearers of purely Iranian specificity.
In the real Sassanid laboratories there were produced different artistic artifacts suitable for the different social strata. All the techniques, such as stucco, fresco, ceramics, metallurgy, weaving and embroidery, goldsmithing and many other arts, show the greatness of the spirit of the proud people of that period. And yet, it is the bas-relief on rock walls that represents the link with the ancient Iranian tradition, and this is what makes it the art par excellence of the Sassanid era.
Among the Sassanid rulers, Bahram II (276-293) was the one that gave the most impetus to rock sculpture. At Naqsh-e Rostam, where there is a still partially visible Elamite incision, alongside the coronation of Ardashir I, one can find Bahram among the members of his family. It is the only Sassanid king immortalized together with the queen and his other relatives. Also this image, like the others that have a strong religious characterization, is composed according to the arrangement of asymmetrical symmetry, around a central axis. What is evident is that the bas-relief of Bahram II is connected to the previous tradition, of which the representation of his victorious battles against the enemies is also represented. In the image of Bahram on the throne, still in the framework of a symmetrical composition, Bahram is seated in a frontal position and bears on his head a crown with a royal hawk's wing, which is an attribute of the god of victory Verethragna. On either side of the king are symmetrically arranged four characters who bring their respects to the sovereign, also portrayed frontally, with the exception of the faces, which look at the king, and feet. The folds of the clothes are the same as the images of Shapur, while the frontal position is the same as the arsacid works and is a feature of eastern Iranian art that became generalized under the Sassanids.
At Sar Mashhad there is another bas-relief of Bahram II, in which the king is depicted in the act of cutting a lion into two, in the two phases of the landings and of the actual cut. Behind the king stand the queen and two other members of the royal family. The image of the queen has no feminine trait: the curls are not in order or the contours of the breasts are noticeable, but the image has tried to give a sense of three-dimensionality. The sacredness of women among the ancient Iranians prevented them from being represented; therefore it would seem that the sculptor decided to give the queen masculine traits. Ghirshman believes that the artist was not able to reproduce the relief of the breasts and the unwinding of the curls, which is not acceptable, since the same sculptor who was able to represent so well the audacity and power of the attack of Bahram to the lion, using the traits with such force that all the movement is concentrated on the king, would certainly have been able to give some relief to the breasts and curves of the curls. The artist, on the other hand, was not interested in manifesting the external beauty, but rather the interior beauty. In the 1957 another bas relief of Bahram was discovered in the Guyum area, in the Fars, which depicts, even if incompletely, its coronation.
The representation of the coronation on horseback has been disappearing from about the fourth century onwards, supplanted by the "standing" version. The coronation of King Narse, son of Shapur I, in Naqsh-e Rostam, and of his successor Bahram III, are examples. In the coronation of Narse, the king receives a diadem from Anahita, while his son Bahram, still a child, is standing between the two figures and two members of the court are waiting standing behind Narses. The Anahita deity is bigger than the king and her ruffled clothes descend from the body to the ground, a characteristic that allows to identify the goddess, together with the shape of her curls. From the point of view of proportion, this image does not have the strength and beauty of those of Shapur and Bahram II (Bahram Gur), but the work is nevertheless realized with the same technique and expertise.
Another bas-relief of Naqsh-e Rostam portrays Hormozd II at a gallop as he unsaddles the enemy with a long pole. The image appears borrowed from that of Ardashir in Firuzabad, in which the king is represented in a very similar way.
The image of the triumph of Shapur II on the Kushana is different from the previous bas-reliefs. Here, the composition develops horizontally, along two overlapping horizontal lines. At the center of the upper line appears Shapur, seated frontally with an air of force that has something magical, while with the left hand holds the handle of the sword that is placed vertically along the axis of his bust. The representation, whose relief does not emerge much from the level of the rock, may have been carved following the lines of a pre-existing fresco. To the right of the king, that is to the left of the observer, are the notables of the court, standing, with fingers bent as a sign of submission. Along the lower line, on the same side, a groom leads the horse of the sovereign while the servant is behind him with his arms folded. In the line above, to the left of the king, the Iranian soldiers lead the kushana prisoners with their hands bound in the presence of the sovereign, while under the same side the executioner brings to the king the severed head of the enemy king; behind you are other prisoners in chains. The use of bringing the enemy's head to the king or commander is of Sarmatian origin. The Sarmatians were related to the Persians and became tributaries of the Achaemenids and then the Sassanids.
Among the other fragments of this era, we mention the stone head of a horse kept at the Berlin museum, the so-called "head of Nezamabad" (from the place where it was discovered). Two other pieces, the head of Qobad and the head of Bahram Gur, were found in Hatra in Iraq, and are now in the archaeological museum of Baghdad.
Since the end of the third century, the Sassanid rulers began to be particularly interested in the west of the country. After Narsete, it stopped performing reliefs in the Fars, probably due to the fact that the Silk Road passed near Kermanshah and Taq-e Bostan, which according to Herzfeld was considered "the gateway to Asia", was the subject of a new interest.
In the bas-relief of the coronation of Ardashir II (379-383), the crowning god and the king are standing, and behind Ardashir we see Mitra, who with the barsom blesses and guarantees victory to the king. Under the crowning god is the fallen enemy king, while Mithra is seated on a lotus flower. The lotus was called by the ancient Iranians "the twilight sun", due to the fact that it opens in the evening while it remains closed during the day. There are other Iranian-Eastern traditions in this work, such as the frontal position of the bust of the king and the deities, while the faces are in profile. Also the feet are portrayed on the side, open in both directions. The figure on the ground, seem to suggest clothes, symbolizes the Roman Empire. The enemy and the flower appear to emerge from the surface of the stone, while the three main figures are carved in depth, so that they seem to have a consistency independent of the context, as if they were arranged on a thin strip. This work, from the technical point of view, does not reach the same levels as the images of Shapur and Bahram. Here the image of the king, like that of the gods, of the lotus and of the enemy, has no great depth so much as to seem designed. Therefore, it is possible to hypothesize that the artist wanted to make a difference emerge between bas-relief and painting, which at that time was experiencing a certain flowering. This work has much to do with stucco works, but follows the traditions of Sassanid sculpture with regard to the reproduction of details. Sculpted decorations and stucco decorations are placed next to each other, in a balanced combination, in the main cave of Taq-e Bostan, and were attributed to Piruz (459-484) and to Cosroe II Parviz (590-628) respectively by Endmann and from Herzfeld. The site's sculpture complex is the last example of Sassanid bas-relief. Basically, Taq-e Bostan had to have a three-iwan façade, which was never completed. On the right there is only a small iwan with the image of Shapur III alongside his father Shapur II, known by the nickname of Zu'l-ektaf. The wall that closes the cave is divided into two parts: the upper part represents the king's coronation performed by two deities, the Fravarti and Anahita, while in the lower part there is the sovereign on horseback who throws his spear towards the enemy . From the point of view of sculptural technique and attention to details, these images go beyond simple bas-relief and are very close to the statue in the round. Here too, the king and the gods are portrayed in front, apart from the equestrian statue, which is in profile (Fig. 19)
The production of bas-reliefs on the walls of a cave, rather than on the sides of a mountain, typical of the last Sassanids, is probably due to Iranian-Oriental influences, perhaps kushanidi. On the other hand, we know that the palace of Shapur in Bishapur had 64 niches whose decorations and images we know very little. On the contrary, we know that Nissar's palace had similar niches that housed images of the sovereigns, a solution that we find also in the fortress of Tuprak, in Corasmia. The mutual influence of the western and eastern arts of Iran in the Sasanian period is remarkable and enriched the Sasanian artistic tradition. Every foreign element that touched the Iranian art was transformed by the artists of this earth and deeply iranized.
On the two side fronts of the cave of Taq-e Bostan are depicted in relief the royal hunting reserves. On the surface on the left is a painting of parks or hunting grounds surrounded by high peaks. A boat carries the king who is standing on a boar with an arrow. Other boats follow that of the king, transporting musicians and singers, while the prey are carried on the back of an elephant. On the wall to the right are other deer hunting scenes. The paintings of Susa, which depict a deer hunt, are very similar to this one. The descriptive style of these images is full of life and movement and is certainly linked to that of Susa. The scenes shown are, in order, the following. The king on horseback, protected by a parasol, is about to go hunting, while the musicians perform on a stage. At the top you can see the king's horse galloping, while in the other image the hunt seems finished and the king leads the horse to a man's step with a bridle in his hand. In these paintings we recognize an aesthetic of detail that will be typical of Islamic painting of Iran of the ninth and tenth centuries.
The need to narrate the events and explain the details, together with the inclination to the novelty, led to the reduction of the relief to almost make it disappear on the surface of the rock. Here is another element, something that looks like a bird's eye view from above. The palisades that surround this estate seem to have been carved deep into the rock and the whole sequence of the scene appears from above. This style will later be taken up again in the Safavid pictorial style of the schools of Herat and Esfahan. The orderly succession of events is also present in the painting of the XVII-XX centuries, despite the artists who produced it were completely unaware of these bas-reliefs. On the other hand, the sculptors of this work were competent in animal anatomy, as can be deduced from the perfect way they portray them, especially the elephants, so realistic as to have few comparisons in the oriental world.

 The mosaic

The assembly of ceramic tiles, or as they say in European languages, the mosaic, is one of the techniques of ancient artists for the decoration of walls, floors or ceilings. At the Sumerians and in Mesopotamia, as well as in Elam, the mosaic was made up of small cones that were enamelled and colored on the flat side, to then be attached to the fresh plaster. In ancient Greece and in Rome were used colored squares of terracotta, colored stones or glazed ceramic, with which they produced flat designs as in painting. After the devastating invasion of Alexander, the use of cards similar to the Greek ones was widespread, instead of those of the ancient Sumerian-Elamite mode, which was also widespread in the Arsacid period (although not much remains of this period). In King Shapur's Bishapur the mosaic was widely used for the decoration of the walls of the buildings, in the vaults as in the floors, or arranged along large strips that connected the walls to the floor, on which large carpets were often spread, which are supposed to resume drawing of the mosaics of the walls.
Often the mosaics on the walls depicted the women of the court, dressed in Iranian-Roman style, intent on carrying out some work, or in different positions, such as lying on a pillow, or dressed in long robes, with tiaras and bouquets of flowers, or busy weaving shawls, dancing women, minstrels, players and other figures whose features seem to indicate belonging to the nobility (Fig. 20). The style of these works suggests that they are the work of Roman prisoners brought from Shapur, or imitations of artifacts of Antioch produced in Africa. Whatever their origin, if they were Iranian artists, they worked with the contribution and assistance of Greek artists, since the representation of women in works of art is not part of the Iranian tradition. Despite this, none of the works in question is a pedestrian imitation of the mosaics of Antioch; one can detect a certain iranizing taste in the features of the face, in the hairstyles, in the clothing and even in the posture and in the shape of the face and the chin. By the way, the Roman portrait is usually first or half-length. These mosaics are not even without a certain partisan influence; the faces without necks are part of a tradition that is found in the small figures found in Siyalk and dating back to the Arsacid era, and which spread even to the border areas on the borders of Iran. It can be concluded that the art of Bishapur is a work in which Roman-Syrian and Iranian artists participated.

 The stuccoes

The oldest sasanid stucco decorative work was found in the Ardashir palace in Firuzabad. The decorations, which are found in the moldings above the entrance doors or on the vaults, are copies of Egyptian decorations that are located above some doors to Persepolis. They are particularly simple and their reliefs are not very deep. So, beautiful stuccoes can be found in the niches of the palace of Shapur I in Bishapur. In the exemplar preserved in the Louvre, the two sides of the niche are in fact quadrangular columns with a simple capital, surmounted by a semicircular niche; on the two sides of the columns there are two vertical strips decorated with greek, which reach up to the frieze above the vault, which above is decorated with an intricate arabesque of leaves, embellished by four arabesque rings. These stuccoed niches were all 64 and perhaps housed statues, although none was actually found, and it is also possible that they housed servants standing, ready to serve.
Most of the stucco is from the period following Shapur I, more or less the 3rd century. Many of them, and particularly the stuccoes of Kish, in Mesopotamia, have inspired the stuccos of the Islamic period. On a stuccoed tablet found in Kish and now in the museum in Baghdad, a half-length woman is represented, framed by leaves and flowers. The diadem she wears indicates that it is probably the queen or daughter of the king, and the composition follows a pattern widespread in Asia in previous centuries.
On a large stuccoed table framed by stucco tiles depicting a repeated motif, found in Chahar-Tarkhan near Tehran, a hunting scene of the Sasanide Piruz (459-484) is represented, but its compositional structure is completely different from the previous one. Here the main stucco methods have been used: in the central image the two figures are produced by a single mold and the ornamental elements are also printed. In the inner part there is a theory of roses of 12 petals, similar to those that adorn the frames of Persepolis and that perhaps have Egyptian origins. In the central part is a raised pomegranate, which is an epiphany of blessing and abundance, lying on two beautiful wings that wrap it in a loop, creating an image that resembles that of a carpet. The lines of the wings and the leaves are dashed with precision, while the arabesque of the outermost drawing describes a knotted gait in which a small graceful flower emerges from each knot. This stucco is exhibited at the Philadelphia museum. In the repeated motif at its center on the right we see the Shah attacked by two wild boars, and on the left we see the king prevailing over the animals, while in the middle there is a group of wild boars escaping. In this stucco, the characters and animals are stuck in parallel rows at the top of the scene. The density of the representation and the minor immobility put it as a level of excellence different from the rest of Sassanid plaster.
We also have the stucco portrait of a prince whose style is very simple and whose technique basically consists in the alignment of points; the face is probably that of Qobad I (488-498). Sasanian plaster was widely used in vegetable arabesque, formed by flowers and leaves reproduced rhythmically, with buds and winged motifs in the center of rings made up of rows of dots. In a Ctesiphon iwan 18 different types ascribable to this ornamental motif were identified, and in a Sisanid Kish palace other 40s were found. In the Archaeological Museum of Berlin, a Sassanid stucco is preserved which contains numerous winged pomegranates, obtained with exceptional refinement starting from a single mold; pomegranates are arranged in parallel rows so that each pomegranate is placed between the pomegranate wings of the row below. Furthermore, also in Berlin, there are two splendid tablets, one of which introduces the arabesque motif that will be typical of Islamic art, with stylized flowers and plants and pomegranates; the other presents two wings with an inscription in the center, placed in the middle of a circle composed of 36 points in relief, all in the middle of an arabesque of branches and leaves.
In a rectangular table found in Ctesiphon, also conserved in Berlin, there is the relief image of a bear fleeing in a mountain landscape, endowed with a certain realism. While the mountains are portrayed in the simple and schematic way typical of Sumerian and Elamite art, the vegetation that serves as a background to the bear is quite realistic. In a tablet, instead, kept in the archaeological museum of Tehran, the head of a wild boar is placed in the center of two concentric circles spaced by 24 smaller circles. This composition is at the center of an ornamental pattern of branches and leaves. The find dates back to the first century and was found in Damghan.
In the tablet of Ctesiphon, another example of a work dating back to the first century and preserved in Berlin, is the image of a peacock in the center of a circle. The dots or small circles surrounding the bird have been turned into small circular nails.

Coins, seals and crowns
coins

The Sassanid coins differ each according to the sovereign of which they carry the effigy and from which they were beaten. Therefore, they are also the only complete instrument able to give us the chronology of this period. On every coin there is the name of the sovereign that he has ordered the production, in pahlavi sasanide or middle Persian, reason why the historians are able to datarle precisely. The numismatic art developed at the same rate as the other Sasanian arts and had its own evolution, which helps us to understand the various phases of Sasanian artistic development in general. In addition, the iconography of the coins reproduces the type of crown worn by the various kings, until the time of Piruz. The crowns were of very different shapes and usually there was a spherical appendage above the crown; the crowns were crenellated and often had wings. Sometimes the surface of the crown, as in the case of those of the Fravarti, of Mitra, of Verethragna and of Anhaita, had parallel vertical slits. Subsequently, the large sphere was replaced by a smaller sphere, sometimes by a crescent, accompanied by some stars. With the exception of Bahram II, whose image was printed on the coin along with that of the queen, the coins had only the image of the king.
The technique of engraving underwent considerable changes during the four centuries of Sassanid rule. In its initial stages, this technique reveals a great beauty and precision; the proportions of the bodies are very accurate and the figures are represented with significant realism. In the III and II centuries before Islam the technique did not undergo notable changes, but from the end of the II century the tract appears unstable, approximate and less defined. In the first century before Islam, the period of decline comes to an end and there is a rebirth. These coins had value throughout the first century after Islam even among Muslim governments; the name of the coin was dirham (drachma) and the coins were usually in silver. The image of the coins was usually in profile, with the exception of a coin depicting the wife of Cosroe I, known as the "beloved lady"; usually the coins reproduced only a crowned half-length; in a coin, Bahram II appears depicted side by side with his wife, and with the children in front of him.
The methods of artistic communication in the III and IV century d. C. knew great growth. The works produced, from the point of view of quality, were superior to those created in previous eras; in the second century we witness a decline in artistic quality and technique, and despite the attempt to recover the creativity and quality of the past, what was produced were mere imitations of ancient specimens. This decline took place in almost all artistic forms, with the inclusion of bas-relief, gold and engraving. Nevertheless, Sasanian art must be considered a unitary phenomenon as a whole, with specific and unique characteristics, endowed with homogeneity and continuity that can not be found in other periods. This same fact reveals the unity of the country, the solidity of the state and society and the unity of faith and belief. The Sassanid is a national art, purely Iranian, and the coins and seals that have come down to us, as well as the metal containers, clearly show its aesthetic value. The unity was such that the Sassanid iconographic models, ie the coronations, the hunting and war scenes and the feasts, were also reproduced by blacksmiths, goldsmiths and potters who produced objects of daily use, so that these signs of greatness and the majesty of the Sassanid court became part of the visual repertoire of the entire population.
The Sassanid coins were usually silver. The golden ones, called dinar, were very rare pieces. What we know from the numismatic texts is that we only know a Sassanid gold coin of King Cosroe II Parviz, the diameter of 2,2 cm., Now owned by the American Numismatic Society of New York. Aside from the different coins of Ardashir I, the coins carried the effigy of the king that made them beat. The coins of Ardashir dating back to the beginning of his reign are not without similarities with those particle, with the difference that these reproduced the left profile of the sovereign (with the exception of some kings portrayed frontally, as Mitridate III, Artaban II and Vologese IV ) and that on the other side they carried the portrait of Arsace, eponymous founder of the dynasty. The coins of Ardashir, instead, depicted the right profile of the sovereign and presented on the back a fire altar similar to a table with one leg. The successive coins of Ardashir have a simple crown with a sphere above, while the brazier on the other side has a cubic shape. With the exception of the wife of Cosroe I, who is portrayed frontally, all the other Sassanid coins portray the right profile, perhaps also a claim to the connection with the Achaemenids, whose coins carried portraits of kings in profile in the same verse.

 Seals and precious stones

Sassanid seals were normally made of precious stones, and were flat tablets or hemispheres. They were usually dark or light garnets, jade, agate, light and dark red agate, lapis lazuli, transparent and opaque Yemenite carnelian, ruby, onyx, sometimes with red spots, rock crystal. For those plates the onyx was usually used, while the other stones were used for hemispherical seals. Often the seals were placed instead of precious stones in the rings of the rings. Normally the figures on the seals were engraved, other times they were in relief and could have the owner's name as not having it. However we have seals of Sasanian notables who have only an inscription and are without figures. The images were usually the portrait of the owner, with the exception of special cases, in which animals were engraved, a hand, winged horses, heads of animals with multiple bodies (for example, a group of single-headed deer, or two chamois joined from the back). A seal representing a triumphal deity is preserved at the National Library in Paris; other seals have symmetrical ornamental inscriptions (not yet deciphered) placed between two wings, such as those of the Ctesiphon stucco, which bears the sign that is probably the emblem of the city. Some of these seals have a hole in the back, which was used to house a chain by which they were hung around the neck. Among the typically Sassanid motifs we find: the king who hunts on horseback, the lord of the sun on his mount, banquets and feasts, coronations, the king who fights with a six-headed serpent (Iranian invention), and the god Mitra pulled by two winged horses. The god of fire is sometimes represented in the form of the face of a woman around the face of which a flame is shining, placed on a brazier. Examples of these stuccos are scattered among European and American museums.
The seals were not reserved exclusively for sovereigns and notables, indeed it can be said that all classes, from priests to politicians, from tradesmen to artisans, rich or poor, had a seal. The seal took the place of the signature. Some seals, in considerable quantities, report a phrase of invitation to faith in the gods, which in "pahlavi sasanide" reads "epstadan or yazdan". The seals were imprinted on raw earth or printed with ink on leather or parchment. The finest example of these objects is a jewel that is thought to belonged to Qobad I, kept at the National Library of Paris, on which is engraved the image of a queen wearing a crenellated crown similar to that of Shapur II, together with full figure of Bahram IV, standing behind his enemy, with one lance in his hand the other resting on his side. Another example of a seal is worthy of attention. It is a seal of neutral color agate on which is engraved a hand with fingers that are transformed into leaves, which holds a bud between the index finger and thumb. The hand is inscribed in a circle that at the height of the wrist takes the form of a bridle, and is part of the Vass Hunn collection.

 Crowns

The crown of Ardashir I is initially very simple: a sphere above the head very similar to the arsacide headdress; in the following years, however, he changed significantly, until he had a small sphere on the front, usually made up of the hair of the sovereign so coiffed. On the first crowns, on either side, two roses with eight petals adorned with pearls often appear.
Shapur I, son of Ardashir I, is depicted with a crown with four long merlons on both sides and on the back, and on the front a sphere larger than that of the crown of Ardashir. The crown has two hanging wings that cover the king's ears. The crown of Hormozd I is very simple, having only small blackbirds in the back. The sphere on the front is similar to that of Ardashir I, while that of Shapur I is placed between the battlements.
The crown of Bahram I is a revisit of that of Shapur I, with merlons in the shape of long pointed leaves, similar to the tongues of a flame, and the typical hanging earcovers; above, it has a sphere higher than that seen on the crown of Shapur. Also the crown of Bahram II is similar to the crowns with the sphere of Ardashir I and Hormozd I, with the sphere slightly moved forward, with the earpieces inclined towards the rear, horizontally. On his coins, Bahram II is often represented together with the queen, dressed in a dress that covers her body up to her chin, and with her son.
Bahram III has a crown whose lower edge has a row of short merlons, while the high margin is adorned with two large deer horns (or golden copies of deer horns) on the sides; the front part of the crown, between the two horns, houses the large sphere typical of the Sassanids. The relief of the coins of Bahram III is not very pronounced, therefore, the fine decorations of the crown are not clearly visible.
The Narses crown has a row of rectangular battlements along the lower margin, while above, where the head is located, has four large leaf-shaped merlons, similar to flames with many tongues. Here, the sphere is located in the middle of the front leaf. The crown of his son Hormozd II has large spherical grains instead of rectangular merlons, above which a hawk is seen with its head stretched forward, holding a pomegranate with its beak whose grains are made of large pearls; its wings point upwards and are bent backwards, while a large sphere is resting on the neck of the bird.
The crowns of Shapur II and Ardashir II are, with only minor differences, similar to those of Shapur I and Ardashir I. The merlons of the crown of Shapur II are more pronounced and protrude more outwards, while below them, on the margin, there are a series of golden decorations whose coils seem to project forward. In this case, the sphere is placed above the three frontal battlements. The crown of Ardashir II is similar to that of Ardashir I, with only pearls set in the margin; there is perhaps a connection between the names of the sovereigns and the similarity between the crowns.
The crown of Shapur III is different from the others. The Sassanid sphere which is supported by a tubular support whose upper part is wider than the lower one, and takes the form of a large strip which adapts to the shape of the crown. It is decorated with rather simple repeated motifs, while behind the sphere there are two wings that hide under its great size.
From this moment onwards, significant changes can be observed in the shape of the sasanide crown, which include the introduction, on the front part, of a crescent whose concave part faces upwards. In some crowns you can also see a star just between the two points of the crescent, while in others the crescent and the crown lie between two stylized palm leaves, reminiscent of the wings with the tips pointing upwards, bent towards the crescent . Among the crowns of this type the crown of Yazdegard I, with only the crescent on the front; the body of the crown is decorated in a simple way, while the sphere is smaller than that of its predecessors, and is placed on the tip of the headgear, which ends behind with a small tail. The crown of Bahram V, embattled like those of Shapur I and II, has a crescent above the headgear and a small sphere in the center of the star.
The crowns of Piruz I and Qobad I have a large blackbird on the back and a crescent on the front. A larger crescent, in the center of which is the Sassanid sphere, is mounted on the tip of the headgear. The difference between the two crowns is in the crescent with the sphere, which in the case of Qobad is slightly smaller. The crown of Vologese has the same shape, even if it has four blackbirds similar to those of the crown of Shapur I, with the tip slightly rounded, and the crescent and the sphere a little bigger. The other crowns, with the exception of that of Cosroe II Parviz, Purandokht, Hormozd V and Yazdegard III, all roughly respect the model with the frontal crescent and the sphere (or the star instead of the sphere), with or without battlements , which can be wide or narrow. The crown of the four sovereigns just mentioned, however, presents a kind of stirrup, placed between two wings pointing upwards and with the point directed towards the crescent, which holds the figure with the star or the sphere.
We have described the Sassanid currencies quite in detail because they remained current and accepted throughout the first century of the Islamic era by Muslim governments; for this reason symbols like the crescent and the star became Islamic symbols, which are found in many ornamental motifs of different periods and places in the history of Islam. The flags of some Muslim countries, bearing the crescent and the star, have been influenced by this Sasanian tradition. It should be remembered that the Sassanid crown was a very heavy object, so that the sovereigns did not wear it, but hung it with a chain on the upper part of the throne by sitting underneath. On other occasions the sovereign wore a hat with ram's horns, as during the battle of Amida with Julian the Apostate. As emerges in the story of Ardashir-Babakan, the ram in Persian culture is a symbol of the Fravarti of victory and divine glory. The act of hanging the crown to the throne, introduced by the Sassanids, remained in use even after the end of the dynasty in other areas, particularly in Byzantium.

 Metals and glasses

The manufacture of glass has a long tradition in ancient Iran. Glass production was widespread during the Elamite period in the third millennium BC. C., in the Susa region and seals carved and engraved in stone and glass have been found. In the Sassanid era, this art so deeply rooted in Persia found new impetus, and it is not possible to know if in this rebirth some foreign workers had a role. This is an unconfirmable hypothesis in the light of the few objects found to date. The form and the decorations of the finds show that the Persian artists used the blowing, and imitated the metal plates that were very common. A pear-shaped blown glass container reminiscent of the Sasanian silver jugs or the glazed ceramic terrines housed in the Archaeological Museum of Tehran, which probably date back to the period that coincided with the birth of Islam in the 7th century AD . C. Another similar object, preserved at the Berlin museum, is a cup of the same period with images of embossed winged horses inscribed in a small circle on the outer surface. Another important find of the same type was discovered in a building in Susa, where there are numerous frescoes from the Sassanid era. In addition to the blown glass, red or green printed glasses have been found, which can be brought closer to the Cosroe gold cup, conserved in Paris. To the southwest of Qazvin, in the Daylaman area, some glass cups made using different techniques have been found. In Susa, again, glass was found whose surface has small reliefs, which served to permanently house the base of the glasses. At Daylaman the same result was obtained by tracing embossed lines or vertical relief strips in the lower part of the container. The winged horses of the Berlin Cup had the same purpose. All these objects have a dating from the first century before Islam to the first century after Islam. From the analysis of the numerous artifacts found in a dry well in Susa, the scholars have deduced that in the city there was, in continuity with the Sassanian glassworks, a very flourishing glass industry, probably active until the IX-X century.
During the Sassanid period metallurgy and its various applications were very widespread, and the most worked metals were gold and silver, which testifies to the relative well-being enjoyed by the population. The objects produced were commensurate with the socio-economic situation of the client, and for this reason they are of very different types and qualities, from objects with refined and detailed reliefs, to simple and approximate incisions. A selection of a few but very precious examples can be found today in private collections and in European museums. A collection of more than a hundred cups, plates and plates uncovered by chance in southern Russia is now on display at the Hermitage and in recent decades the Tehran Archaeological Museum has also acquired some valuable examples found in Iran. The discovery of these works outside the borders of Iran shows that, despite the Sasanian socioeconomic model was based on agriculture, trade and the exchange of artistic artefacts with neighboring countries or other courts was very common. Plates covered with metals or precious stones were traded in Russia, in Badakhshan and in northern Afghanistan, and most of these exchanges occurred in the era of Cosroe I and II. Many of these objects were copies of objects from previous eras; since the Sassanids maintained the relationships of their predecessors with various areas of Eurasia, these silver containers were often gifts produced for the counterparts of other kingdoms, used to win their favor. It was goblets, vases, goblets, oval or round mouth, smooth or machined, containers for perfumes and sometimes even small animal shapes, often horses. The apex of this kind of objects was touched in the third and fourth centuries.
These objects were produced in such a way that each decorative element was manufactured separately, finished and then welded directly onto the object (cup, vase, plate, etc.). This is a procedure typical of Iran, unknown in Greece and Rome. The oldest known specimen of this kind of objects is the large Ziwiyeh cup.
Among the many different techniques used during the Sassanid era there was one that included a preliminary survey and then an engraving. Engravings and reliefs were then covered with a thin silver leaf that increased the contrast of the decoration. Another technique involved the creation of incisions on the silver body of the object, within which a golden thread was placed and beaten. The same technique was used in the production of other objects such as shields, sword handles, daggers and knives, or even spoons and forks. Very beautiful specimens of these objects are kept in the Reza Abbasi Museum in Tehran. In addition to their historical importance, these objects bear witness to the fact that the arabesque later spread in Islamic times has its origins in pre-Islamic Iran, in Sassanian art. Other metal objects were produced with molds, and only subsequently engraved; we have a plate decorated with precious stones, with a golden surface adorned with rubies, emeralds and silver plaques. The main image of the plate is that of the king, portrayed while sitting on the throne, or hunting or at the moment of the coronation by the hand of the god.
Among the most beautiful cups is that famous as "cup of Solomon", which belonged to Cosroe "Anushirvan" and that the caliph Harun al-Rashid gave to Charlemagne and that ended up being included in the collection of Saint Denis. Today it is preserved in the Cabinet des Medailles of the National Bibliotaca of Paris. On this cup is the image of Cosroe Anushirvan on the throne. The legs of the throne form two statues of winged horses and the image is engraved on a clear and transparent glass stone sphere, while on the base a red ruby ​​is embedded in the inside. The king is seated in a way that makes him appear in the act of standing up, portrayed front, with his hand resting on his sword, while next to him we see some cushions on top of each other. The bands in its crown are parallel and describe a curl directed upwards. Around this image there are three circular rows of red and white glass, each with the engraving of a bud, which reach the edge of the cup at the top. The glass circles gradually widen as they continue upward, and the spaces are filled with bits of green glass with a rhomboidal shape. The outside edge is covered with ruby, while the rest of the cup is golden. The use of all these complementary colors shows how the artist was poured into the art of associating them with each other. This way of decorating objects with precious and colored stones, a typical Iranian innovation, went beyond the borders of Iran to reach the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.
Another cup, all silver and finely embossed, belonged to Cosroe Anushirvan, is located at the Hermitage museum; the cup has the same scene as the king who sits on the throne described above, with the only difference that there are two servants on each side of the throne, ready to serve. In the lower part of the cup, we see the king on horseback in a hunting scene. The fact that it is separated from the rest of the surface by a horizontal line and the placement of the hands along a single row along the last third of the vertical shows how the Persian artists were interested in the study of proportions and the division of space in regular portions, and the axial composition, together with the asymmetrical symmetry, testifies to their great and profound artistic experience.
Another cup of the same sovereign is exhibited at the Tehran museum; parts of the object have disappeared, without its fundamental structure being compromised. The king is depicted seated, as in the previous cups, on the throne, placed under an arch. This is located in a square, whose vertical sides are covered by small circles (seven on each side) in which birds are engraved. Outside the square - supported by two lions - two servants are depicted, placed politely in an upright position. Above the square frame there are merlons and a crescent.
The silver cup conserved at the Metropolitan Museum in New York instead shows Piruz hunting for ibexes, pictured as they flee. One of these animals has been hit by a spear and is trampled by the horse at a gallop. Parts of the cup, which has a diameter of 26 cm, are decorated with beaten gold thread, and some outlines, such as those of the horns of the ibex and the king's quiver, are accentuated. The images of the cup are in silver and placed on another sheet of the same metal; and joints are then filled and polite finely. This is a technique introduced by the Persians. This cup has a circular composition and the king is approximately in the middle and in the upper part. It is a very balanced composition, which has different refinements. The choice of gold, silver and dark contours shows that in the Sasanian period there was a particular attention to the balance of colors in the representation.
A silver plate found in Sari, now kept in the Archaeological Museum of Tehran, shows the Sassanid king struggling with the lion hunt, or in defense from the danger represented by the lion. It is not clear, from the crown, which king is exactly, even if from the strokes it would seem Hormozd II. The composition is unpublished: the body of the lion, the movement of the hands of the king and the body of the horse are parallel, and in front there is a lion instead placed vertically that gives the back to the sovereign; perhaps the author wanted to represent the terror of the lion and his flight before the king. Under the body of a fallen lion there are geometrical stones, with some bushes of grass that appear here and there. The scene has its roots in the ancient Iranian-Sumerian art, revived with greater refinement in Persian design. What is noteworthy, the movement of the horse is in the opposite direction to that of the king, that is, the king throws the arrow to the lion that is behind the horse. The incisions are performed with great care and attention. As has been said for the Sassanid rock reliefs, here too the artist abstains from any kind of realism, obtaining an extraordinary strength in the representation of the king's struggle with the proudest animal known, eventually showing the victory of the man, confident in himself, on the beast.
Another silver plate depicting Shapur II is kept at the Hermitage. The design of the plate is in relief, but the composition is similar to the previous one. The only difference is that the vertical lion is attacking the king, while in that he was behind, and the head of the horse is facing down, and the mane of a fallen lion is stirred in the wind, while the legs are completely extended, indicating that he is dead. The plate is executed much finer than the previous one. Another pot, this time in gold, is kept in the National Library of Paris, and shows Cosroe II called Piruz Shah while hunting. The clothes are represented in great detail, with a precision that is not found elsewhere. King, horse and prey are all in the same verse, and the design has similarities with those found on the walls of Susa. The animals are different, wild boar, deer, gazelle, and many lie struck under the hooves of the horse, in the lower part of the surface. On the right, in the outermost margin, there are other animals that flee, while the king appears in the central part.
In a silver cup found in Daylaman, now kept in a private collection, Shapur II, standing, is killing a deer, with the knee pressed on the side of the animal, a hand on the horns, while with the other holds the sword that pierces the deer on the back. Another cup, kept at the Hermitage, features a Sassanid king with a crown of chamois horns, while on horseback he kills a wild boar that had attacked him from the undergrowth. The design of the cup is uncertain, and it is probable that it is a cup copied by the Kushana on the basis of an original Sassanid.
Another metallic object that should be mentioned here is a long carafe with a handle, in silver and with gold insertions. On the belly of the carafe a deer is visible, while on the neck of the object there are three filigree stripes. The watermark is an Iranian art still widespread today in some cities, such as in Esfahan. The same process can be seen on the feet of the carafe, while the deer is inscribed in an oval frame which in turn is surrounded by ornamental plant motifs.
Some Sassanid cups are decorated both inside and outside. For example, the Baltimore museum cup bears the image of Cosroe II Parviz seated on a throne supported by two eagles; in place of the servants, on the two sides dancers are depicted, portrayed while they move gracefully playing the daf. Behind the cup found in the Mazanderan, which is now on display at the Archaeological Museum of Tehran, the surface has been divided into paintings or frames, each of which (there are four) houses a dancer placed under a vine shoots. Under the cup, in a circular frame formed by pearls, a pheasant with a crescent-shaped crest is depicted. Another boat-shaped cup, preserved in Baltimore, bears the image of a naked dancer dancing with a stole, while musicians perform around her; the cup was probably destined for export.
But let's get back to the silver dishes and cups. Inside the base of a cup we see Piruz Shah on a galloping horse, who throws arrows at the fleeing gazelles. The scene depicts two gazelles, an ibex and two wild boars that flee in terror. The decoration is not particularly well done and the king and the horse have a different style.
A cup with the figure of the sasanian phoenix (simorgh) was found in India and is now in the British Muesum. In Baltimore, however, there is a cup with the image of a winged lion, whose smooth parts are decorated in gold, and with very simple reliefs that however do not have the refinement of the cup with the phoenix.
The 26 high carafe cm. found at Kalardasht, today at the Archaeological Museum of Tehran, has on both sides the figure of a dancer who moves excitedly. On one side one of the dancers has a bird resting on her arm and a jackal puppy in the other, while another bird can be seen at her feet, along with another animal that looks like a sleeping jackal. On the other side of the jug the dancer is holding a kind of thyrsus, while in the other a plate filled with something that would seem to be fruit. On his right is a small fox (or jackal) and a pheasant on the left. At the base, in a circle formed by hemispherical reliefs, an Iranian dragon is framed, while on the three sides of the image, under the feet of the dancers, you can see the head of a lion whose mouth actually forms an opening on the carafe ( Fig. 21).
In the corners formed by the meeting of the strings there are small musicians playing the tar; the dancers' clothes are not Iranian, just like the headdress. OM Dalton, in The Treasure of the Oxus, describes a cup similar to this, suggesting that such perforated objects served to clarify the first wine of the year, and that they were probably destined for export. According to André Godard, the Dionysian images of dancing and drunken women, the thyrsus branch, the animals and the musicians are undoubtedly evocative elements of the bacchanalia that spread, after Alexander's conquests, up to India. The dancers who dance in the middle of arabesques that recall intertwining lives, their ornaments and hairstyles, seem to indicate an external influence, or a deliberate stylistic choice used to sell objects in other countries. The cup of Sari, today in Tehran, is gold and has silver decorations on the surface.
Another cup, which is located at the National Library of Paris, and has a bird-beak-like opening. On it there are images of two lions in a crossed position, with their respective heads turned towards each other. The lions have an eight-pointed star on the shoulder, which reveals a close relationship with the images of Ziwiyeh's lions of treasure. In light of this, it is likely that the place of production is western Iran, in a northern region of the Zagros. On either side of the lions is a tree, very similar to the one depicted in Taq-e Bostan, then also to the ornamental palms of Ziwiyeh's treasure and the cups of Hasanlu and Kalardasht. In this case, we can appreciate the continuity of artistic elements and Iranian styles throughout the ages.
In a private collection the leg of a throne is preserved which has the shape of a front leg of a lion-eagle. It seems that the object was cast separately and then mounted on the throne, to be then decorated and worked properly. At the Louvre is a horse head found near Kerman. The object is silver, and on the surface there are decorations in gold, including the vestments, which are welded on the silver surface. The head is high 14 cm. and long 20, has ears that protrude forward and the expression looks like that of a galloping horse; in all likelihood it is an element that was part of a sovereign's throne.
Manufacture of zoomorphic containers and vessels became widespread in Sasanian Persia, especially under Cosroe I and II, when Iran's trade reached India, Asia Minor, southwestern Russia and the Roman Empire. There are many beautiful objects that date back to this period, including a silver horse and decorated in gold, kneeling on the ground and with the mane knotted on the head. Above the withers of the animal are depicted two female busts in relief, with dresses and crown of Sasanian style, inscribed in a golden frame similar to a chain. One of them holds the crown, while the other takes it, and the bite of the animal is similar to the Sassanid bronze or iron specimens found in Susa. These pieces are characterized by a surprising realism, the same realism that is found in two other cups, respectively in the shape of a horse's head and a gazelle. The first one is made of gold, has inlaid paraments, and an inscription in pahlavi sasanide reveals the name of its owner. The head of the gazelle has instead long circular horns, and is kept in the private Guennol collection. The horns are composed as follows in the order: a ring of gold, one of silver, one of gold and four of silver, one of gold and six of silver, with the point still bent in gold. The ears of the animal are elongated and pointed. At the Louvre there is also a beautiful gold plate decorated with colored crystals and engravings, found in Susa, and a beautiful pendant with precious stones, rubies and sapphires in a square or circular shape, on the reverse side of which is engraved in pahlavi the name of Ardashir and that was probably intended to be hung on a belt.
A gold pendant in another form of a boar, with the relief image of a lion attacking a cow, in the style of bas-reliefs of Persepolis. Two wings open on the animal's thigh. The boar is the symbol of Verethragna, god of victory, and is also found on royal official seals.
At the beginning of the Islamic period, many gold and silver plates were melted for the production of coins, a fate that also had many bronze objects. And yet, if we were to judge from the royal bust kept at the Louvre, we should conclude that bronze artistic production enjoyed excellent health during that period. It is the half-length of a king, or prince with a winged crown surmounted by a crescent and a sphere, with a smaller crescent in the front and two rows of pearls connected by a larger stone. Some Orientalists mistakenly consider it to be a late work, post-Sassanid; instead it is sasanide, portrays a young Piruz Shah, whose face has however been remodeled, misleading scholars. There is a similar bust, included in a private collection, which represents young Piruz Shah and is better preserved than the previous one. Finally, another object attributable to the same category is the bronze head of a Sasanian queen or princess, who wears a brooch on her head and who has for a time been in the hands of Tehran's antique dealers. The face is very simple, and instead of the pupils a precious stone has been set; the hairstyle is typically sasanid and is framed by a diadem.

 The fabrics
Silk

The sasanide fabric par excellence is silk, even if its use was normally reserved for the more affluent families. Of course there is little left of this material, but what we have is enough to show that it was widespread in every corner of Iran in the fourth and third centuries. The Sasanian silk motifs, sometimes slightly modified, were imitated in Rome, Byzantium and also in the areas recently gained by Islam.
The discovery of silk is due to the Chinese, who for centuries preserved their secrets, monopolizing the export market. In fact, the Silk Road crossed Persia and arrived in Rome, starting from China through Turkestan. Around about the first century a. C, silk became so popular that the satirical poets used to hide those who wore silk dresses. Silk fabrics are found in Iran and Syria at the beginning of the Christian era, but they were very expensive in the Roman Empire, due to the duties imposed by the countries it had to cross to reach Europe. In the 4th and 3rd centuries, the Persians produced silk independently and the silk industry developed so much that the Persian silk fabrics were the most sought after and precious. From the 3rd and 2nd centuries weaving became so popular in Persia that the exportation of the finished product replaced that of raw silk. The splendor of Persian silk became a cause of concern for the church of Byzantium, to such an extent that the Iranian silk was banned and declared illegal in the empire. We can reconstruct the changes in the patterns of the silk fabrics thanks to the bas-reliefs of the second half of the Sassanid dynasty, since no fabrics from that period were left. The oldest mural representation, dating back to the first half of the fourth century, shows the multicolored dress of a knight decorated with golden palms and perfectly geometrical and regular rhombuses. In the bas-reliefs of Taq-e Bostan, however, the ornamental motifs seem richer and more diversified. In a hunting scene, the dress of the sovereign is embellished by the repetition of the phoenix motif enriched by circular shapes.
From the 10th century the trade in Christian relics became very common. Every place of worship aspired to have bones or other objects that belonged to saints as a vehicle of blessing; the relics were placed in caskets lined with ancient Sassanid silks, before being sent to Europe, which made it possible to discover important silks when the caskets were opened. The Merovingian churches were decorated with large Sassanid cloths or produced according to the Sasanian style in the laboratories of western Iran (Gond Shapur, Ivan-e Karkheh, Shushtar) after the fall of the dynasty. Even today, in many European cathedrals and in the museum of Cluny, in Paris, specimens of Sassanid silks can be admired. Some Sassanid silks have emerged from the deserts of China or Egypt.
The design of these silks often consisted of large circles surrounded by other smaller circles that had the effect of rows of pearls, very similar to the motifs of Ctesiphon's stuccoes we saw above. The circles were tangent, or connected by small buds surrounded by other small circles. Sometimes some ornamental design was inserted between two separate circles.
At the center of the circles were Iranian styles, such as ibex, the phoenix, peacocks or pheasants, but sometimes even simple geometric designs. In a circle of a fabric found in Astana (Chinese Turkestan) is depicted the head of a deer with an open mouth. The specimen preserved in Nancy, in the Lorraine museum, once covered the crypt of St. Leon in the church of St. Gengoult, in Toul, presents circles with the image of a palm tree with two lions on each side facing one 'other, under which you see an arabesque every edge of which ends with a pomegranate flower. Each circle has three margins, the first with drawings of small spheres, the second of the chains, the third formed by a sequence of light and dark triangles. Among the circles are depicted dogs running one behind the other, and the image of stylized plants typical of the carpets of the nomads of Persia. These styles are still common today in some rural and nomadic populations of Iran. The trunk of the tree is very similar to the one called heibat-lu, typical of the carpets produced in southern Iran, especially in the Fars.
In another precious cloth, preserved in the cathedral of Sens, there are very similar patterns to those found on the silk of St. Gengoult. Also in this case, two lions are depicted in the circle, but without the palm. Below each two rows of circles there are two horizontal rows of animals (maybe dogs) that run, and among these rows there is a new palm, this time executed in a more geometric way.
In the Vatican Museums there is a silk that dates back to the VII or VIII; the background of the silk is blue, while the background of the circles, tangent and surrounded by rows of pearls, is light green. The small pearls are green and blue and arranged on a white background and in each circle there are two blue lions, standing in front position, facing each other. The wings and the claws are white, while the space of the area left free by the meeting of the circles is filled with vegetable arabesques that will be the model for floral motifs that became very common afterwards. The body of the lions is wrapped in a beautiful yellow stripe and on the shoulders of the animal there is a circle with two small wings, while on the thighs there is a green pearl in the center of a white circle.
Two pieces of Sasanian silk were discovered in the cemetery of Antinoe in Egypt, one decorated with the image of a chamois (symbol of divine glory) and the other with that of a winged horse, variant of one of the symbols of Verethragna. This image is also found among the bronzes of Luristan, as well as on the Bisudpur's oudoor, where the chariot of the sun appears to be towing. The ribbons tied to the neck and knees of the animal, together with the half-moon with the sphere seen on the forehead, seems to make the drawing a representation of divine power. In the other piece of Antinoe, the animals are not inscribed in circles, but arranged in neat rows, but in different positions. A tapestry on display in Florence shows the phoenix depicted in a series of circles, not unlike that preserved at the Tehran decorative arts museum; the difference here is that if in the case of Tehran there is a series of green and yellow ornamental motifs on a black background, the one in Florence presents yellow, ocher and light blue decorations, set against a dark blue background. In a beautiful fabric, the image of a rooster with a pearl necklace and a multicolored aura around the head is placed in a circle, whose ring is made up of images of small green and red hearts on a golden background. its own special beauty. The rooster is in turn red and green and its wings are represented in a very geometric way. The space between the circles is filled with medallions, buds and plant motifs in red and dark green. The rooster has a very precise shape, and the wise use of different colors, red, blue, green, gray, gives it a particular strength.
Still in the Vatican Museums, a drape is conserved which, on a golden-yellow background, presents circular cornices that seem to emerge from the surface, in which are inscribed some strange birds in profile, with geometrically shaped wings; the animals have a twig in their beak and spurs on their legs; overall, this bird resembles the Asian pheasant. The edge of the frame, which has rather thick points, is in all respects similar to the circles of the Japanese Mikado Shomu. This demonstrates to what extent Sasanid art has exerted an influence, while a more detailed analysis could reveal to us how much it has influenced art forms such as the Shoso-in treasure or the Tarim basin frescos, in the Chinese Turkestan.
There are also fabrics that represent human figures, especially in hunting or walking scenes, with or without the aid of the falcon. Most of them go back to the 5th century up to the 10th and according to the experts, they are Egyptian copies of the original Sassanids. In these specimens, men are depicted in the center of circles, arranged parallel to the animals, facing or back to back. The king is on horseback, with the falcon on his arm, while the mount tramples a fallen lion; on both sides, specularly, two palms. A variant is the king riding a winged elephant, who bisects the enemy, while a lion attacks a gazelle. Among the circles, which tend to become rhombuses, there are two horned beings, similar to wild cats with goat horns, placed on both sides of the palms (Yale University and private collection). In another drape, we see Cosroe seated on the throne while her soldiers are busy fighting the Abyssinians (Lyon Museum). There are no reasonable doubts about whether they are Sassanid works, from the point of view of workmanship, color and motif; however, since similar artifacts were also produced in Egypt and elsewhere, the authenticity of the same is not entirely beyond doubt.
Centuries after the fall of the dynasty, Sasanian art continued to be imitated in different nations, Japan, China, India, Turfan, Asia Minor, Europe and Egypt.

 Carpets and the like

We have no carpet from the Sassanid era, but we know that the Achaemenids used the carpet, even coming to export this type of artefact (see the carpet of Payzirik). The story also speaks of a precious carpet called "The Spring of Cosroe", made of silk, with precious stones and set pearls, presumably looted during the Arab conquests, cut into pieces and divided as loot among the soldiers. Mention should also be made of a precious carpet that covered the carpet dell'Apadana Bishapur, who had to have human and animal figures coordinated with the ceramic decorations on the walls, and that probably did the same end of the first.
The kilim experts also believe that the flat knot carpet was widespread during the Sassanid era, even if we have no written evidence, nor specimens or exhibits. This is why the chapter on carpets is absent from the manuals of Persian art of the Orientalists, although most believe that this art was common.

 Music, poetry and other arts

Shapur I, after the construction of Gondi Shapur in Khuzestan, founded a great academy in which were cultivated all the sciences of the time, taught by Greek, Roman, Persian, Syrian, Indian and other masters. Unfortunately there is no document of this activity. A series of traditions informs us that after the Arab conquest of Eastern Persia and the fall of Ctesiphon, to the question "what do we do with the library of Gondi Shapur", it seems that the second caliph replied: "the book of God is enough". The answer was the reason for the fire that destroyed the library, which - some oral sources tell us and some Arab historians - contained more than half a million books.
Despite this, we know that the Arjang, the major work of Mani, was completely illustrated and that great musicians, such as Nakisa and Barbod, were well-known figures at the time, especially at the court of Cosroe II. Persian literature shows the names of musical instruments from the Sassanid era. For example, when Hafez speaks of the nightingale singing from the branch of a cypress the melody of spiritual states - along with the figurative testimonies we have on cups and plates - indicates that the music was very widespread in the Sasanian period and most likely the traditional music of Today's Iran has its roots in Sasanian music.
From the images of the clothes and the rock sculptures we are able to say that the filigree embroidery and other arts were very developed and that the roots of these and others, like the miniature, sink in the Sassanid era. Many of them towards the end of the short period of the Pahlavi were about to be forgotten, but had a rebirth with the advent of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We will talk about these arts in the third part of this study.