Bell’s photograph of the south-eastern corner of the interior of Ukhaidir’s enclosure wall, showing the remains of a staircase leading to an outwardly projecting corner round tower.
On either side, blind, slightly pointed arches face the interior. The narrow windows above, accessed from a vaulted walkway that is no longer preserved in this corner, served as slits from which arrows or other missiles could be discharged. The square holes visible in the stonework mark the places where wooden ties once existed.
The façade in the south side of the Court of Honour led to some of the principal rooms of the palace. In the centre, a wide and tall arched doorway – possibly one of the earliest examples of a so-called pishtaq (a square framed archway, common in later Persian architecture, used to mark grand entrances)– gave access to a deep, brick, barrel-vaulted chamber, which Bell dubbed an iwan, or principal reception hall (Room 29). Doorways on either side opened to flanking Rooms 31, 32, 41 and 42, placed at right angles to the iwan, while a doorway at the rear gave access to Room 30.
With their elaborate stuccoed vaults, Bell observed that Rooms 31 and 32 were among the most important spaces within the palace as a whole. It is conceivable that these chambers were used as formal living rooms, where guests could sit on the floor on cushions, their backs against the wall, the centre of the back wall being the place of honour. The vault in Room 31 featured a corrugated stucco pattern and a decoration of variously embellished square coffers in the ceiling, while blind windows marked the ends of the room. Even more charming and original were the ceiling decoration and vaulting system of Room 32.
As in Room 31, the barrel vaults, set between transverse arches, were embellished with stucco patterns, but here they comprised an even more elaborate arrangement of coffered designs and corrugations. Some of the vaults terminated against semi-domes, the corners of which were resolved by small recessed squinches or horizontal brackets. On the wall between the arches, as well as at each end of the room, pairs of elaborately embellished blind windows further contributed to the distinctive character of this chamber (Fig. 3.12).
Bell observed that the entire central block of spaces just described – namely, the Court of Honour, the principal iwan and flanking reception rooms, as well as additional chambers surrounding Room 30 at the rear – was enclosed by a narrow roofed corridor (Corridor 28). The corridor created a physical divide between this central block of the palace, which clearly represented its ceremonial heart, and the remaining components. Of these remaining sections, four suites of living rooms – otherwise referred to as baits (from the Arabic for ‘houses’) – located on either side of the central ceremonial block filled much of the interior palace space. These units had central courts (B, C, G and H), at each end of which were long reception rooms flanked by living room chambers, referred to by Bell as ‘liwan groups’ (henceforth, ‘iwan groups’). Creswell conjectured that the groups of rooms facing the south would form the winter residence, while those facing north would be used in the summer.
To the north and south of the iwan groups, the baits were completed by the presence of rectangular chambers with barrel vaults pierced with terracotta pipes, and central open spaces (Rooms 47, 51, 56, 60, 74, 78, 83 and 87). It is highly likely these spaces served as kitchens.
Source:
In Search of Kings and Conquerors, Gertrude Bell and the Archaeology of the Middle East - Lisa Cooper
[Pg. 114-115].
