A marvelous construction

Bishapur, the beautiful city of Shapur, is situated south of modern Faliyan, just off the ancient road between Persis and Elam, in Fars Province, Iran.

The road connected the Sasanian capitals Istakhr and Firouzabad to Susa and Ctesiphon. The city was built near a river crossing, livius.org wrote.

As the name indicates, the city was founded by King Shapur (241-272). Like the bridge at Shushtar, it was built by Roman soldiers who had been captured after the defeat of the Roman emperor Valerian in 260.

Perhaps, they belonged to the Sixth Legion Ferrata, because this unit disappears from our sources after Valerian’s defeat.

Many aspects of Bishapur’s architecture look Roman and do not belong to Iranian building traditions.

An example is what specialists call the ‘Hippodamian street plan’, which means that the city looks like a gridiron, while Iranian cities usually were circular in design.

Bishapur was not a completely novel settlement: Archeologists have found remains from the Elamite and Parthian ages.

Bishapur Palace

The palace of Bishapur was excavated by French archeologists in the late 1930s.

They found a cross-shaped central room and several smaller halls adjacent to it. The interpretation of these structures is very difficult.

To start with, there is the puzzle of the cross-shaped hall. According to the original excavators, there was a large dome that covered the entire area, but the walls appear to be insufficiently strong to support such a heavy superstructure.

Probably, the building in reality consisted of four half vaults and an open square. If so, it belongs to the same building type as the ‘four iwan mosque’, which was designed in the Middle Ages to create a real, Iranian space for prayer.

Another puzzling feature is the presence of sixty-four niches, which were apparently decorated with statues.

However, freestanding sculpture, although not unheard of in Sasanian Iran — the Bishapur cave is a case in point — is rare.

On several places, stucco decorations have been excavated. Again, the patterns were inspired by Greek and Roman art, like leaf scrolls and meanders. On many places, traces of yellow, black, and red paint are still visible.

To the west and east of the central, cross-shaped hall are the rooms that are known as the western and eastern mosaic halls.

In the last-mentioned hall, the small relief of Bishapur was found. To the north was the mysterious building that is commonly known as the ‘temple of Anahita’. It has the same orientation as the palace but appears to have been a separate monument.