Fig. 5.14 Hall 54 of Chehar Qapu from the south, showing the partially preserved vaulted roof of Room 62 on the left. The arched doorway in the centre of the south wall of Hall 54 is made of horizontally laid bricks. A small, roundheaded window appears above the doorway. Hall 54’s interior space is believed to have been covered by a massive dome set upon squinch arches, the latter of which are still preserved in places in the interior.
Clearly inspired by Andrae's account of his work at Hatra, and their conversations about the site, Bell made her actual visit in April 1911, after she had departed from Assur and a happy reunion there with the German excavation team. It seems that she had long intended to visit Hatra, for already in Andrae's letter to Bell in 1910, he was giving her directions concerning her arrival there.164 Hatra lies just over 51 km due west from Assur, and she records that it took her caravan 11 hours to reach Hatra, passing over rolling steppe the entire way and crossing the Wadi Tharthar, a salty seasonal stream.
Upon arriving at Hatra, Bell was immediately impressed by the size and grandeur of the ruins, particularly the ‘palace’ that stood in its midst, which could be seen from a five-hour distance on every side, and whose ‘immense stone built halls, roofed with huge vaults’ were decorated with ‘the strangest carved ornaments that have ever grown out under oriental chisels’ (Fig. 5.15).165 Perhaps equally exciting to Bell, however, was the fact that the site had become the base of the Turkish army's military operations and was currently accommodating some 300 men, encamped in tents. Apparently, the army had been dispatched to bring the Shammar Bedouin to order, and the Turkish commander, Riza Beg, had done admirably in levying the tribes, getting them to pay taxes and settling all of their grievances. Rather than being annoyed or intimidated by the ample display of soldiery in this remote desert place, Bell writes happily and glowingly of her interactions with the Turkish soldiers, heaping praise on their achievements and showing particular admiration for their commander, whom she deemed a ‘very remarkable man’.166 Before her departure, the whole army – cavalry, infantry and artillery – paraded before her, and she took the opportunity to photograph the spectacle, much to everyone's satisfaction.167
It is interesting to read Bell's description of the Turkish military presence at Hatra, and her appraisal of their work, in a letter to her parents:
The whole business has been brilliantly well done and I think that if the government has a few more men like Riza Beg (which it has) and knows how to use them, the whole desert will shortly be as safe as any city. I shall write a long article for some leading journal when I get home and call it ‘The Pacification of the Desert’, for it should be known how well and wisely the Turks are handling matters here […] The immediate future of the Turkish empire depends, to my mind, entirely on what the soldiers are like, for it is carefully to be remembered that the whole work of government is at this moment military, and will be for some time to come, that is till the country is internally at peace.168
Bell's description of these affairs reflects well her interests beyond matters relating to ancient relief decoration and monumental stone architecture, as spectacular as they would have been at Hatra. Indeed, they presage her work in Middle Eastern political affairs, which would eventually consume her life, particularly after the war. It is noteworthy that in 1911, she felt genuine esteem for the Turkish army and only wished, innocently, to publicize its positive achievements in some ‘leading journal’. Such sentiments clearly highlight her extreme interest in current affairs, as well as her perceptiveness and desire to weigh in on such matters.
Of Hatra's ancient remains, Bell repeatedly commented on the bizarre nature of the design and placement of their carved ornaments, with their unusual mélange of Greek, Roman and Oriental elements, deeming them ‘pretty mad’, ‘a nightmare’ or ‘quite barbaric’. Her photographs nicely capture many aspects of this unusual art, as they focus on specific elements of ornament located on architraves, door jambs and the underparts of lintels (Fig. 5.16). Bell's images are also valuable for preserving a record of the original ruins of Hatra and these distinctive ornamental details before they underwent significant restoration later in the twentieth century.169 Far worse, however, have been the recent actions of IS in its efforts to destroy pre-Islamic idols and ‘false gods’. Damage to Hatra's antiquities appears to have started in February 2015 with the smashing of statues, many of them representations of Hatrene kings, housed in the Mosul Museum.170 Video footage from early April 2015 documents IS individuals chipping and smashing sculpture at Hatra with pickaxes and sledgehammers. A trio of carved human heads that Bell photographed in 1911 was shot at with an AK-47 rifle (Fig. 5.17). Such wanton acts further underscore the value of Bell's photographic images, since the latter are a permanent record of Hatra's antiquities, which now simply no longer exist or are damaged beyond repair.171
Fig. 5.15 Gertrude Bell’s camp in front of the ruins of the Temple of the Great Iwans, Hatra.
Of Hatra's architecture, Bell was drawn in particular to the Temple of Shamash (also known as the Great Temple or the Temple of the Great Iwans), which stands on the western side of a large, rectangular temenos enclosure in the centre of the city, and which at the time of her visit was considered a palace. Its principal constituents are several lateral rectangular chambers roofed with lofty vaults. Bell took the time to observe carefully the form and technology of these vaults at Hatra, and she devotes considerable space to their description in her 1914 final report on Ukhaidir.172 Particularly interesting to her, in this report, is the place of Hatra in the history of the development of the vault, this feature first being observed in ancient pre-Hellenistic Mesopotamia and then continuing prominently right up to the Islamic period at locales such as Ukhaidir, as will be discussed further below. The other principal architectural feature of the Temple of Shamash in which Bell took a great deal of interest was the iwan – this room-type with its open end facing a courtyard in front, which characterizes the main lateral chambers covered by the high vaults just described.173 The persistence of the iwan – from its early origins in ancient Mesopotamia, up through the Parthian and Sasanian periods and into the architecture of the early Islamic period – represents a critical aspect of Bell's grand narrative concerning the development of the early Islamic palace, as at Ukhaidir, as will also be discussed further below.
Bell had the opportunity to return to Hatra one more time, in 1922, when she was most active as a political officer of the British government in the newly founded kingdom of Iraq. She was on a tour of the northern polities of Iraq, and time allowed her – accompanied by other British officers – to visit the ancient sites of Assur and Hatra.174 Travelling now by car over the same ‘glorious rolling steppe’ she had traversed on horseback in 1911, Bell found Hatra remained captivating. In a letter to her father, she describes with almost lyrical prose the strangeness of the carved ornaments and the loftiness of the vaults. Reflecting the dramatic turn of events brought about by the war and the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, Bell also reports the presence of the Shammar camel-guard who now presided over the site, where before their overlords the Turks had tried to tame them. Despite such changes, however, Bell – peering down at the camels and horses of the guard within the courts and seeing the smoke of the Shammar Bedouin tents beyond the ancient city walls – was struck by the timelessness of her surroundings: ‘It was a scene in which past and present were so bewilderingly mingled that you might have looked down upon it like any evening for twenty centuries.’175 Sadly, one cannot make that claim now in the twenty-first century. Recent events in Iraq have been most unkind to ancient sites, including spectacular Hatra.
The Genesis of the Islamic Palace, 1911–14
Upon the completion of her travels, first to Italy and the Dalmatian Coast, then to Mesopotamia and Persia, Bell had amassed sufficient data to write her most ambitious scholarly report ever. Her work on this volume carried through 1912 and 1913 and was completed just as she embarked on her monumental trip to Arabia,
at the end of 1913. Appearing in print in 1914, Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture represented in many ways the culmination, and largely the endpoint, of her scholarly pursuit of archaeology.
As already described in the chapter concerning Ukhaidir, Bell's monograph provided a detailed and learned discussion of the castle's architectural forms and the sources of its creators’ inspiration. The work also offered an informed proposal for the desert palace's date. Yet, it was evident that Bell was not merely content in this book to devote herself to these descriptive and temporal matters about Ukhaidir. Another complete report on Ukhaidir had already appeared, by the German scholar Oscar Reuther in 1912, and Bell could hardly improve upon this publication's detailed plans and illustrations, which highlighted beautifully the palace's distinctive architectural characteristics.
Fig. 5.16 The left side of the North Iwan of the Temple of the Great Iwans at Hatra, showing the remnants of a flanking engaged column and arch decoration, consisting in part of sculpted human heads. Bell’s photograph captures the appearance of this complex before later twentieth-century excavations and reconstruction work restored the temple façade to its full height.
Fig. 5.17 Bell’s photograph of a group of three sculptured heads or masks on the interior wall of the South Iwan, in the Temple of the Great Iwans, with arched doorway below. These incurred damage in early 2015, when they were targeted by IS gunfire.
For Bell's report to stand apart from Reuther's effort, it required a broader, more substantive scope. She attained this by situating Ukhaidir's ‘oriental’ palace and mosque within the wider context of the architecture of the Near East and of the ancient world as a whole, tracking its features back to their earliest origins and discussing the multitude of cultures and architectural traditions that had inspired their development up to their appearance in the early Islamic period. In the end, such investigations constitute three extensive chapters within the Ukhaidir monograph. Two cover the Classical and ‘oriental’ inspiration for the three-storeyed north façade of Ukhaidir's ‘Court of Honour’ and the earlier Islamic antecedents of Ukhaidir's mosque.176 The third and longest chapter (67 pages), ‘Genesis of the Early Mohammadan Palace’,177 traces the Ukhaidir palace form back to Classical and ancient Near Eastern prototypes, some existing as early as the second millennium BCE. The chapter forms the central piece of the monograph and is particularly ambitious, given its temporal range and geographical scope, which go far beyond a mere consideration of Ukhaidir in and of itself. It reflects Bell's wide learning from over a decade of research on late antique ecclesiastical architecture and early Islamic monuments. In particular, it highlights her knowledge of the broad sweep of Near Eastern antiquity, much of this acquired through her Mesopotamian journeys, where she was exposed to ancient sites and monuments extending from the earliest periods of high civilization up to those thought to have existed only shortly before Ukhaidir's construction, like Qasr-i-Shirin in Persia. The chapter additionally underlines Bell's exposure to the artistic and architectural innovations of Greece and Rome, which had also left their mark on Ukhaidir. Her knowledge of Classical traditions derived from her earliest studies of the ancient world as well as her recent visit to Italy. All of these subjects were informed by Bell's self-directed studies and by knowledge obtained from other scholars with whom she engaged in extensive and fruitful correspondences, or with whom she developed close personal relationships. It is indeed remarkable the extent to which, in the chapter, Bell highlights her acquaintance with these scholars and draws on their expertise. In so doing, she demonstrates her capacity for intensive research while simultaneously impelling her readers to acknowledge her deserved place among her academic peers.
In its method and ambitious scope, ‘Genesis of the Early Mohammadan Palace’ continues to bear the imprint of her early mentor, Josef Strzygowski, whose work frequently consisted of broad sweeps and grand narratives that situated architectural and artistic traditions within the wider history of the ancient or pre-modern world and traced them to their roots. Bell's attempt to take components of the Islamic palace back to their ‘genesis’, for example, clearly echoes Strzygowski's style in finding the earliest manifestations of particular formal characteristics. Moreover, the fact that Bell was able to locate the origin of the heart of the Islamic palace, the iwan, in the ‘Orient’, and not in Greece and Rome (as discussed below), fell in line with Strzygowski's insistence on the eastern, non-Classical origins of nearly all important architectural forms of late antiquity and the Islamic period.178 Like Strzygowski, Bell gave priority to the style and form of art, especially architectural features, and tracked similarities through time and space using comparative analysis. Her objective was to demonstrate a clear and convincing path of cultural diffusion that spread out from one point of origin. This method did not place much emphasis on other factors that may have affected the development of certain characteristics, such as the social and political contexts in which architectural traditions had developed, or the choices and peculiar tastes of individual human agents. Bell's comparative, formal analysis clearly had its shortcomings, but it was deemed an acceptable and effective approach in its time, and was attractive to scholars of the ancient world in Europe and North America who no longer wished to or could not give primacy to the philological, textual evidence, this having long dominated studies of antiquity up to that point.
I suspect that besides Strzygowski's influence, Bell's ‘Genesis of the Early Mohammadan Palace’ bears the imprint of another individual, Ernst Herzfeld, whose scholarship she also greatly admired at the time of writing the chapter. Bell was familiar with Herzfeld's 1910 article, ‘Die Genesis der islamischen Kunst und das Mshatta-Problem’, which comprised his masterful study of the art and architecture of the desert palace of Mshatta, located south of Amman in present-day Jordan, and his controversial – but correct – opinion that this was an Umayyad Islamic construction of the eighth century CE.179 Even today, this article is considered a masterpiece among studies of early Islamic art because of its clear methodology, persuasive argument and broad frame of reference.180 There is perhaps a touch of irony in the fact that Herzfeld's ‘Genesis’ article triumphantly overturned the hypothesis of Bell's mentor, Strzygowski, who had argued for a pre-Islamic date for Mshatta.181 Moreover, Herzfeld had accomplished this coup de grâce largely by employing Strzygowski's own comparative formal methodology, thus beating him at his own game.182 As we have already seen through Bell's early correspondence with Herzfeld (see Chapter 4), his bitter rivalry with Strzygowski was the cause of some antagonism and resentment at first, but by the time she was completing her Ukhaidir monograph in 1913, Bell was on amicable terms with Herzfeld and had come to respect, even admire, his phenomenal knowledge and his knack for getting things right.183 Knowing these circumstances, it is hard to resist the idea that the title of Bell's chapter may well echo that of Herzfeld's article; her attempts to highlight all the cultural influences that affected the construction, style and layout of Ukhaidir in the eastern Syrian desert arguably emulated Herzfeld's treatment of Mshatta in the western desert.
To discuss and assess the entire contents of Bell's chapter on the genesis of the early Islamic palace in her Ukhaidir monograph would require a lengthy report going well beyond the limits of this work. Presented here, therefore, is an overview of one of the principal architectural features of the Islamic palace: the ceremonial reception room, known as the iwan, which Bell traced back to its origins. The overview is intended to give the reader some sense of the scope of the research Bell carried out through her reading, her correspondence and discussions with other archaeologists and scholars of antiquity, and her own astute deliberations on the subject. One can also see how her archaeological fieldwork and observations factored into her work and constituted a critical aspect of her overall conclusions.
At Ukhaidir, the most notable iwan was Room 29, open to its full width at one end. Deep in the centre of the palace, it was reached only after
the visitor had passed through the complex's elaborate gatehouse and grand gallery, led through a magnificent interior open courtyard. The iwan was grandly vaulted, serving to highlight its function as the palatial complex's principal reception room, and it gave access to other important reception chambers in the palace. Although this particular iwan was the most notable at Ukhaidir because of its ceremonial character, this distinctive type of room occurred elsewhere within the palace. Its form could also be located in the private suites, or baits, situated on either side of the central ceremonial block. In these baits, the open-ended iwan was flanked by more closed, private chambers and in this context probably served as the main living room for the occupants of the suite and the place where visitors were received.
According to Bell, the iwan originally derived from the lands of the Hittites of northern Syria, Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia.184 Her proposal advanced a theory of the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey. Although mostly known for his excavations at Babylon, Koldewey had previously excavated at the Neo-Hittite settlement of Zinjirli in Anatolia, and had outlined in that site's archaeological report the development of the two-chambered, towered Hittite gateway into the palatial bit hilani. Several examples of the bit hilani palace were observable at Zinjirli, dating back to the beginning of the first millennium BCE, and according to Koldewey they contained within them the antecedents of the iwan, taking here the form of a covered portico flanked by two towers, which in turn gave access to an inner hall with a small chamber at either end.185 Bell relates that Assyrians subsequently adopted this bit hilani arrangement for their own palaces in the succeeding centuries, and then the arrangement reappeared in Achaemenid architecture, where it took the form of two towers flanking a columned portico, with a hall of audience in behind.186 The Achaemenid builders of the palaces of Pasargadae, Persepolis and Susa carried out the scheme in colossal dimensions: the iwan was now a deep, latitudinal, columned portico, while the hall of audience was greatly expanded into a massive, quadrangular chamber, and its roof was supported by a ‘forest of columns’.187
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