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The necessity for something to break the monotony of the brick architecture was generally and permanently felt, and in those Parthian and Sassanide periods in which, as we have said, the traditions of the old Chaldæan school were continued, we find the panel replaced by wall arcades in which the arches are divided from each other by tall pilasters.
The Shah Namah contains the history of the kings of Persia down to the death of the last of the Sassanide race, who was deprived of his kingdom by the invasion of the Arabs during the caliphat of Omar, 636 A.D. The language of Ferdusi may be considered as the purest specimen of the ancient Parsee: Arabic words are seldom introduced.
If we are justified in our belief that the constructors of the Parthian and Sassanide palaces were no more than the perpetuators of systems invented by the architects of Nineveh and Babylon, the Assyrian domes also may very well have been opened at the summit in this fashion.
The Sassanide monuments bear witness that many centuries after the destruction of Nineveh the custom of placing cylinders of terra-cotta in vaults was still practised. These same writers have ascertained that the architects of Chosroes and Noushirwan employed still another method of lighting the rooms over which they built their domes.
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