wing of the palace, besides a number of baits of a more or less normal character, there are a bazaar and barracks. The huge building here displayed covers only a quarter of the whole area of Balkuwârâ. It is interesting to note that the chief mosque lies to the right hand of the main entrance, just as at Ukhaiḍir it lies to the right of the gate. The smaller palace of al-’Âshiq is again composed of a central block between two wings.[154] The audience chambers appear to consist of a large lîwân with a rectangular room behind it, this room being flanked by two similar rooms (compare Firûzâbâd). The general features of the main gateway, a closed lîwân flanked by two chambers on either side, each with an antechamber, were already known, as well as the details of the wall decoration on either side of the gate.[155] M. Viollet, who did some work in 1910 on the great palace known as the Bait al-Khalîfah, has published a sketch-plan of it,[156] and Dr. Herzfeld is now engaged on further excavations there. Both he and M. Viollet have published exceedingly instructive photographs of stucco decoration from the palaces, and I gave a few in _Amurath to Amurath_. Dr. Herzfeld’s series is naturally far the most interesting, as his work has been the most thorough. If the palace of Khusrau is unmistakably the culminating point of a long oriental tradition, and the model for future generations of oriental potentates, it serves also to illuminate the little known period during which it arose; it throws light upon the ḥîrahs of the Lakhmid phylarchs, concerning which we have practically no contemporary information. Mas’ûdi tells us that the khalif Mutawakkil copied in one of his palaces a scheme which had been adopted by a king of Ḥîrah. It consisted of a central block, wherein was situated the audience chamber, and two wings containing storerooms and lodgings for courtiers. In front lay an open court common to all three parts of the palace; the way to the audience chamber passed through three gates. Dr. Herzfeld, when he had laid bare the plan of Balkuwârâ, realized that it corresponded with Mas’ûdi’s description.[157] That Mas’ûdi believed the type of the Ḥîri with two sleeves to have been created by a Nu’mânid prince in imitation of the battle array of his army, we, who are acquainted with older monuments, know to be incorrect;[158] it is the latest descendant of a long ancestral line of oriental palaces which runs back through the Achaemenid and the Assyrian to the Hittite. The palace of Khusrau is as perfect an instance of the scheme as is the palace of Balkuwârâ; the differences between them are differences of dimension, not of kind. At Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn old oriental traits, such as the artificial platform and the double stairways, are peculiarly well marked. The three gates of Balkuwârâ are not present at Qaṣr-i-Shîrîn, or rather they are not laid out in the same relation to one another, but it is very possible that