Identifier: persiapastpresen01jack (find matches)
Title: Persia past and present; a book of travel and research, with more than two hundred illustrations and a map
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Jackson, A. V. Williams (Abraham Valentine Williams), 1862-1937
Subjects: Zoroastrianism
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan Company London, Macmillan & Co., ltd.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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of the mountain ridge that runs fromBisitun, and richly supplied with water that springs from themountains feet and converts the enclosure into a garden, theplace when I saw it showed traces of the veritable paradisethat it must have been in the palmy days of the Sasanidse. The name Tak-i Bostan^ which often sounds like TdgJi-i Bos-tan, or is even turned into Taw-ou-stan by a slovenly labialpronunciation among the peasants, means Arch of the Gardenand is given to the enclosure because of the arched recessescarved in the rocky base of the mountain. The place is oftencalled also Takht-i Bostan, Throne of the Garden, appar-ently from a stone ledge cut high in the rock above the archesand approached by a hundred or more steps in the face of thecliff. ^ In earlier times it was sometimes popularly known as 1 The Arab geographer Tbn Kostah Kitab al-Aldk an-Nafisah, ed. De(aboiit A.D. 950) speaks of these steps Goeje, Bihl. Geog. Arab. 7. 166.as numbering about 250, in his See p. 224, below.
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The Sculptured Panel at Tak-i Bostan(From de Morgan, Mission Scientifique en Perse) A G A ED EN OF THE SASANIAN KINGS 215 Shahdiz^ from the statue of Khosrus horse, and sometimesspoken of as Kasr-i SMrln, Castle of Shirin, from the beauti-ful favorite of Khosru Parviz. The former name we knowfrom Ibn Rostah and Al-Hamadhani, a thousand years ago,iand the latter, Shirins Castle, from Yakut, two centurieslater, who mentions it as a place containing the remains ofmany porticoes, halls, pavilions, great vaulted arches, loftyterraces, gardens, and a park, which surpassed in magnificenceeven the splendor of its royal founder.^ xhe name Kasr-iShirin, however, belongs more strictly to the great mass ofruins known by that title some eighty miles westward fromKermanshah, near the Turkish border. A wall surrounds the park of Tak-i Bostan, and as we passthrough the crumbling gateway we find ourselves directly onthe edge of a miniature lake, a reservoir about one hundredand twenty yards square, fe

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