Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

190 HISTORY OF PERSIA.
fire-worship was never wholly suppressed ; indeed, so
late as the tenth century, after 300 years of Muhammedanism,
Ibn Haukal expressly observes that "no
district or town of Fars was without a fire-temple."
Shahpur itself, like many other places in the East,
suffered less from the first violence of the Arabian
invasion than from the wars of the subsequent native
dynasties : it gradually decayed as have nearly all
the sites of early Persian greatness. As late, how-
ever, as the sixteenth century, the rame of Shah-
pur occurs in a table of latitudes and longitudes
attached to the Ain-i Akbari; its position is marked
on a map of Cluverius in 1672; and D'Anville, on
the authority of the Oriental writers, has so called a
district of Persia.
Having now described the principal monuments
of the south of Persia, we must, in conclusion, take
a brief review of some in the northern part of the
country, which are not less worthy of attentive notice
and study; and we will take first those of Takht-i-Bos-
tan, the throne of the gardens, a portion of the great
rocky mass of BehisUin. The rock itself is craggy,
barren, and terrific ; its towering heights frown darkly
over the blooming vale of Kirmanshah, but, at the
base of the mountain, bursts forth a stream of peculiar
clearness, which the natives have named Shfrfn, in
remembrance of the celebrated loves of Khosru and
the beautiful damsel of that name.
The monuments consist of two lofty and deep
arches, excavated with great labour and skill on the face
of the mountain; within which are several bas-reliefs,
executed with remarkable spirit and excellence; while