Ukhaidhir - outside
(click to enlarge)
Ukhaidhir
The following is a description of Ukhaidhir as recollected by Gavin Young from his book "IRAQ Land of Two Rivers."
Ukhaidhir, the colossal pre- or early Abbasid (late eighth century) fortified pleasure palace is fifty kilometers west of Kerbela in the desert. There are interesting sights on the way to this leviathan of a building. Just outside Kerbela is a tiny shrine, with the usual dome of colored tiles, to Hurr ibn Yazid el Riahi, an officer in the army of Ubaidullah who joined Hussein's band when he realized that Ubaidullah would have no mercy. Hurr, ironically, was the first to fall. Not far from his tomb you may be amazed to smell what seems like the sea- a definite tang of salt water- and soon after the good, metalled road comes close to Lake Razazza. The road skirts it for some way, crossing a plain empty except for some young camels grazing, and the odd tent.
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Ukhaidhir - outside (click to enlarge) |
Ukhaidhir's huge walls rise like a cliff out of the plain, and inside them you have the feeling of being in a particularly large Crusader castle. The walls are immensely thick, the chambers legion, the whole massive structure three stories high. Every room is vaulted and majestic. Ukhaidhir means 'small green place'. It is one of several fortified mansions built by Arabs on the east and northern fringes of the desert; there are others in Jordan and Syria. Some authorities claim it is an early example of Arab architecture-that is, something that is not a straight copy from the Persian or Byzantine. The open-fronted hall (or iwan) and its archway framed in a rectangular panel are both Persian in origin. Byzantine acanthus leaves decorate fallen stone capitals. 'Yet,' says Seton Lloyd, 'the whole building with its circular buttresses and vaulted colonnades is neither Greek nor Persian, but the first, perhaps overbold step in the evolution of an individual (Arab) style, which later produced the Caliph's palace in Samarra.'
Ukhaidhir - interior (click to enlarge) |
When I walked over it, families of anxious puppies tumbled about the ground-floor chambers- a lot of dogs seem to live here. Hawks and doves perched silhouetted on the highest battlements. In the great abstraction of the desert, Ukhaidhir felt solid and reassuring. As the sun was beginning to settle down, I drove on to Ain al Taint, twenty kilometers away on the same good road west. This little place is much mentioned by Arab historians of Khalid ibn Walid's campaign in Mesopotamia. It was a Christian settlement also called Shetara. The Spring of the Dates, as its name suggests, is a pleasant oasis, with electricity, stone and mud houses and a single main street of shops. The spring itself is in the town center- alas, a stagnant reservoir is all you can see of it. A storekeeper told me that its water is good only for the date- and fruit-gardens which enfold the little place. Drinking water is carried in tankers from the Euphrates at Kerbela. What about the water in Lake Razazza- is it salty? 'No,' he said, 'but it's bitter. An animal will drink it. But a man would have to be very thirsty indeed.'
Wandering around, I passed by a school window and overheard a women's anti-illiteracy class, part of the government's nationwide campaign to teach everyone up to the age of forty-five how to read and write. And round the corner an elderly man and some boys were mending the shafts of a wooden cart; the donkey stood patiently by. Several poor houses nearby sprouted television aerials and I asked the man if he, too, had a television set. 'Too expensive,' he smiled. 'But I expect these boys will afford one when they grow up.' Ain al Tamr produces apricots, pomegranates and other fruit. There is talk that a tourist center may be in the making here; although that may be local wishful thinking. And, incidentally, on the shores of Lake Razazza, a short way from Kerbela and the Hurr tomb, is a 'casino'- a restaurant that also sells alcoholic drinks. You can sit there and imagine-the lake is so big- that you are at the seaside. In any case, driving from Ain al Tamr back to Kerbela, spare the time for a last glance at the sunset-pink bastions and arched windows of Ukhaidhir castle standing wind-battered but four-square, as it has for twelve hundred years, between the deserts of Arabia and the newer, greener Islamic lands of the east.
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