Sasanian Frescos
An important book by the late Masoud Azarnoush entitled: The Sasanian Manor House at Hajiabad, Iran, Monografie di Mesopotamia - 3, Esaurito, 1994, seems to have largely gone unnoticed. This is mainly due to the fact that the book was published in Italy and it has not gotten very good circulation. Azarnoush discovered the manor house at Hajiabad in the late 1970s and continued the excavations with spectacular results. The excavation in eastern Fars at the manor house demonstrated the contact with the Kushans. The numerous busts of nobility which decked the columns at the manor house demonstrated this artistic symbiosis of the eastern and western Iranian tradition in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. The manor house has been dated to the time of Shapur II in the fourth century CE.
Of specific interest are the frescos that were found which I am including a specimen. As far as I know there are two other sites that had Sasanian frescos: Kuh-e Khwaja in Sistan and at the city of Ardashir-Khurrah in Fars. Many of the frescos and the photographs taken at Kuh-e Khwaja were destroyed in Germany during World War II, but still a few do survive. D. Huff’s more recent excavations at Ardashir-Khurreh has unearthed a new group of frescos, but those at Hajiabad are the best preserved.
