Farhad Tarash in Bisotun: A Sample of Sassanid Landscape Architecture

A huge rock cut panel like that with the inscription of Darius the Great at the Bisotun mountain of Kermanshah is named as Farhad Tarash. By the mid of 20th century some orientlists such as Jackson, Thompson, Erdmann and Hertzfeld introduced Farhad Tarash as an incomplete monumental rock relief dated back to the Achaemenid imperia. In the 1960s H. Luschay and W. Kleiss excavated the village of Bisotun, next to Farhad Tarash, and recovered some architectural remains. The German expedition to Bisotun realized such ancient remains as a Sassanid palace, but they could not explain any connectivity between Farhad Tarash and those architectural relics. According to W. Salzman the panel of Farhad Tarash is the incomplete Sassanid project of a rock cut Iwan like Taq-i- Bostan in Kermanshah. By this paper, based upon the results of expedition of the Tehran University to Bisotun in summer 2002, Farhad Tarash is dated to the Sassanid relics in both Kermanshah and Kangavar. The paper explains how the incomplete bas- relief of Farhad Tarash is related to the ancient architectural remain found from the village of Bisotun whose its function is proposed a hunting garden or Daskereh in accordance with classic Persian texts. In consequence Farhad Tarash is established as a sample of Sassanid art of gardening- landscape architecture by the authors.