Architecture
The heavily decorated, two-storey, stone structure (measuring about 40 metres by 20 metres, and 13 metres high) is a rare example of Hellenistic architecture in Jordan. In the 1st century AD, Flavius Josephus described it as, "A strong fortress, which was constructed entirely of white marble up to the very roof and had beasts of gigantic size carved on it; and he enclosed it with a wide and deep moat". The castle is built from some of the largest single blocks of any building in the Middle East, with the largest block measuring seven by three metres. However, these blocks were at most only 40 centimetres wide (making the building relatively vulnerable to the earthquake which destroyed it).
Archaeologists have established that Qasr al-Abd once stood in a much larger estate which was originally surrounded by a wall and included a park with trees and shrubs (a large stone olive press has been found on the site, suggesting the estate was partially self-sufficient in agricultural produce). Much of the estate now stands beneath the village of Iraq al-Amir.
Read more about this topic: Qasr Al Abd
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)
“For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)