Qusayr ‘Amra, ca 740 CE. Amir al-Walid reclining and dressed in accordance with Iranian fashion

Qusayr ‘Amra is an Umayyad site (ca. 85 km east of Amman), famous for its small bathhouse, commissioned by the amir al-Walid ibn Yazid, the future caliph al-Walid II (743-744). The bathhouse consists of a relatively large entrance room – a sort of audience hall – followed by thermal rooms; the walls and the ceilings were completely covered by paintings. In the audience hall, on the south wall of the western aisle, al-Walid is seated like an Iranian sovereign ‘in Majesty’, constituting an important pendant to al-Walid sitting on a high Western throne, like a Pantocrator, on the lunette of the central nave (on axis with the door). While in the latter portrait he is flanked by two (female?) figures holding fans, in the first one to the right of al-Walid is the very important figure of a scribe facing the man who, standing on the left, holds a fan or fly-whisk. Most likely the scribe positioned behind al-Walīd assumes the function of a chronicler, as well as dibīrs at the Sasanian court, responsible for recording daily events. Both these pictures lead us to some considerations about al-Walid’s sponsorship and his search for both dynastic and personal legitimacy as the future leader of a new society, meant to replace the Sasanian and Byzantine empires but tracing its origin back to a universal past, according to Sasanian traditions.