378 
SHAPOUR. 
of the East, suffered less from the first violence of the Arabian invasion, 
than from the successive wars of native dynasties, and from the 
gradual decay to which the declining population and exhausted wealth 
of the empire consigned all the works of their former greatness. Still 
Shapour appears to have survived these causes of desolation, and to 
have deserved a place among the cities of Asia, at the end of the six¬ 
teenth century, for it occurs in a table of latitudes and longitudes in 
the Ayeen Acbaree From that time nothing more is known of it: 
its position indeed is marked in a map of the year 1672 ;*f* and its 
.name, on the authority of Oriental geographers, is repeated by D’An- 
ville as the capital of the district. But no European traveller had 
described its actual state, or alluded to its history ; and the first account 
of those sculptures, which yet render it an object of interest, was con¬ 
veyed to us in a short note, added by Sir Harford Jones from his 
own observations, to the second edition of Dr. Vincent's Near chits, 
p. 391« 
The Eastern monarchs have often commemorated the great exploits 
of their reigns by the foundations of cities. Cyrus is thus said to 
have built Pasagardce, to celebrate his overthrow of the Median em¬ 
pire; and Artaxerxes, on the spot where he had defeated Arta- 
banus, the last King of the Parthians, raised the city of Jawr.% 
Succeeding princes of his house, as Baharam§ and Shapour 
D'Hulactaf,|| severally raised Kermanshah and Casvin , to immor¬ 
talize particular acts of their history. It is probable therefore that 
Shapour the first, who is described by the Orientals as the founder of 
great cities,and acknowledged by all to have built Shapour, imposed 
* 86° 55' long. SO 0 , lat. Vol. iii. p. 53. 
t “ Schabur,” in a map of Persia in Buko’s Cluverius, 1672, p. 547. 
$ EbnHaukal, p. 101. 
^ De Sacy, p. 238-9* 
|1 Ancient Universal History, xi. 159. 
S Mirkhoxd in De Sacy, p. 289. See the Ancient Univ. Hist. p. 151. vohxi. 
