KIIUSRU, the Chosroes of the Romans, who applied it as a surname to almost every king of the Sassanfan dynasty, and it was applied by the Arabs, like Caesar among the Romans, to many ancient kings of Persia. Khusru, a polytheist, who was king of Elam (not of Persia), conquered Babylon.
The Tak-i-Khesra formed part of the royal palace of Ctesiphon. The palace was commence I by Sapor it., the ninth king of the Sassanian dynasty, at the beginning of the 5th century. It was added to about a century later by another king of time same line, Nushirwan, usually called Kushru I., and was finished by his grandson, Kushru Parwez or Khusru Ir. The part remaining is merely a portion of the facade and one of the halls of audience,—not a tenth part probably of the original building. It was covered with brilliant white stucco, and the halls were decorated with historical paintings and figures of the heavenly bodies. It was taken from the Persians by the
Arabs in the time of the khalif Umar in the six teenth year of the Hijira, and was called by them the White Palace. Its splendour and magnifi cence, as related by the Arabian historians, are scarcely credible. The dimensions of the bail were-105 feet in height., 95 feet in width, and 180 feet in length. The building remained entire till the time of the khalif Al-Mansur, who en deavoured to destroy it in order to make use of the materials in the construction of his palace at Baghdad. At the close of the 9th century the khalif Muktassi-b-illah regularly unbuilt the White Palace, in order to erect his famous edifice called the Taj at Baghdad, and merely left this hall as a specimen of the Sassanian architecture.—Tr. of Hind. ii. p. 222 ; Catafugo.