Sassanid Influence
Sassanid art revived forms and traditions native to Persia; and in the Islamic period these reached the shores of the Mediterranean. The influence of Sassanid architecture reached far beyond their borders, it had a distinctive influence on Byzantine architecture and Islamic architecture. Islamic architecture in fact borrowed heavily from Persian architecture. Baghdad, for example, was based on Persian precedents such as Firouzabad in Persia. In fact, it is now known that the two designers who were hired by al-Mansur to plan the city's design were Naubakht, a former Persian Zoroastrian, and Mashallah, a former Jew from Khorasan, Iran.
The Great Mosque of Samarra is another example, where the spiral edifice was based on Persian architecture, such as the spiral tower in the middle of Firouzabad, a former Sassanid capital.
In Afghanistan at Bamian are ruins that show the great impact of Iranian art and architecture (specially from Sassanid era) from the 4th to the 8th century. Frescoes and colossal Buddhas adorn Bamian's monasteries, revealing a fusion of Sassanid-Iranian and Greco-Buddhist elements.
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