纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 052后宫壁画残片（4）（在线收听）

You might think at first that these paintings are not very much to look at - they're really just scraps of paintings, and the largest is no bigger than a CD disc. They are drawn fairly simply, with black outlines on a yellow ochre background, with just a few sketchy lines to catch the features. But there are flecks of gold in the painting, which give us a hint of their original lavishness.

Like random pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, it's difficult to guess what the bigger picture that they once came from might have been, and, indeed, they're not all portraits - some of the fragments show animals, some show bits of clothing and bodies. But the faces that are caught here have, I think, a definite sense of personality - there's a clear air of melancholy in the eyes, as they look out at us from a lost world.

These small bits of plaster were excavated by archaeologists from the ruins of the Dar al-Khilafah palace - the main residence of the caliph in Samarra and the ceremonial heart of the new purpose-built capital city. And pleasure was built into the very name of the city, which was interpreted at the court as a shortened form of 'Surra Man Ra'a' - 'He who sees it is delighted'.

But beneath the frolicking, there were ominous undercurrents. The decision in 836 to move the court from Baghdad to Samarra was taken in order to defuse a tricky situation. There were dangerous tensions between the caliph's armed guards and the inhabitants of Baghdad - tensions that had already ignited a string of riots. And Samarra was intended to provide both a haven for the court and a safe base for the caliph's army.