The ruins are located approximately 30 km south of Amman, Jordan, north of Queen Alia International Airport, and are part of a string of castles, palaces and caravanserais known collectively in Jordan and the wider Southern Levant region as the Desert Castles (qasr, pl.

Though much of the ruins can still be found in situ, the most striking feature of the palace, its facade, has been removed and is on display at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

[citation needed] The ruins of Qasr Mushatta consist of a square enclosure, surrounded by an outer wall comprising 25 towers.

The reception hall wing, called by Creswell the "Main Building", placed at the centre of the northern part of the enclosure, was the only fully built section of the palace.

It consists of a basilica-shaped hall (a vaulted hallway with three aisles separated by columns), leading up to the throne room.

The side rooms of the reception hall wing were combined into four residential suites, called in Arabic buyut, the plural of bayt,[1] [2] [3] barrel-vaulted and ventilated through concealed air ducts.

The most famous element of Mshatta is the carved frieze which decorated a section of the southern facade, on both sides of the entrance gate.

It is worth noticing that not the entire facade was adorned by the frieze, but only its central third, which corresponded to the very strip of the complex apparently reserved to the caliph, and the only one close to completion.

[4] The frieze is of high importance to scholars due to its original combination of Classical and Sasanian decorative elements, thus being an early example of the east–west synthesis which led to the development of a full-fledged Islamic art.

It is shown lying down in a tense posture, its head facing upright, most of which is missing, and its front legs are stretched forward.

Lions are frequently found throughout Islamic art and can be seen attacking weaker animals, emphasizing the millennia-old symbol of royalty and power.

Raised vertical ridges recall draped fabric or its fringed edge, indicating that this woman is partially covered or in the act of undressing.

[14] However, not all scholars agree that these images exclusively represent “princely pastimes.” Miriam Gelfer-Jørgensen argues that representations of female dancers are inherited from Sasanian art, in which these figures are often accompanied by symbols of the afterlife.

They seem to have had a number of roles, probably including political and military control of the local area, and pleasure in the form of hunting.