Chapter XXI: The Last War with Granada (1)

1475–1486

Description of Granada--Its Wealth, Prosperity, and
Civilization--Its Cities--Beauty and Splendor of the
Capital--The Alhambra--Condition and Power of the Spanish
Monarchy--Character of Ferdinand--Character of Isabella--Muley
Hassan and His Family--Storming of Zahara--Alhama surprised
by the Christians--Siege of that City and Repulse of the
Moors--Sedition at Granada--Ferdinand routed at Loja--Foray
of Muley Hassan--Expedition to the Ajarquia--Defeat and
Massacre of the Castilians--Boabdil attacks Lucena and is
captured--Destructive Foray of the Christians--Boabdil is
released and returns to Granada--Renewal of Factional Hostility
in the Moorish Capital--Moslem and Christian Predatory
Inroads--Siege and Capture of Ronda--Embassy from Fez--Al-Zagal
becomes King--Defeat of the Court of Cabra at Moclin--Division
of the Kingdom of Granada--Its Disastrous Effects.

I undertake with diffidence the description of the last, the most romantic, the most melancholy epoch in the history of Mohammedan Spain. Its events have been recounted, its catastrophes enumerated, its gallant exploits and its deeds of infamy depicted by far more skilful hands than mine. The plan of this work, however, requires the exhibition of the last scene in that great and thrilling drama which, for a period of almost eight centuries, attracted the attention and inflamed the proselyting zeal of Christian Europe, and without which it would be manifestly incomplete. It is therefore from necessity that I enter upon this task, profoundly conscious of its difficulty, yet with the hope that the reader may not be unwilling to again peruse a story of surpassing interest and pathos,--this time viewed from the Moorish stand-point,--and with no design of attempting to improve that which is popularly regarded as historically perfect or of imitating that which is beyond all imitation.

In the year 1475 of the Christian era, that portion of the Spanish Peninsula bounded by the Christian provinces of Cordova and Murcia, by the Sierra Elvira and the sea, was the richest and most highly civilized region of corresponding area on the globe. Every advantage of soil, of climate, and of geographical position contributed to multiply its resources and increase its power. Its agricultural system, invented in Mesopotamia, extended in Syria, and perfected under the khalifs, had been developed by the industry and experience of many generations until the territory which it controlled appeared a marvel of diversified and luxuriant fertility. The earth yielded in inexhaustible profusion the choicest products of every portion of the world susceptible of cultivation and improvement. The date, the fig, and the pomegranate grew side by side with the cherry and the lemon, none of these fruits being indigenous, and all having been introduced into Europe by the curiosity and enterprise of the Arabs. The vineyards, whose grapes were seedless and for nine months retained unimpaired their exquisite and delicious flavor, covered the slopes of every hill and mountain-side. Such was the extent of the olive plantations, and so unusual the size of the trees, that they were compared by travellers to vast forests of oaks. An endless succession of harvests was produced by the crops of barley, wheat, and millet which grew upon the table-lands. Thousands of acres in every district were covered with mulberry-trees, planted as food for the silkworm, for the manufacture of silk was the most profitable industry of the people of Granada. From the flax and cotton grown near the coast fabrics of remarkable fineness and durability were produced, which found a ready market in all the ports of the Mediterranean. The rice and the sugar plantations, the almond-groves, the citron- and orange-orchards, the forests abounding in valuable woods, the pastures affording constant subsistence to immense droves of cattle and flocks of sheep, constituted no inconsiderable portion of the agricultural wealth of the kingdom. The intelligent cultivation of medicinal herbs furnished to the pharmacopœia many excellent remedies, still used by the modern practitioner. The propagation of the cochineal afforded a dye far surpassing in beauty and brilliancy the famous purple of the ancients. In the number and value of its minerals, this land, so favored by nature, was excelled by no other country at that time known to man. The sierras abounded in extensive beds of jasper, variegated marble, agates, onyx, chalcedony, lazulite, and alabaster. The mines, whose richness had early attracted the attention of the Phœnicians, yielded annually great quantities of gold, silver, iron, tin, mercury, and lead. Valuable gems, such as the ruby, the sapphire, and the hyacinth, contributed to the adornment and pleasure of woman and the exhibition of feminine taste and vanity. Along the coast of the Mediterranean the pearl-fisher, as in classic times, plied his dangerous but lucrative calling.

In the development and adaptation of these extraordinary natural advantages a laborious and intelligent people had profited by all the expedients suggested by human experience and ingenuity. A complete and intricate system of reservoirs and canals distributed the mountain streams, by myriads of tiny channels, through every orchard and plantation. Gigantic walls, which the credulity of the ignorant ascribed to supernatural agency controlled by talismans in the hands of royal magicians, formed terrace upon terrace rising along the sides of every acclivity, and the ground, thus painfully reclaimed by art, equalled in productiveness and value those more fortunate localities whose bounties had been lavished by the prodigal hand of Nature alone. Every country, from Hindustan to France, from Syria to Arabia the Happy, had paid tribute to the investigating spirit and botanical knowledge of the Spanish Moslem. Under a sun of almost torrid intensity, in a soil of inexhaustible richness, the rarest exotics grew with a luxuriance not surpassed in the lands from whence they derived their origin. The graceful palm, whose drooping branches had suggested to the architects of the Great Mosque of Cordova that interminable series of mysterious arches which at once awe and enchant the traveller, had been introduced by Abd-al-Rahman I. as a souvenir of Damascus, the city of his birth, From India had come the cubeb and the aloe; from Yemen the balm and the frankincense; from Persia the myrtle and the oleander. The pomegranate, from which Granada was supposed to have obtained its name, the cotton-plant, and the sugar-cane were imported from the coast of Africa. Europe itself furnished many contributions to the vegetable products of the kingdom, among them the pear, the apple, the peach, and the quince, which had long before been known to the Romans. In short, there was no plant of culinary value or medicinal virtues, no grain whose harvests promised an adequate return for the toil of the husbandman, no fruit whose flavor might tempt the palate of the epicure, which was not cultivated with success by the Moors in the closing days of the empire.

The geographical extent of that empire, at the beginning of the war which terminated with its conquest, was inconsiderable when compared with its commerce, its wealth, and its population. In area it scarcely equalled a modern European principality. At no time did its dimensions exceed seventy-five by two hundred and ten miles; fully one-fourth of its territory was rendered useless for agricultural purposes by the ranges of steep and barren mountains that intersected it, but which more than compensated for this loss by the value of their quarries and mineral deposits. The population exceeded three million souls. As has been previously mentioned, the new economic and social conditions resulting from the ever-contracting boundaries of the Moslem dominion, while they diminished its original territorial area, enormously increased the resources of the remaining provinces. From the conquered cities of Seville, Xerez, and Cadiz, alone, three hundred thousand families had emigrated to Granada. Every town and every hamlet subsequently occupied by the Castilians furnished its proportion of Moslem refugees, who, bearing their household goods and animated with undying hatred of the Christian faith, sought an asylum in the last stronghold of their race and their religion. The discerning wisdom of the emirs saw in the industry of these unhappy exiles a prolific source of future opulence and strength. The increase of military power arising from their numbers was prodigious. The property which the indulgent policy of the conqueror permitted them to retain was often of immense value. But greater than all was the accumulation of wealth represented by the capacity, the skill, the diligence, of these unwilling emigrants. There were few of them, indeed, unpractised in the science of husbandry or in the mechanical trades. Their intelligence and thrift were revealed by the flourishing condition of the country which they were compelled to abandon, much of it originally but little indebted to nature and largely reclaimed from barrenness, now covered with fragrant gardens and magnificent plantations, watered by crystal streams, adorned with sumptuous edifices, wherein were displayed all the resources of unbounded opulence, all the splendid embellishments of Oriental taste, all the wanton caprices of unbridled luxury,--a country destined soon to relapse into its pristine barbarism, a prey to sloth, to superstition, to ignorance; the home of mendicancy and imposture; the chosen field of the inquisitor and the monk.

With the welcome accession of material wealth and untiring energy came the no less valuable contributions of literary genius and intellectual culture. Civil war and Castilian aggression had not yet entirely destroyed the libraries of the great Moslem cities which had been formed in the glorious age of the Western Khalifate; and these inestimable legacies of ancient learning were, one by one, added to the stores of knowledge already existing in the city of Granada. From the lofty gallery of the minaret, not yet purified by Pagan lustration or resounding with the clangor of Christian bells, the Moorish astronomer, elevated far above the sleeping city, still observed the aspect of the heavens with their gorgeous constellations and their mysterious and interesting phenomena. The genius of poetry, whose influence was ever paramount with the romantic and imaginative Arab, found renewed inspiration amidst the beautiful surroundings of the capital of the Alhamares,--the scene of so many heroic achievements, the home of so many fascinating legends, transformed by the credulous into tales of enchantment, celebrated by the learned in poem, in disquisition, in chronicle.

In this charming region, where were concentrated the last remains of a civilization whose development had aroused the wonder and provoked the hatred of barbaric Europe, every merchant and every traveller found a cordial welcome. The Genoese had great factories in Malaga and Almeria. The enterprising Catalan, already noted for his shrewdness and in whom the spirit of proselytism and conquest was always subservient to the temptations of avarice, owned extensive mulberry plantations and was largely interested in the manufacture and exportation of silk. In Granada, the Hebrew, ever prosperous, was engaged in banking, in commerce, in the exercise of every mercantile occupation which suggested a substantial return to his proverbial and insatiable rapacity. Even the Castilian, oblivious of the hereditary prejudices of thirty generations of unceasing hostility, did not hesitate to accept the hospitality of the infidel, and to profit by the advantages afforded by the enlightened policy of the emirs of Granada. What a prospect was presented to the observing stranger who, for the first time, passed the frontiers of the Moorish dominions! He saw great cities whose streets, obstructed by an immense traffic, exhibited the costumes and displayed the commodities of every country accessible to commercial enterprise. At Malaga he beheld the ships of every nation possessing a maritime power; stupendous warehouses; admirably cultivated districts, where, for three days’ journey, he could traverse an uninterrupted succession of pomegranate and fig plantations. In Almeria were thousands of factories, furnishing employment to tens of thousands of artisans, where were produced fabrics of silk, of wool, of linen, and of cloth of gold,--some of gauze-like texture, others stiff with exquisite embroidery, all of unrivalled excellence; potteries where were formed those vessels of metallic lustre famous in the Middle Ages, the secret of whose composition was so jealously guarded that its tradition alone remains; hundreds of vast caravansaries swarming with the traders of the Orient and their caparisoned camels and other beasts of burden; bazaars filled with every ornament demanded by pampered wealth and every article of prime necessity, where even the utensils of the household were damascened and embellished with delicate arabesques; suburbs, where for forty miles the eye was charmed by an expanse of tropical verdure and innumerable orchards and gardens, dotted at frequent intervals with the palatial villas of the wealthy merchants of Almeria, whose reputation for prodigality and voluptuousness had spread to the remotest confines of the East. He saw a land enriched by a system of cultivation without parallel in the annals of horticultural industry; which, adopting the principles of antiquity and profiting by the experience of centuries, had surpassed in the value and importance of its practical results the efforts of all nations, ancient and modern; which had brought the science of irrigation to such a degree of perfection that the effects of its application could be computed with all the accuracy of a mathematical problem; which, as far as the eye could reach on every side, displayed the apparatus which had evoked these marvels of intelligent husbandry,--that art which forms the indispensable foundation and bond of society,-water-wheels a hundred feet in diameter; reservoirs on whose ample surface naval spectacles might be exhibited; dikes of prodigious height and of cyclopean masonry; canals not inferior in their length and volume to rivers; a maze of siphons, sluices, and rivulets which, by concerted signals, at regular intervals, discharged their rushing waters through field and garden and into bath and fountain; majestic aqueducts which in dimensions and massiveness might vie with even the gigantic and imperishable monuments of Roman antiquity. On the face of the cliffs, hewn in the solid rock, were spacious galleries and caves, wherein were deposited the surplus of the harvests, as a security against siege and a resource in time of famine.

In addition to the great seaports,--each a commercial metropolis and once the capital of an independent principality,--three hundred towns and villages, many of them of considerable size, acknowledged the authority of the kings of Granada. Of these, fifty were of sufficient importance to be provided with mosques, presided over by the expounders of the Koran. In accordance with the customs of the Orient, the inhabitants of each manufacturing district exercised a single occupation, the knowledge of which had been transmitted from father to son through many generations. Baza produced the finest silks, whose beauty and delicacy of texture surpassed the famous fabrics of the Chinese and the Byzantine looms,--those destined for the use of royalty being interwoven with the portrait and the cipher of the monarch in threads of many colors and of gold; in Albacete were forged weapons not inferior in temper and design to the scimetars and daggers of Toledo, and damascened with all the skill of the Syrian artificer; from the shops of Hisn-Xubiles came furniture of ebony and sandal-wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory, and filigree jewelry of exquisite patterns; Granada was renowned for its enamels, its mosaics curiously wrought and fused with the precious metals, its woollens, its silk brocades, and its coral-colored pottery whose polished surface was flecked with particles of gold. Other towns were distinguished for manufactures of equal utility and beauty; castings and implements of bronze; silken veils and mantles; leathern hangings embossed and gilt with all the elegance of a sumptuously covered volume,--a legacy of the Ommeyade capital, from whence the material derived its name of Cordovan; paper of great fineness and durability made from flax and cotton; and mats of palm and esparto, soft and flexible, and dyed with brilliant colors.

The culminating point of this marvellous development of architectural magnificence, commercial prosperity, and intellectual culture was the ancient Moorish capital. From its peculiar situation and the color of its buildings, it had early received the romantic and appropriate appellation of Hisn-al-Romman, The Castle of the Pomegranate. The plain, or Vega, which extended in a semicircle before it, for a distance of ten leagues, resembled a garden evoked by the genius of enchantment. The roads which traversed it were bordered with hedges of myrtle, mingled with orange- and lemon-trees, and overshadowed by the palm and the cypress. Everywhere the ear was greeted with the grateful sound of murmuring waters, whose channels were concealed by the dense vegetation that grew along the banks. Above the foliage of laurel and oleander appeared the red-tiled roofs of picturesque cottages, whose snowy walls were often entirely covered with the roses trained upon them. In the poetic imagery of the Arab they were likened to “so many Orient pearls set in a cup of emerald.” Towering above all other structures, and projected against the azure depths of an Andalusian sky, were the minarets of numerous mosques, inlaid with colored tiles, belted with gorgeous inscriptions, sparkling with gold. In the spacious court of each of these temples was a marble fountain, and rows of orange-trees and odoriferous shrubs, whose fragrance, wafted through lofty doors and stucco lattices, permeated the interior. A hundred and thirty mills, whose wheels were turned by the swift currents of the Genil and the Darro, were required to grind the produce of the abundant harvests and to supply the capital with bread. Within the walls of that capital, which, with their thousand towers, enclosed a vast and thickly settled area, were the homes of more than five hundred thousand people. Access was obtained by means of twenty gates. The principal ones of town and palace were those of the Tower of the Seven Stories, and of Justice. The former, of grand and imposing dimensions, was faced with the beautiful marble of Macael, exquisitely carved. The latter, still one of the most striking memorials of the Moorish domination, faced the holy shrine of Mecca.

In the mercantile portion of the city the streets were so crooked and narrow that a single armed horseman could barely traverse them, a condition attributable to climatic and defensive precautions; the interminable bazaars were composed of a multitude of little shops modelled after those of the great Moslem communities of the East; the public buildings--the mosques, the colleges, the hospitals, the insane asylums--were upon a scale of magnificence elsewhere unknown, and scarcely exceeded by those of the khalifate during the period of its greatest splendor. The baths, whose institution and adornment the luxurious Moslem regarded as a part of his religion, were embellished with precious mosaics and many-colored marbles, and surrounded by beautiful gardens filled with fragrant and delicious flowers. The Spanish Moslem never suffered himself to forget that water had ever been the most precious treasure of his Bedouin ancestors. Its offer was the first and an indispensable courtesy to a guest. Always in sight in private houses, it dripped from the sides of porous alcarrazas; or, in the palaces of the emirs, filled exquisite vases standing on either side of the portal in niches where the prodigal fancy of the Moorish architect had exhausted all the resources of his decorative skill. There was not a dwelling, even of the humblest character, in Granada unprovided with an abundant supply of the purest water. The streets, always clean, were sluiced at frequent intervals. Around the fountains, in every court-yard, grew aromatic plants. In the mansions of the wealthy, the refreshing jets that cooled the summer air in winter were replaced by the hypocaust, which diffused a genial warmth through apartments hung with silken tapestry and glittering with rich enamels.

No description can convey an adequate idea of the splendors of this peerless city. Built upon the sloping sides of the Sierra Nevada, whose lofty peaks protected it from the winter blast and tempered the torrid air of summer, it stood three thousand feet above the level of the sea. Its walls, models of mediæval fortification, were nearly seven miles in circumference. Far above the roofs of the houses and the groves of palm, of elm, and of cypress, scattered through the parks and gardens, rose graceful minarets, observatories, cupolas, towers, to the enormous number of fourteen thousand. Of these, some were incased in many-colored mosaics; others were covered with lace-like arabesques gilt and painted; all were furnished with arched windows divided by columns of marble; some were roofed with porcelain tiles of brilliant colors, others with plates of gilded bronze.

The suburbs of the city, seventeen in all, were occupied by the royal villas and the mansions of the nobles, which not infrequently vied with the palaces of the Sultan in the magnificence of their appointments and the elegance of their surroundings. The quarter of the Albaycin, so called from the refugees of Baeza to whom Mohammed I. had afforded an asylum, had presented with homes, and had exempted from tribute, contained ten thousand houses. Its defences had been largely constructed by Don Gonzalo de Zuñiga, the Bishop of Jaen, from whom the erection of the stupendous wall had been exacted as a ransom. The mosque of the Albaycin was one of the most exquisite structures of the kind in the kingdom.

In the centre of the city was the Alcazaba, at once fortress and palace, its frowning bulwarks and crenellated towers in close juxtaposition to the orchards of tropical fruits, labyrinths of verdure, and sparkling fountains which formed the delight of its inmates and the admiration of foreigners,--an edifice long antedating the Alhambra and whose origin is lost in antiquity; for centuries the seat of government, the source of military, political, and religious influence; a building which, swept away by the violence of the conqueror, is now remembered only in barbarous chronicles and uncertain traditions. Here also was the castle of Habus,--that monarch to whom popular credulity, unable otherwise to account for his prodigious wealth, attributed the possession of the philosopher’s stone,--surmounted by the bronze effigy of a Moorish warrior on horseback, armed with a double-headed lance, which turned with every breeze, whose existence, ascribed to enchanters, was supposed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the city, and which the fears of the superstitious had invested with the virtues of a powerful talisman. In the very centre of the population, surrounded by the turmoil of a great commercial capital, stood the Djalma, or principal mosque. While vastly inferior in dimensions, splendor, and sanctity to the great temple of Cordova, it was long one of the holiest shrines of the Moslem world. Its arches were supported by columns of marble and jasper. Its floor was formed of blue and white enamelled tiles. From its shallow cupolas, glittering with golden stars, were suspended innumerable lamps. Its mihrab was encrusted with mosaics. In its court-yard the waters gushed from pipes of bronze and silver into a basin of alabaster.

Adjoining the mosque, in accordance with the custom which always placed institutions of learning and places of worship together, was the famous University of Granada. Founded by Yusuf I., under whose personal supervision its building was erected, its treasury had been enriched by the munificence of every succeeding sovereign. In its general appearance that building resembled those elsewhere raised for public uses by the piety or the ostentation of the emirs of Granada. As if in open defiance of the rule of the Koran, which sternly prohibited the representation of animal forms, the portals of an edifice largely devoted to the study of that volume were guarded by lions carved in stone. Its apartments, admirably adapted to the purposes for which they were designed, were almost destitute of ornamentation, in order that the attention of the scholar might not be diverted from his studies. Appropriate texts and legends from the works of celebrated writers were inscribed upon the walls in letters of gold. Here were taught the natural and the exact sciences,--law, theology, philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine. A great number of eminent men, renowned in every branch of literature and in every useful profession, are mentioned by Arab biographers as having received their education at the University of Granada. The halls were open even to the national enemy, and the Castilian obtained in a hostile capital those principles of knowledge which his native country was unable to afford.

It was the last institution of learning worthy of the name left in the Peninsula. It was the exponent of scientific method, of intellectual advancement, of liberal thought, of enlightened toleration; the final refuge of Moorish culture which, expelled by armed force from its ancient seat upon the Guadalquivir, had implored the protection of a race of kings who emulated with distinguished success the noble example of the khalifs, it represented the flickering ray of a civilization which, during an epoch most conspicuous in the history of national development, had illumined with noonday splendor the darkness of mediæval Europe.

Originally settled by members of the military division of Damascus who served in the army of Musa, Granada ever loved to boast a fanciful and traditional resemblance to the famous capital of Syria. But that capital, with all its magnificence, rising like an enchanted vision from the desert, could never compare in picturesqueness of situation, in productiveness of soil, in salubrity of climate, in architectural splendor, with the beautiful city of the Spanish emirs. Attracted by the purity of its atmosphere, the inhabitants of Africa sought, amidst its verdant groves and refreshing waters, relief from the ailments induced by the sultry and malarial vapors of the coast. The fame of their kinsmen frequently prompted the sultans of Fez to cross the sea, and become sometimes suppliants for favor, sometimes suitors for the hand of Moorish princesses, traversing with their swarthy retinues the streets upon carpets of flowers and under canopies of silk and gold.

The fate of the Hispano-Arab empire had always been closely associated with the policy of the states of Northern Africa. Thence had come the invading army which, like an irresistible tempest, swept away the Visigothic monarchy. Thence came the Almoravides, who seized the throne of the Ommeyade Khalifate, and the hordes of fanatics who had levelled the remaining monuments of civilization with the dust. The princes of Granada had been alternately the vassals and the allies of the sultans of Fez, Tunis, and Tlemcen, but never their masters. For generations African garrisons occupied the keys of the Peninsula,--Algeziras, Gibraltar, Tarifa.

The political sagacity of Mohammed I. had early recognized the necessity of maintaining amicable relations with his Mauritanian neighbors. From his reign the prayer for the Sultan was offered daily in every mosque. Magnificent embassies, bearing valuable gifts, frequently solicited his friendship. His intervention was sought in settlement of the pretensions of rival claimants to the throne. The fiercest warriors of the Atlas Mountains were enrolled in the guard of the emirs. The Gomeres, the Zegris, and the Abencerrages were permanently established in different quarters of the city which were long distinguished by their names; and the African influence represented by the bloody feuds of these jealous tribesmen exerted no inconsiderable effect upon the ultimate fate of the kingdom of Granada.

The general attractions of the populous and luxurious capital, manifold as they were, paled, however, before the splendors of the royal palaces. Of these, nine in number, the chief in extent and beauty was the Alhambra. Rising upon a jutting promontory of the Sierra, its highest point towered five hundred feet above the city. A double wall surrounded it; the outer line of circumvallation enclosing an oval half a mile in length by seven hundred and thirty feet in its greatest diameter. Here were domiciled all the numerous officials and retainers of an Oriental court and the ministers of religion, the viziers, the faquis, the muftis, the kadis, the guards, the relatives of the monarch, and the discarded sultanas. Oxide of iron in the plaster which covered the walls had imparted to them a coral hue, from whence the imposing pile derived its name of Medina-al-Hamra, The Red City. The battlements were painted white, and, projected against the brilliant green of the mountain-side, were visible for a distance of many leagues. The palace itself, isolated by a wall and a moat, was of vast dimensions and of quadrangular form. In the centre and at each corner was a court with encircling galleries, charming: pavilions, and innumerable fountains. At the right of the entrance, in accordance with Oriental custom, was the apartment where the Emir, or, in his absence, the kadi, daily dispensed justice. Beyond, opening upon the largest court in the palace, was the great hall of audience, devoted to grand ceremonials,--coronations, royal festivals, and the reception of foreign ambassadors. Its dome, inlaid with ivory and gold upon a surface of blue, green, and scarlet, was sixty feet in height. Its walls were covered with gilded stucco-work upon a ground of brilliant colors; its floor was of great slabs of white marble; in its centre was a fountain of beautiful design. Constructed by the pride and emulous ostentation of many sovereigns, the Alhambra presented an epitome of the progress and the perfection of Arab decorative art. To its magnificence the taste and invention of every Oriental nation had contributed, but the utmost efforts of their skill had been eclipsed by the genius of the native Moorish architects. The arcades of every court, the walls of every apartment, afforded unmistakable evidences of the foreign origin whence was derived the civilization that erected them. In the slender marble pillars could be discerned the tent-poles which sustained the fragile and temporary shelter of the nomad of the Desert. The mural decorations, which in the marvellous delicacy of their intricate patterns resembled silk and gold brocade, were copied from the shawls of Cashmere. In the blue domes, studded with shining stars, the Moslem recognized a representation of the firmament under whose boundless expanse his Syrian ancestors watched their flocks or followed with weary steps the midnight march of the plodding caravan. The grotto-like stalactitic arches and cupolas, modelled after a section of a pomegranate from which the seeds had been removed, were also symbolical of the cave which sheltered the Prophet during his flight from Mecca. In all the truly characteristic and distinctive features of this ornamentation the precepts of the Koran were generally, but not universally, observed. The tracery, fairly bewildering in its complexity, was composed of an infinite variety of combinations of simple, geometric forms. The segments of graceful curves were blended in a thousand fantastic designs with the rich foliage of tropical plants and flowers. The ceilings were made up of different sections of the cube,--triangles, prisms, rhomboids. The interior of an apartment in this gorgeous edifice suggested the influence of the supernatural rather than the ingenuity of man. Its doors, ten feet in height, were inlaid, painted, and gilt. The floor was of glazed tiles and marble; the ceiling of stalactites, resplendent with crimson and gold. The walls were hung with brocaded tapestry and decorated leather. Light was admitted through windows of stained glass on which appeared pious texts and the cipher of the sovereign. Silver censers of globular form diffused everywhere the smoke of rare perfumes. The divans were covered with rich silks striped with many colors. On one side the eye fell upon a court-yard paved with broad slabs of alabaster, in its centre a great fountain supported by twelve grotesque lions; on the other, it was charmed by a panorama of unequalled grandeur and beauty,--a view of hill and valley, of palace and hamlet, of villa and plantation, refreshed by a myriad of sparkling rivulets, fragrant with the intoxicating odors of countless gardens, framed in a gorgeous setting of empurpled mountains, verdant plain, and firmament of the clearest blue. Not without reason did the Emir of Granada liken his abode to Paradise!

In the decorations of this enchanted palace nothing exceeded in elegance the inscriptions, in which might be read its history and the sentiments and aspirations of its royal founders. Some were texts taken from the Koran. Others were selections from the poems of famous writers. On the capitals of columns appeared the cheerful greetings, “Prosperity,” “Happiness,” “Blessing.” The Cufic and the Neshki characters lent themselves with peculiar facility to this method of ornamentation. Artistic ingenuity had so disposed the letters that they could be read in either direction; and skilfully inserted in many legends of double significance were the names and the nationality of the craftsmen who had executed the work. Amidst the maze of tracery were emblazoned the arms of the kings of Granada, bestowed upon the first of the Alhamares by Ferdinand III.,--a shield of crimson crossed by a golden bar held in the mouths of dragons and inscribed with the motto, “There is no conqueror but God.”

In the summer portion of the palace the walls of enormous thickness, the dimly lighted apartments, the marble lattices, the lace-like spandrels through which passed, without obstruction, the lightest breeze, the perpetual ripple of waters, banished from the minds of the inmates even the idea of the discomforts of a semi-tropical climate. The winter palace, of larger dimensions, while certainly not inferior in elegance to the remainder of the edifice, afforded less opportunity for the display of architectural magnificence. The rooms were smaller, and the distribution of water confined to the necessities of religious and sanitary ablution. Warmth was distributed by the Roman hypocaust, a system of earthenware pipes similar in arrangement to a modern furnace. A higher degree of temperature was obtained by the use of metal globes filled with burning charcoal, which were rolled over the floors of the apartments. A bath, the luxury of whose apartments was unsurpassed in the realm of Islam, offered that voluptuous indulgence which was to the devout Moslem a sacred obligation, enjoined by his creed and inculcated by the traditions of centuries.

The mosque of the Alhambra, raised by the piety of Mohammed III., was recognized by all Moslems as one of the most exquisite temples of their religion. Its foundations had been laid by the toil of Christian captives. The expense of its erection as well as the revenues required by the worship celebrated within its walls--a worship which far exceeded in ostentatious splendor that of the Great Mosque of the city--were largely derived from the proceeds of forays and the tributes levied upon the Jewish and Christian population. Its materials were the rarest and most expensive that could be procured. Columns of jasper, of porphyry, of Numidian marble, and of alabaster sustained its arches, enriched with delicate stuccoes and inlaid with lazulite and onyx. The bases and capitals of these columns were of silver carved in arabesques and flowers. From the ceiling, painted with blue and gold, hung fifty lamps of shell, mother-of-pearl, and bronze, whose light was tempered by rose-colored shades of silken gauze. In its tile-work, its legends, its mosaics, its harmoniously blended hues, the Moorish artificer had exhausted every device of human skill. Adjoining the mosque was the pantheon, wherein, deposited in caskets of massy silver, were entombed the emirs of Granada. Their marble sarcophagi were ranged around a sombre vault, whose roof, like that of the Mihrab of the Djalma of Cordova, was chiselled in imitation of a shell.

Within the great circuit of the Alhambra were many secret apartments, subterranean passages, and galleries subservient to the uses of the eunuchs and the garrison, which communicated with the fortifications of the city. In the gardens, of which there were several, the capricious taste of the Arab was disclosed by peculiarities of floral embellishment,--walks paved with colored pebbles in arabesque patterns; beds of myrtle representing meadows in which grew plants and diminutive trees of the same vegetation clipped into forms of perfect symmetry; royal ciphers and pious legends traced in flowers of scarlet, purple, white, and yellow on a field of emerald green. The riotous fancy of Moorish genius attained its maximum development in the construction of this palace, celebrated by every traveller of ancient and modern times as unrivalled in picturesque elegance and beauty. In the delightful villas within the walls or adjacent to the city, the emirs, in the company of their favorite slaves, were accustomed to pass many months of the year. All of them resembled the Alhambra in arrangement and decoration, yet each was distinguished from the others by some peculiarity from which it derived its name. In one was a labyrinth of waters,--streams, cascades, and fountains, whose jets were projected to the height of sixty feet; another was famed for the virtues of a medicinal spring; in a third was an immense artificial lake; to another was attached an aviary filled with the song-birds of every clime.

The channels of three great aqueducts which supplied the city and palaces were in many places tunnelled through the solid rock. Their waters were also utilized for mining purposes, the cliffs in the vicinity of the Darro being especially rich in mineral deposits. The daily rental of a single mountain in the rear of the Alhambra, where toiled four hundred Christian slaves, amounted to two hundred ducats of gold. From the royal demesnes, thirty in number, an annual income of twenty-five thousand dinars, or four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, was derived; and in addition to this great sum were the revenues from the mines, the forests, the pastures, the ransom of captives, and the tribute of vassals. At the roll of the Moorish atabal fifty thousand soldiers sprang to arms. Of these, eight thousand cavalry--the most splendid in equipment, the most rapid in evolution, of any similar force in Europe--were quartered with twenty-five thousand cross-bowmen in the Alhambra. The entire available military force of the kingdom was not less than three hundred thousand men.

An examination of the character of the inhabitants of Granada reveals to us one of the many causes of their fall. They are described as incredibly selfish, as deficient in humanity, without sympathy for the living or reverence for the dead. In times of scarcity, the superfluity of the rich was abused for the oppression of the poor. They celebrated their riotous festivals in the vicinity of cemeteries. That humble piety which is at once the merit and the security of a people was extinct. The most sacred precepts of religion were constantly violated. In the infidel University of Granada the maxims of Averroes and other heretics of the Cordovan school were publicly taught. The use of wine was almost universal; and the fasts enjoined by Mohammed were transformed into scenes of wassail and license. Charity was refused alike to the worthy unfortunate and the brazen impostor. The schools of theology were full of scoffers and hypocrites. In the congregations of the mosques, the women outnumbered members of the other sex ten to one. The delineation of animal forms, that abomination of the devout Moslem, was everywhere visible,--on the arms of the sovereign, on the public fountains, on the ramparts, on the ceilings of palaces, in the institutions of learning, at the very portals of edifices dedicated to the study of the Koran. The monarch, to whose example the people naturally turned for instruction and whose family traced its genealogy in a direct line to the Ansares, the Companions of the Prophet, was not infrequently the first to violate the maxims of a religion of which he was the acknowledged representative. The entire population was deficient in the principle of cohesion indispensable to the maintenance of political power. Its elements were composed of the antagonistic fragments of a hundred tribes and factions. Sectarian prejudice had been succeeded by undisguised hostility. Familiarity with assassination, the impunity of frequent revolt, the exile of princes, the recurrence of civil war, a succession of usurpers, had practically abrogated the principle of loyalty. Without attachment to the soil, without reverence for the throne, without incentives to national independence, without aspirations for national glory, even the appearance of patriotism could not exist. Enervated by luxury, the military spirit, which sometimes prolongs the existence of moribund nations, had ceased to display that ferocious energy which had so frequently led the armies of Islam to victory. Twice had large bodies of the citizens of Granada, exasperated by tyranny, resolved on expatriation, and solicited the protection of the kings of Castile. In the final struggle, the Christian invader found no allies so useful as those partisans hopelessly contending for political supremacy, and willing to sacrifice home, honor, religion, liberty, provided their countrymen of a hostile faction might be involved with themselves in a common destruction. The Spanish Moslems had reached a point in their development beyond which, as a people, they could not pass. With them, as with all others, the epoch marked by the perfection of mechanical ingenuity, by the climax of artistic excellence, by the superiority of mental culture, was coincident with the period of national decay. Their civilization, however dazzling it might appear, shone with a false and delusive lustre. Its promoters founded a great and opulent state. They improved the practice of every art, they extended the productive power of every industry. They patronized letters with unstinted liberality. They based their religious policy upon the broad and statesmanlike principle of universal toleration. In their conquests, as far as was consistent with national security, they recognized the rights of humanity and forbearance. From the most unpromising origin resulted achievements of surpassing grandeur and pre-eminent value. The migratory Bedouin of the Desert, with no home but a low tent open to the air and possessing no idea whatever of substantial architecture or mural ornamentation, when brought under the influence of Greek and Roman antiquity and of the stupendous structures of the Valley of the Nile, rapidly developed into the most accomplished of decorators and architects. The descendants of the conquerors of Egypt who burned the Alexandrian library founded the University of Cordova and formed the great collections of the khalifate. A race whose progenitors lived by violence and whose name was synonymous with rapine established schools of law, secured the safety of the highways by the maintenance of a vigilant police, and became renowned for their administration of rigid and impartial justice. The seal of that civilization was impressed more deeply upon the monuments, upon the life, upon the traditions of Granada, than upon those of any other locality which had experienced the magical effects of its influence and its example. That kingdom had long survived the wreck of the empire. Within its borders were to be found specimens of architectural splendor which the wildest visions of Oriental fancy could not surpass. To the scholar, it was the seat of learning and the home of poesy; to the merchant, the centre of a vast and profitable commerce; to the traveller, a far more pleasing and instructive subject of study than the pageantry of Roman superstition or the melancholy exhibition of Byzantine pride and impotence. The imaginative peasant, whose mind had been nourished from childhood with tales of wonder, regarded his country as a land of enchantment. Especially was this true of the capital. Its approaches were guarded by talismans. Its towers were peopled by demons. A thousand fantastic legends adorned the story of its princes, the lives of its heroes, the foundation of its citadel, the erection of its palaces. Its incomparable monuments, apparently transcending the efforts of human power, were attributed to genii enslaved by magicians. Inscribed alike upon the portals of royal villa and peasant’s hut was the cabalistic hand, of potent efficacy against the dreaded evil-eye. Over all the city and its attributes popular superstition spread a veil of romantic and unearthly influence, which to our day has never been removed; symbolized by the artificer in forms universally believed to conceal some mysterious significance; in the carvings of architrave and capital; in the blending of characters in inscription and cipher; in the verdant labyrinths of the terraced gardens that encircled her fair brows as with a coronet; in the bursting pomegranate, in field of silver, emblazoned on her arms.

Such was Granada on the eve of the Conquest. Well might Castilian ambition covet such a prize! Well might the Moslem, proud of the commercial pre-eminence of his country, intoxicated with her beauty, mindful of her immortal souvenirs, conscious of her impending fate, refer with Oriental hyperbole to her fair metropolis as, “Court of the Universe,” “Throne of Andaluz,” “Mother of Peoples,” “Pomegranate of Rubies,” “Diadem of Roses,” “City of Cities!” She had fulfilled her magnificent destiny in the world of science, of art, of letters. She had created imperishable monuments of her intellectual power. The star of her glory, long past its meridian, was now rapidly hastening to its setting.

The implacable struggle for national existence on the one hand, for religious and political supremacy on the other, was now about to assume a new and a more decisive character. With much show of reason the Spaniard regarded the Arab as the usurper of his hereditary rights. With a valor and an inflexible tenacity of purpose scarcely paralleled in any age, he had for centuries prosecuted the recovery of his ancient patrimony in the arduous and bloody path of conquest. Undismayed by physical obstacles, undaunted by repeated reverses, never yielding what was once within his iron grasp, he had finally advanced to the gates of the last infidel stronghold. In his ruthless progress he was no unworthy type of the Genius of Destruction. The charming landscape he encountered he transformed into a blackened desert. The shrines of a hostile faith, embellished with the most exquisite labors ever bestowed by the hands of popular reverence and royal prodigality upon the altars of God, were demolished or purposely suffered to fall into decay. The smoke of his camp-fires begrimed the walls of gilded palaces. Historic records of former ages, priceless relics of antiquity, scientific instruments, were delivered to the flames. His energy, his sincerity, his bravery, however, could never be called in question. The simple Roman sword, the emblem of courage, the symbol of power and dominion, which is carved upon the tomb of Pelayus in the valley of Covadonga, was the worthy precursor of those trenchant blades that hewed their way from the mist-enshrouded defiles of the Asturian Mountains to the rose-clad slopes of the Sierra Nevada, and established, amidst the sack of cities and the extermination of an industrious and accomplished people, the awful tyranny of ecclesiastical avarice and inquisitorial power. Every impediment had been surmounted by the indomitable perseverance, fanaticism, and ambition of the Crusader. New sovereigns now controlled the destinies of his country. For generations the principal adversary of Granada had been the kingdom of Castile, impoverished in resources, divided by faction, exhausted by warfare, weakened in authority. The union of the two great realms of the Peninsula brought into the contest the hardy population and the unimpaired vigor of Aragon. In Castile a great social and political revolution had been effected. The claims of the nobility, inconsistent with the dignity and the prerogatives of the crown, had been curtailed or abolished. The possession of a title or the occupancy of a mountain stronghold no longer conferred immunity from the punishment of crime. Treasures and demesnes extorted by violence or procured by fraud from the weakness of former princes were relinquished. Feudal privileges, the subject of constant abuse and encroachment since the foundation of the monarchy, were sternly retrenched. Civil disorder was suppressed. Through the agency of a vigilant military police, which in the pursuit of offenders was no respecter of rank, the highways became safe, and commerce revived. With the return of public security, national development received a new and powerful impetus. The seaports, long deserted, were filled with vessels. The stores of capital, secreted from royal and aristocratic rapacity, gradually found their way into the channels of trade. A debased currency which had impaired public credit and produced repeated financial disasters was replaced by a legitimate coinage of universally recognized value. The folly of Henry IV. had authorized the establishment of private mints, the standard of whose product was regulated solely by the necessities or the avarice of their proprietors. These were abolished, and all coins now bore the royal stamp, a substantial guaranty of their worth and genuineness. With the decline of feudal privileges the influence and the importance of the middle class increased. That class, ever constituting the most valuable portion of the social fabric, dependent for its existence upon the security of trade and the practice of industry, could not survive amidst the incessant disorder of feud and sedition. For many generations a vast interval had separated the majestic castle of the noble from the filthy hovel of the serf, whose occupants represented the two most numerous castes of society. Royal authority now interposed to especially protect those whom political experience had proved might constitute a safe and effective bulwark against aristocratic aggression. It was an age of religious as well as of political transition. The Church was not yet sufficiently strong to persecute. The Crown could not yet venture to support the ecclesiastical with the secular power. The Inquisition had not yet raised its menacing and bloody hand to stifle thought and check the exertion of every generous impulse, but it was even then soliciting recognition; the glory of its establishment was reserved for the pious Isabella. As a result of toleration based upon the consciousness of weakness, the sectaries of other religions, heedless of impending disaster, pursued their avocations in peace. The rancor of mediæval prejudice did not prevent the shrewd and obsequious Jew from buying his cargoes or negotiating his loans. The Mudejar, who had, perhaps without reluctance, exchanged the capricious despotism of his hereditary rulers for the suspicious protection of an ancient foe, exercised, in a delusive tranquillity, those agricultural and mechanical occupations which had conferred such blessings upon his race. In addition to other important considerations, the tribute collected from this heretical population brought no inconsiderable revenue into the royal treasury. The once discordant elements of Christian authority in the Peninsula had been reconciled; what had formerly been its weakness was now its firmest support; dissensions had been supplanted by affectionate loyalty; a protracted truce had insured the development of national strength; and the disputes and prejudices of a score of hostile and semi-independent states had been forgotten in the inauguration of the bold and subtle policy which, almost imperceptibly and without determined resistance, had established and consolidated a formidable monarchy.

The accession of the princes under whose auspices these grand results were achieved is coincident with the beginning of one of the most important periods mentioned in history. Not only were the political conditions of the age eminently favorable to the increase of Spanish power, but every adventitious circumstance seemed to contribute directly to that end. The nobles were exhausted by generations of discord. Feudalism, carried to extremes, had become synonymous with irresponsible tyranny. The people were weary of revolution. The spirit of loyalty, always strong in the chivalrous Castilian, required but the assertion of regal authority to be revived in all its original fervor and intensity. The inherent and fatal weakness of Granada, whose treasures were greater than those possessed by any other country in Europe, was well known to its enemies. Their cupidity, long since aroused by the ostentatious exhibition of fabulous wealth; their fanatical zeal, stimulated by the Papal blessing and the unlimited distribution of indulgences, urged them to the gratification of the most powerful passions which dominate humanity. The apparent strength of the Moslem kingdom was illusory. Its vitality had long been sapped by border conflict and domestic convulsion. Its capacity for resistance was not proportionate to the formidable character of its bulwarks, the number of its inhabitants, the value of its resources, the spirit of its traditions, the gallantry of its defenders, or the measure of its renown. Before the first well-concerted attack it must inevitably fall.

The sovereigns upon whom had devolved the task of erasing from the Peninsula the last vestige of Moslem ascendancy were, in many respects, admirably qualified for the undertaking. Ferdinand was experienced beyond his years; practised in that school which taught that duplicity was the highest development of political wisdom; tried by the dangers and the vicissitudes which in an age of national disorder beset the path of princes; of mediocre abilities and limited education; incapable of sincere attachment; of undoubted courage, yet inclined to negotiation rather than to violence; moderate in the indulgence of his pleasures; abstemious in diet, and shabby in dress almost to parsimony; frigid in temperament, yet dissolute; taciturn and vigilant; suspicious, arbitrary, and imperturbable; without faith or integrity where momentous public interests were involved; a bigot rather from policy than from principle; narrow, selfish, and crafty; stern, sullen, merciless, imperious; equally ready to conciliate an enemy or to sacrifice a friend.