Beyond this hall rises the Tower of Comares, appearing to rest on the slenderest pillars and almost to be balanced in the air. The real supports have been purposely kept out of sight. The view from the summit of the massive battlemented tower is magnificent. From this platform, Washington Irving remarks, the proud monarchs of Granada and their queens have watched the approach of Christian armies, or gazed on the battles in the Vega. The walls of the tower are of surprising thickness.
The interior, which is a square of 37 ft. by 75 ft. high up to the centre of the dome, is occupied by the Sala de Embajadores, the reception-room of the Sultans. It is the largest and perhaps the most imposing of the halls of the Alhambra. Lifting our eyes, we behold a glorious, airy dome, of artesonado work, with stars and painted angles. Owen Jones is of opinion that the present ceiling replaced an earlier one, which was supported by an arch of brick. The hall lacks its former pavement of marble, its central fountain, and the lattices that filled in its twin-windows. But it is still adorned by a beautiful mosaic dado (known as sofeisfa) reaching to the wooden cornice. Numerous are the Kufic and African inscriptions introduced into the decoration, the motto of Al Ahmar being frequently repeated. Opening on to the hall are nine alcoves, each with twin-windows, which have replaced balconies. The alcove opposite the entrance was the site of the Sultan’s throne, as the long poetical inscriptions testify. What gorgeous assemblies must have filled this saloon in bygone years—and what tumultuous scenes and fateful decisions must have been here enacted!
The Patio de los Leones and adjacent Apartments.
The Patio de los Leones (Court of the Lions) occupies, with the chambers opening on to it, the south-eastern quarter of the Palace. “There is no part of the edifice that gives us a more complete idea of its original beauty and magnificence than this,” says Washington Irving, “for none has suffered so little from the ravages of time. In the centre stands the fountain famous in song and story. The alabaster basins still shed their diamond drops; and the twelve lions, which support them, cast forth their crystal streams as in the days of Boabdil. The architecture, like that of all other parts of the palace, is characterised by elegance rather than grandeur; bespeaking a delicate and graceful taste, and a disposition to indolent enjoyment. When one looks upon the fairy tracery of the peristyles, and the apparently fragile fretwork of the walls, it is difficult to believe that so much has survived the wear and tear of centuries, the shocks of earthquakes, the violence of war, and the quiet, though no less baneful, pilferings of the tasteful traveller: it is almost sufficient to excuse the popular tradition, that the whole is protected by a magic charm.”
The court is an oblong measuring 116 ft. by 66 ft. On each side is a peristyle or portico, and at either end a graceful pavilion with a fine dome. The supporting marble columns are 124 in number and 11 ft. high. They are placed irregularly, sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs—an arrangement which does nothing to mar the general impression of harmony. The arches exhibit a similar variety of curve, and spring from capitals decorated with rich foliage of various designs. The space above the arches is filled in with the usual arabesque work, and adorned with verses from the Koran. The ceilings of the porticos are enriched with delicate stucco work, and the walls are covered to a height of five feet with a dado of blue and yellow azulejos, bordered with blue and gold enamelled escutcheons bearing an Arabic motto on a bend.
In the centre of the court is the fountain from which it derives its name. This is composed of two basins (in Moorish times there was but one) supported by twelve marble lions. These Arabian sculptures, remarks Ford, are rudely but heraldically carved, and closely resemble those to be seen supporting Norman-Saracenic tombs in Apulia and Calabria. “Their faces are barbecued, and their manes cut like the scales of a griffin, and their legs like bedposts, while a water pipe stuck in their mouths does not add to their dignity.” Indeed, the consolatory reminder contained in the tremendously long inscription round the basin, that there is nothing to be feared from these creatures, for “life is wanting to enable them to show their fury,” seems ludicrously unnecessary. As specimens of Arabian sculpture they are in all probability unique; the builders of the Alhambra were evidently not over-strict in the observance of their religion. The inscription referred to has been versified by Valera, and runs into forty-four lines of Castilian.
On the south side of the Patio de los Leones is the Sala de los Abencerrages (Hall of the Beni Serraj), so called because it is believed to be the scene of the massacre of thirty-six chiefs of that tribe by order of Boabdil. A reddish vein in the marble flooring is pointed out as the victims’ indelible bloodstains. The story has only the slenderest historical foundation, and was first circulated by a writer of the name of Ginés Perez de Hita, who lived in the sixteenth century. According to some, the usurper Aben Osmin (1446) was beheaded here by order of the prince Muley Hassan; but others, writing of that confused period of Granadine history, say the tyrant fled to the mountains. This chamber, perhaps the most elegant in the Alhambra, does not seem a likely place for deeds of blood. It is entered through a wonderfully graceful arch, growing out of, rather than springing from, marble shafts. The chamber is a square, prolonged on the east and west by two alhamis or alcoves, which are entered through exquisitely-curved arches. But the glory of the Sala de los Abencerrages is its roof—its plan like that of a star, with pendants or stalactites, and sixteen windows in its vaultings.
“Its thousand stalactites,” writes Don Francisco Pi Margall, “its colours, its innumerable archings, its crowns of stars, its complicated depressions and projections, its cones, its polygons, its accidents of light, the effects of chiaroscuro, present it at first sight as something confused, indefinable, indecipherable, resplendent, and vague, like that broad band, the Milky Way, which crosses the pavilion of the heavens. Yet in reality it is most regular, although irregular in appearance; the compass of the geometrician had more to do in planning it than the genius of the artist; but its lines are so many, and their combinations change so rapidly, that the scheme is only to be comprehended after a long and patient study.”
The azulejos which face the walls date from the time of Charles V. In the centre of the hall is the marble basin beside which the Beni Serraj are fabled to have been slain.
Opposite this hall, on the north side of the Lions’ Court, is the Sala de las Dos Hermanas (or, of the Two Sisters), so called after two twin slabs of marble let into the pavement. An exquisite arch gives admittance from the court to a narrow corridor, which communicates on the right with the upper storey, and with the mirador or latticed balcony, from which the ladies of the Harem would gaze into the patio below. The hall is as rich, as graceful, as suggestive of Eastern luxury and repose as that which we have just left. In each wall is an arched opening, two being entrances, the others admitting to alcoves somewhat more shut off than in other parts of the Alhambra. Above each arch is a window corresponding to the apartments in the upper storey, now vanished. The roof exhibits the same marvellous combinations of geometrical forms, the same confused symmetry, as are seen in the Sala de los Abencerrages. Indeed, this hall is generally (but not universally) considered the more admirable of the two. The surface of the walls is hidden beneath costly reliefs of stucco and azulejos. Inscriptions on the sixteen medallions and cartouches have been deciphered into a long poem by Ibn Zamrek, composed in honour of Mohammed V., and translated into eleven verses of Spanish by Valera. One verse exhorts us “to look attentively at my elegance and reap the benefit of a commentary on decoration; here are columns ornamented with every perfection, the beauty of which has become proverbial.”