PLATE XXXI.
Cornice at Springing of Arch of Doorway at one of the Entrances.
judgments of the East and of the feudal lords of the West, and which magnified the idea of justice in the eyes of foolish and irreflective people, but which were held by men of good sense to be a mere pretence of equity, with which to mask his tyranny. The place where justice was administered in the time of the Almohadan kings was in the Court of the Monteria—a vast and beautiful apartment, one of the oldest constructions in the alcazar, and of a more purely Moorish style.
The Court of the Hunters leads to another larger court, known as the Princes’ Hall. This is more regular in form, and in it rises the chief entrance, dazzling and richly ornamented with painting and gilding, from its twin windows to the topmost moulding of its projecting eaves, of the purest Almohadan style. How can one describe it? Not only the entrance, but the whole façade is of precious marbles, the capitals of the columns being in the most exquisite Moorish taste; and the facia of interlaced arches above the doorway display the escutcheons of Castile and Leon; while round another facia, running between the brackets over the twin windows of the principal floor, there is a legend in Gothic characters, which says: “The very high, and very noble, and very powerful, and very victorious Don Pedro, King of Castile and Leon, commanded these alcazars, and these palaces, and these doorways to be made, which was done in the era of one thousand four hundred and two.” The cupola of the Princes’ Hall rises above this façade, its outer walls being adorned with little arches and blue tile work, in imitation of a pyramid, and bearing at its summit, in the Oriental fashion, a weather-cock with gilded spheres.
On entering the vestibule, one sees first the result of unfortunate modern reformations, little rooms or recesses to right and left, now almost stripped of their ancient ornamentation. On taking the corridor, which is at the back of a sort of ante-chamber, nearly square, one arrives at the chief inner court called the Court of the Damsels. There is an unfounded tradition which says this court derives its name from the disgraceful tribute of one hundred damsels levied by Mauregato, and paid to the khalifs of Cordova, it being supposed that the throne upon which the Moorish king sat when receiving this tribute was situated in this court. In point of fact, as Pedro de Medrazo reminds us, there were no Moorish kings in Spain, and neither was Seville the capital of the Andalusian khalifate, nor can it be asserted that there was a Saracen palace there before the eleventh century. Without any doubt this court was part of the great restorations of the fourteenth century. Its plan is a rectangle, with galleries of marble columns in couples and pointed mitred arches; the central arches of each side are higher than the rest, and instead of resting, as these do on the columns, they are supported by small square pillars, which appear to be held up by the capitals. These small pillars have beautiful little columns at their angles, which at first sight seem to be a prelude to the caprices of the Renaissance, which loved so much to surmount one style by another; but here it is really an accident very characteristic of the Arabic-Granadian architecture, such as is often to be noticed in the Courts of the Alhambra.
These arches are only seen in the façade here, in the House of Pilate, and in the buildings of the eighth century in the East. One could not explain them unless there were hanging decorations, such as tapestries attached to the walls, which were neither seen nor guessed in the intercolumniations. It is a strange shape, which is elegant on account of the lobules, the point, and the horseshoe-formed