its magnificent bridge, creating useful public institutions, and finally completing the grand mosque, which his father had commenced, founding and endowing in connection with it schools and colleges. Moreover, he did all this with the resources of the treasury, and with his lawful part of the spoils of conquest, without levying any extraordinary taxes.
Tradition relates that there formerly was a bridge over the Guadelquivir, erected on the site of the present structure, about 200 years before the arrival of the Moors in Spain: but, this edifice being greatly decayed, it was rebuilt by the Arabs during the Viceroyship of Assamh, A.D. 720 or 721. This noble structure is four hundred paces, or one thousand feet, in length, and its breadth is twenty-two feet eight inches within the parapets. The passage over the bridge is a straight line from one end to the other; the arches are sixteen in number, and the buttresses of the piers are much stronger and better adapted for similar purposes than the modern tri-lateral cut-waters. Nearly eleven centuries have these buttresses withstood the rapid floods of the Guadelquivir, without sustaining any material injury. Although Hisham practically rebuilt the bridge, the labour did not contribute to his personal convenience. His great love of hunting caused the malcontents among his subjects to whisper that he had repaired the bridge to facilitate the outgoings and incomings of his hunting parties. The rumour reached the king, who vowed that he would never cross the bridge again—a vow he faithfully observed.
The great Aljama was completed in the year A.D. 793. The Emir Hisham took as great a personal interest in its progress as did his father, the walies of the provinces contributed to its decoration with the spoils from ancient monuments, the artificers with their genius, victors with their booty, the city with its workmen, the mountains of Cordova and Cabra by yielding the treasures of their quarries, Africa with the trunks of its imperishable larch-pines, and Asia by inoculating the growing Arabic-Spanish art with its genius of ornament, its aspirations and its poetry.
The superb mosque was finished, the workmen rested from their labours, and Hisham was confident that he had secured a place in the garden of everlasting joys. Let us look at this new house of prayer, majestically situated at the southern boundary of the great city, close to the green banks of the wide river of Andalus, occupying an area of 460 feet from north to south, and 280 from east to west, surrounded by high, thick battlemented walls, flanked by stout buttresses of watch towers, and surmounted by a lofty minaret. It is entered by the faithful by nine rich and spacious outer gates, and by eleven interior doors, four in the east and west sides, and a principal one to the north; the eleven in the inner façade communicating with an equal number of naves in the temple. The interior arrangement of this wonderful monument is most beautiful. There is a great courtyard, or atrium, with wide gates in the north, west, and east sides, having fountains for the ablutions and the purifications, and orange and palm groves. Then comes the immense body of the house of prayer, divided into eleven principal naves, running from north to south, and crossed at right angles by twenty-one smaller naves, which run from east to west. The elegant combination of the arcades, in which the pilasters are superposed on the columns, and the arches on other arches, leaving a passage for the light between the upper and lower columniation, is quite ideal. Finally, the mysterious hidden sanctuary, within which the Koran is kept, in whose precincts Oriental art has exhausted all the riches of its fascinating resources.
The eleven great doors leading from the courtyard to the
CORDOVA
THE BRIDGE.