This gate is placed at right angles to the wall which girdles the hill and runs along its edge, following all its inequalities of level. It is in fairly good preservation, but the rampart walk has disappeared here and there. Of the square mural towers a great many remain—some hopelessly ruinous, others inhabited by the guardians of the domain or their widows and relations. The towers on the south-west side, as far as I could judge, were better adapted for defence than those on the north-east, where the width of the windows would have greatly embarrassed the defence. The area enclosed by the outer wall was divided, it seems, by two cross walls into what, in the medieval parlance, we would call the outer, middle and inner wards. To the last corresponded the citadel proper or Kasba (Alcazaba, the Spaniards call it), whose massive walls rise to your left on emerging from the Puerta de la Justicia. This is the oldest part of the fortress. It occupies the extremity of the plateau, which is marked by the tall, square Torre de la Vela, or watch tower, whereon a silver cross was planted by the "Tercer Rey," Cardinal Mendoza, to announce the occupation of the Alhambra by the Spaniards. Here also is a bell which can be heard as far off as Loja, and which, if struck with sufficient force by a maiden, is said to have the faculty of procuring her a husband. The view from the platform is noble. The dazzling white city is spread out beneath, in front stretches the Vega, to the south the eyes rest lovingly on the white streaks of the Sierra Nevada.
Upon this tower I met a French entomologist, who announced that he should not trouble to visit any other part of the Alhambra, and was, in fact, surprised to learn that there was anything more to see. His horizon was bounded by the Lepidoptera, on one side, and the Coleoptera (I think that is the word) on the other. After all, archæologists take no more interest in black beetles than entomologists do in buildings. Incidentally, I should think Granada an admirable place for the intimate study of insects.
From the Torre de las Armas, a road led from the citadel down the declivity to the town, crossing the Darro by the ruined Puente del Cadi. On the inner side the citadel is strengthened by the picturesque Torre del Homenage—a name often given to towers in Spain. The open space before it, where the water-carriers gather round the well, was a comparatively deep ravine in Moorish times, and was not levelled up till after the fall of Boabdil. On the opposite side—facing the Torre del Homenage—it was bounded by what I will call the wall of the middle ward, which ran across from the Torre de las Gallinas to near the Puerta de la Justicia, and of which only the gatehouse, the beautiful Puerta del Vino, remains.
This admitted to the area which contained the palaces and also the little town of the Alhambra—inhabited by persons attached to the court, the ulema, chiefs of such powerful tribes as the Beni Serraj and the Beni Theghri, discarded sultanas, ex-favourites, soldiers of fortune, plenipotentiaries and envoys, and a crowd of parasites and hangers-on. To-day the population is limited chiefly to one little street, composed of pensions, photographers' shops and estancos. The plan of the whole fortress no doubt varied from age to age, but in the main agreed with that according to which most European strongholds were constructed. There was the outer wall with its mural towers and gatehouses; a strong inner ward, in place of a keep shut off by a ditch or ravine; and two or more other enclosures, each defended by a wall with a fortified entrance. It does not seem that the portcullis and drawbridge were used by the Moorish engineers.
While the Kasba is generally attributed to an earlier dynasty, the outer wall and the other Moorish buildings are almost unanimously ascribed to Al Ahmar and his successors of the Nasrid dynasty. To reach the Alhambra Palace, called pre-eminently by foreigners the Alhambra and by the Spaniards the Alcazar, or Palacio Arabe, you pass across the plaza, leaving the unfinished Palace of Charles V. to your right. Behind it you find not an imposing and gorgeous structure, but what appears to be a collection of tile-roofed sheds. A mean, characterless entrance admits you to the far-famed palace.
The building belongs to the last stage of Spanish-Arabic art, when the seed of Mohammedan ideas and culture had long since taken root in the soil and produced a style purely local in many of its features. Some authorities trace the first principles of Arabic architecture back to the Copts; the Spaniards argue that their style is derived from Byzantine works they found before them in Andalusia. The germs of Arabic art are certainly not, if travellers' tales be true, to be found in Arabia. The Saracen conquerors were warriors, not artists, and their ideas of form and ornament were undoubtedly borrowed—like their vaunted culture—from the more civilized nations with which they came in contact. With Morocco just across the strait, it is not safe to claim too much of native genius and refinement for the Moor. Whatever may have been the primitive models of Andalusian architecture, as time went by it lost much of the dignity and simplicity of its earliest examples—such as the Giralda and the Mezquita. The Moors of Granada had wearied of the fanaticism and austerity of Islam. If not precisely decadent, they had lost the fire and enthusiasm of youth, and wanted to enjoy a comfortable old age. If the palace we are about to enter seems in parts more like the bower of an odalisque than the seat of royalty, we must remember that the sultans wanted to enjoy life here, and had no fancy for the stern, military-looking palaces of their Christian rivals. Your Oriental, like the cat, values luxury very highly, and yet, from our point of view, does not seem to secure it. A European would have found himself hopelessly uncomfortable at the court of Al Ahmar and Mohammed V.