Excursions in the mountains of Ronda and Granada, with characteristic sketches of the inhabitants of southern Spain, vol. 1/2

by C. Rochfort‏ Scott

The Mezquita, in fact, may be said to be made up of the reliques of those two nations, its architecture alone being Moorish. It was finished by Hassim (son of Abdalrahman, its founder), towards the close of the eighth century; but subsequent caliphs made great additions to it.

The exterior of the building is extremely gloomy and unprepossessing; its dark and windowless walls, and low engrailed parapets, giving it the appearance of a prison, rather than of a place of worship. The horse-shoe arches over the doors are nevertheless well worthy of notice, and the principal gate is covered with bronze plates of most exquisite workmanship. Of the four and twenty entrances that formerly gave admission to the holy shrine of the prophet’s descendant, but five are now open, which may in some degree account for the gloom that pervades the interior.

Never did the feeling of astonishment so completely take possession of my senses, as on first entering this most extraordinary edifice. You step at once from the hot and sun-bleached street into a cool and sombre enclosure, of vast extent, which has not inaptly been likened to a forest of marble pillars; and, indeed, to carry out the simile, the arches, springing in all directions from these polished stems, present a vaulted covering which, at first sight, appears as complicated in its construction, as even a forest canopy of nature’s own formation. One soon discovers, however, that the thickly planted pillars are aligned so as to divide the dark interior into regular avenues or aisles, and that the arches springing from and connecting each column with the four adjacent pillars (thus spanning both the main and transverse intercolumniations) form arcades, extending the whole length and breadth of the building. These arches are mostly of the Moorish, or horse-shoe form, but some few are of the pointed gothic, and seem to me to be the remains of a building of more ancient date than the time of the Moors.

The interior of the mosque is nearly a square, its dimensions being 394 English feet from east to west, and 356 from north to south. But on attentive examination it becomes evident that the side which, correctly speaking, must now be considered the width of the mosque, was originally its length, an addition having been made on its eastern side, which has given it greater extent in that direction than in the other, so that its original interior dimensions were 356 feet from north to south (the same as at present), but only 240 feet from east to west.

This space was divided by ten lines of columns into eleven aisles, extending north and south through the building; the centre avenue, which was directed straight from the great gate of entrance to the Maksurah, or sanctuary, situated in the middle of the south wall of the mosque, being (as it continues to this day) two feet wider than the others. Each of these ten rows contained thirty-one columns, placed about ten feet apart, from centre to centre; but they did not extend the whole length of the building, a small space at the south end being partitioned off for the apartments of the Imans.

By the addition which was afterwards made to the Mosque, (doubtless rendered necessary by the increasing veneration with which it came to be regarded) it gained 154 feet in width, and eight aisles were added to the eleven already formed; and, as no part of this was reserved, it required thirty-four columns in each row to fill up the space. These, however, were not throughout placed so as to align transversely with those of the original portion of the building; which circumstance has probably occasioned the discrepancies observable in the accounts given of this singular building by different writers. Swinburne, whose descriptions are generally very accurate, has fallen into error by stating that the mosque was divided into but seventeen aisles, having apparently overlooked the fact, that an avenue on each side has been taken off since it became a Christian church, for the erection of chapels dedicated to the divers saints of the Cordoban Calendar.

The mosque may, therefore, be considered as having formerly been divided longitudinally into nineteen principal aisles or avenues of columns, and transversely into thirty-five. But it is to be observed that the line of columns which marks the division between the old and modern parts of the building differs from the rest; being rather a series of clusters of pillars (four in each pier), than isolated columns: and two similar lines divide the interior also, transversely; so that in making a calculation of the number of columns it formerly contained, these must be duly taken into the account; and it will then be found that the total number did not fall far short of the thousand it is rumoured to have contained.

Although, as I have observed, the cross alignments of the columns in the old and new portions of the building do not exactly correspond, yet in some parts of the interior the arrangement of them is so perfect, that the spectator looks down eight avenues from the spot where he stands; four being at right angles with the walls of the building, the other four bisecting these, and extending diagonally across the mosque.

The columns are of polished jasper, marble porphyry, and granite, and offer as much variety in their architectural as in their geological character; some rising doric-like from the pavement, others resting on low bases; many swelling in the shaft in the early style of the Egyptians, and some few ascending spirally, bespeaking the vitiated taste of the middle ages. Many are capped with Corinthian, others with grotesque, and some with purely Gothic, capitals.

All these varieties of colour, shape, and ornament, have, after a time, a displeasing effect; but on first entering the building the spectator’s attention is so riveted by the novelty of its character, and the vastness of its dimensions, that these violations of the prescribed rules of taste are overlooked.