And Christian knights came also to perfect themselves in chivalric fashions and martial exercises, as well as to master the graceful evolutions of the “tilt of reeds” in the tourneys of the Moors.
From the court of the first Abdurraman came la gaya ciencia, poetic discussions of love and chivalry transplanted later to the Court of Provence.
In architecture no building that ever was erected can compare to the elegance of his Mesquita (come down to us almost entire) as a monument of the taste and culture of the age. The most mystic and astounding of temples, with innumerable aisles of double horseshoe arches, suspended like ribbons in mid-air, resting on pillars of jasper, pavonazzo, porphyry, and verd antique crossing and re-crossing each other in a giddy maze of immeasurable distances, red, yellow, green, and white dazzling the eye in a very rainbow of colour!
No windows are visible, and the light, weird and grim, comes as from a cave peopled by demons; no central space at all, but vistas of endless arcades, which for a time the eye follows assiduously, then turns confused, and the brain reels.
Deep hidden in the heart of the temple is the throne or macsurah, a marvel of embroidered stone, where the Sultan takes his seat. Here the Koran is read in the pale light of scented tapers and torches, and those ecstatic visions evoked by the Faithful of a sensual paradise of dark-haired houris.
Opposite is the Zeca, or holiest of holies, turned towards Mecca, where the gorgeous decorations of the East blend with Byzantine mosaics of vivid colours on a gold ground; a most lovely shrine, a great marble conch-shell for the roof, the sides dazzling with burnished gold, and round and round, deep in the pavement, the footprints of centuries of pilgrims.
Such is the Mesquita of Cordoba in our day, the desecrated shelter of an old faith, a sanctuary rifled, a mystery revealed!
But how glorious in the time of the great Abdurraman when the blaze of a thousand coloured lanterns, fed with perfumed oil, played like gems upon jewelled surfaces, vases, and censers filled with musk and attar, making the air heavy with fragrance, golden candelabra blazing among mosaics, crescent banners floating beside the almimbar or pulpit, where green-turbaned Almuedans mount to intone the Selan, as the Sultan emerges from a subterranean passage leading from the Alcazar, treading on Persian carpets sown with jewels, to take his place on a golden throne within the macsurah, surrounded by swarthy Africans, bare-armed Berbers, helmeted knights bristling with scimitars, Numidians with fringed head-bands and golden armlets, superb Emirs, wandering Kalenders, who live by magic, the dervish of the desert, and hoary Imaums in full gathered robes.
Then the talismanic words are heard from the open galleries of the Giralda from which the Muezzin calls to daily prayer: “There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his prophet.” To which the prostrate multitude echoes: “God is great,” each one striking the pavement with his forehead, and the sonorous chant answers, “Amen.”
When Abdurraman reigned, the lonely quarter beyond the Mesquita swarmed with Alcazars, Bazars, Cuartos, Zacatines, Baños, and Alamedas.