Five Moorish keys—one of bronze and four of iron—are in the Museum of Segovia, and bear, as Amador observes, a general resemblance to the iron key of Seville. The wards of four of them are shaped into the following inscriptions: the first key, “In Secovia (Segovia)”; the second, “(This) key was curiously wrought at Medina Huelma, God protect her”; the third, “Open”; and the fourth, “This work is by Abdallah.”

The first and smallest of these keys informs us, therefore, that it was manufactured at Segovia. The third key is that which is of bronze, and bears the word “Open,” probably addressed to Allah. The second, which is also the largest and the most artistic and ornate, belonged, we read upon its wards, to Huelma, a fortress-town upon the frontiers of the kingdom of Granada. This town was wrested from the Moors on April 20th, 1438, by Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, first Marquis of Santillana, who possibly sent this key to Castile as a present to his sovereign, Juan the Second, in company with the usual papers of capitulation.

Other Moorish keys are scattered over Spain in various of her public and private collections, though none are so remarkable as those of Seville and Segovia. The town of Sepúlveda possesses seven early iron keys, several of which are Moorish. Others are at Burgos, Valencia, Palma, Jaen, and Granada. At the last-named city the following key, dating undoubtedly from the period of the Muslim domination, was discovered, in 1901, among the débris of the Palace of Seti Meriem.[63]

Keys of awe-inspiring magnitude are still preferred among the Spaniards to a handier and slighter instrument, this people seeming to believe that the bigger the key the more inviolable is the custody which it affords—a theory not at all upheld by modern experts in this venerable craft. Perhaps this singular and local preference is derived from Barbary. At any rate it still obtains across the Strait. “Our host,” wrote Mr Cunninghame Graham in Mogreb-El-Acksa, “knocks off great pieces from a loaf of cheap French sugar with the key of the house, drawing it from his belt and hammering lustily, as the key weighs about four ounces, and is eight or nine inches long.” Of such a length are nearly all the house-keys of contemporary Spain; and with this apparatus bulging in his belt the somnolent sereno or night-watchman of this sleepy, unprogressive, Latino-Mussulmanic land prowls to this hour along the starlit streets of Barcelona, Seville, or Madrid.

The city Ordinances of Granada form a valuable and interesting link between the Spanish-Moorish craftsmanship and that of Spaniards Christian-born. The Ordenanzas de Cerrageros, or Locksmiths' Ordinances, though not voluminous, are curious and informative beyond the rest, and show us that a general rascality was prevalent in Granada after her reconquest from the Moor. Locksmiths were forbidden now to make a lock the impression of which was put into their hands in wax, even if the order should be sweetened by “a quantity of maravedis,” since the effect of such commissions, whose very secrecy betrayed illicit and improper ends in view, was stated to be “very greatly perilous and mischief-making.”

Another Ordinance reveals the Christian locksmiths of Granada as arrant scoundrels, almost as troublesome to deal with as the pestering little shoeblacks of to-day. “Word is brought us,” groaned the aldermen, “how many locksmiths, foreigners that dwell within this city as well as naturals that go up and down our thoroughfares, in taking locks and padlocks to repair, do, at the same time that they set the keys in order, contrive to fit them with new wards inferior to the older ones, so as to be able to open and close them with the keys they have themselves in store, wherein is grave deceitfulness, seeing that the aforesaid locks and padlocks may be opened in such wise without a key at all.”[64]

If we except the vast dimensions of the common keys of houses, this branch of Spanish craftsmanship has now no quality to point it from the rest of Europe, having become, in Riaño's words, “simply practical and useful.” Laborde observed in 1809 that “locks and various iron utensils are made in divers places. Locksmiths are numerous at Vega de Ribadeo in Galicia, at Helgoivar in Biscay, at Vergara in Guipuscoa, at Solsona and Cardona in Catalonia. Different kinds of iron goods are manufactured at Vergara, Solsona, and Cardona. The articles made of iron and steel at Solsona are in high estimation, notwithstanding they are destitute of taste and elegance, badly finished, and worse polished; and can by no means be put in competition with similar articles introduced from other countries.”[65]

Iron nails with ornamented heads and decorative door-knockers are other objects which reveal the influence of Mohammedan Spain. A number of artistic Spanish nails are in the South Kensington Museum. “Some doors,” says Riaño, “still exist at the Alhambra, Granada, covered with enormous heads of nails of a half-spherical form with embossed pattern. These same nails are constantly to be found on old Spanish houses, to which are added in the angles pieces of iron of a most artistic order” (Pl. [xix].a). In the same city, though not precisely in the Alhambra, I have seen upon the doors of private houses nails of a decorative kind which appear to consist of a single piece, but which are really formed of two—an ornamental boss perforated through its centre, and the nail proper, which fastens through it to the woodwork of the door behind. Thus, when the nail is hammered tight upon the boss, the effect is naturally that of a single piece of metal. Similar nails are on the door of Tavera's hospital at Toledo.