[38] Cordova was a famous centre of this craft for many centuries. Ramírez de Arellano has found and published a notice relative to Lope de Liaño and García Alonso, two artificers of this city who signed, on January 7th, 1572, a contract with the prior of the monastery of the Holy Martyrs to build a ceiling for one of the chapels of the same. The document, which is quoted in extenso in the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones for November, 1900, abounds in technical expressions, many of them partly or entirely Moorish.

The same writer publishes the names (hitherto completely unrecorded) of thirteen other artist-carpenters who worked at Cordova in the latter half of the sixteenth century and early in the seventeenth. The craft, in fact, died hard, and ceilings of this kind, replete with Moorish detail, were made in certain parts of Southern Spain until the closing moments of the eighteenth century.

[39] That the Moors were proud of their mastery in woodwork is proved by an inscription in the Torre de la Cautiva at Granada, saying; “In the plaster and the tiles is work of extreme beauty, but the woodwork of the roof has vanquished them in elegance.”

[40] Morales was probably mistaken. “On entering Aragon one sees whole forests of ‘Spanish Cedar’ or alerce, some of the trees so thick that they measure four feet in diameter.”—Bowles' Natural History of Spain, p. 102.

[41] Antigüedades de las ciudades de España (a.d. 1575), p. 123.

[42] José Amador de los Ríos mentions, as a good example of the first of these types, a thirteenth-century door of the claustrilla in the monastery of Las Huelgas at Burgos. Other doors in the same monastery are illustrative of the second type; while all three types are represented by the doors, described herewith, which close the principal entrance to the misnamed Hall of Ambassadors in the Alcázar of Seville.

[43] Journal du Voyage en Espagne, p. 85.

[44] The following words record the date of the construction of this place and its doors, and may be read (Plate [xiii].) upon the scroll of tiles or alizares crowning the principal façade:—

☩ EL ︰ MUY ︰ ALTO ︰ ET ︰ MUY ︰ NOBLE ︰ ET ︰ MUY ︰ PODEROSO ︰ ET ︰ MUY ︰ CONQUERIDOR ︰ DON ︰ PEDRO ︰ POR ︰ LA ︰ GRACIA ︰ DE ︰ DIOS ︰ REY ︰ DE ︰ CASTIELLA ︰ ET ︰ DE ︰ LEON ︰ MANDÓ ︰ FACER ︰ ESTOS ︰ ALCÁZARES ︰ ET ︰ ESTOS ︰ PALACIOS ︰ ET ︰ ESTAS ︰ PORTADAS ︰ QUE ︰ FUÉ ︰ FECHO ︰ EN ︰ LA ︰ ERA ︰ DE ︰ MILL ︰ ET ︰ QUATROÇIENTOS ︰ Y ︰ DOS ︰

The observant Swinburne was not misled, like many travellers of to-day, into believing the Alcázar to be of purely Moorish origin. “Having read that the Moors built one part of this palace, I concluded I was admiring something as old as the Mahometan kings of Seville; but upon closer examination was not a little surprised to find lions, castles, and other armorial ensigns of Castille and Leon, interwoven with Arabesque foliages; and still more so, to see in large Gothic characters, an inscription informing me that these edifices were built in the fourteenth century, by the most mighty king of Castille and Leon, Don Pedro.”