The same author proceeds to relate his experiences at bed-time. “Having supp'd and solaced ourselves with muddy beverage and Moresco music, we all composed ourselves to sleep: about twenty were allotted to lodge in this small chamber, whereof two were Christians, three Jews, and the rest Moors; every one made his bed of what he wore, which made our English constitutions to wish for the morning.”
V
ARMCHAIR
(17th Century. Museum of Salamanca)
Among the Mussulmans all this has undergone no change. Do we not find their present furniture to be identical with that of distant centuries?—a characteristic scarcity of portable articles of wood; the isolated box (arqueta or arcón) which serves the purpose of our clumsier chest of drawers or wardrobe;[15] carpets and decorated leathers; the tiny, indispensable table; the lack of knives and spoons; ornaments to regale the eye rather than commodities which the hand might seize upon and utilize? Such was, and is, and will continue to remain Mohammedan society throughout the world; and these descriptive passages of life in seventeenth-century Morocco might have been penned with equal truth in reference to the Spanish Muslim of a thousand years ago.
The furniture of the Moorish mosques was also of the scantiest. “They are,” to quote once more from Lancelot Addison's amusing little brochure, “without the too easy accommodations of seats, pews, or benches. The floor of the Giámma is handsomely matted, and so are the walls about two feet high. If the roof be large and weighty, it is supported with pillars, among which hang the lamps, which are kept burning all the night.” At one point of his expedition the reason for such paucity of furniture was vividly expounded to our tourist. A Moor indignantly exclaimed to him that it was “a shame to see women, dogs, and dirty shoes brought into a place sacred to God's worship, and that men …; should have chaires there to sit in with as much lascivious ease as at home.”[16]
Nevertheless, a pulpit in the mosque, and a seat of some kind in the palace or the private house, were not to be dispensed with. We learn from Ibn-Khaldoun and many other writers, that the throne of the Mussulman sultans was the mimbar, takcht, or cursi. Each of these objects was a wooden seat. The first of the sultans to use a throne was Moawia, son of Abu-Sofyan. The princes who came after him continued the same usage, but displayed a constantly increasing splendour in the decoration of the throne. This custom spread, in course of time, from east to west throughout almost the whole dominion of the Muslims. The Beni-Nasr princes of Granada are also known to have used a throne, but this is believed to have consisted simply of some cushions piled one upon another. This inference is drawn by Eguilaz Yanguas and other Arabists from the old Vocabulary of Fray Pedro de Alcalá, who renders a “throne” or “royal seat” by martaba, a word equivalent to “cushion.”
VI
CHAIR AND TABLE
(17th Century. Salamanca Cathedral)