CHAPTER XXV.
CORDOVA, SEVILLE, AND CADIZ.
Cordova is a gloomy and desolate city with about forty thousand inhabitants. It was once the capital of the kingdom of Cordova, and had two hundred thousand people within its walls; and some say a million, though the former number is doubtless nearer the truth. The grass grows in its streets now, and it looks like a deserted city, as it is. There is only one thing to see in Cordova, and that is the mosque. As soon as the party had been to breakfast, they hastened to visit it.
“We will first take a view of the outside,” said the doctor to his pupils when they had reached the mosque. “This square in front of it is the Court of Oranges; you observe a few palms and cypresses, as well as orange-trees. The fountain in the centre was built by the Moors nearly a thousand years ago.”
“But I don’t see any thing so very grand about the mosque, if that great barn-like building is the one,” said Murray. “It looks more like a barrack than a mosque. We have been in the mosque business some, and they can’t palm that thing off upon us as a real mosque. We have seen the genuine thing in Constantinople.”
“I grant that the outside is not very attractive,” added the doctor. “But in the days of the Moors, when the mosque was in its glory, the roof was covered with domes and cupolas. In spite of what you say, Murray, this was the finest, as it is one of the largest mosques in the world. It covers an area of six hundred and forty-two by four hundred and sixty-two feet. It was completed in the year 796; and the work was done in ten years. It was built to outdo all the other mosques of the world except that at Jerusalem. Now we will go in.”
The party entered the mosque, and were amazed, as everybody is who has not been prepared for the sight, by the wilderness of columns. There are about a thousand of them; and they formerly numbered twelve hundred. Each of them is composed of a single stone, and no two of them seem to be of the same order of architecture. They come from different parts of the globe; and therefore the marbles are of various kinds and colors, from pure white to blood red. These pillars form twenty-nine naves, or avenues, one way, and nineteen the other. The roof is only forty feet high, and the columns are only a fraction of this height. They have no pedestal, and support a sort of double arch, the upper one plain, and the lower a horseshoe; indeed, this last looks like a huge horseshoe stretching across below the loftier arch.
For an hour the party wandered about in the forest of pillars, pausing at the Mih-ràb, or sanctuary of the mosque, where was kept the copy of the Koran made by Othman, the founder of the dynasty of that name. It is still beautiful, but little of its former magnificence remains; for the pulpit it contained is said to have cost the equivalent of five millions of dollars.
“St. Ferdinand conquered Cordova in 1236; and then the mosque was turned into a Christian church without any great change,” said Dr. Winstock, as they approached the choir in the centre of the mosque. “The victors had the good sense and the good taste to leave the building pretty much as they found it. But three hundred years later the chapter of the church built this choir, which almost ruins the interior effect as we gaze upon it. The fine perspective is lost. Sixty columns were removed to make room for the choir. When Charles V. visited Cordova, and saw the mischief the chapter had wrought, he was very angry, and severely reproached the authors of it.”