Description of Granada—Its Wealth, Prosperity, and Civilization—Its Cities—Beauty and Splendor of the Capital—The Alhambra—Condition and Power of the Spanish Monarchy—Character of Ferdinand—Character of Isabella—Muley Hassan and His Family—Storming of Zahara—Alhama surprised by the Christians—Siege of that City and Repulse of the Moors—Sedition at Granada—Ferdinand routed at Loja—Foray of Muley Hassan—Expedition to the Ajarquia—Defeat and Massacre of the Castilians—Boabdil attacks Lucena and is captured—Destructive Foray of the Christians—Boabdil is released and returns to Granada—Renewal of Factional Hostility in the Moorish Capital—Moslem and Christian Predatory Inroads—Siege and Capture of Ronda—Embassy from Fez—Al-Zagal becomes King—Defeat of the Court of Cabra at Moclin—Division of the Kingdom of Granada—Its Disastrous Effects.
I undertake with diffidence the description of the last, the most romantic, the most melancholy epoch in the history of Mohammedan Spain. Its events have been recounted, its catastrophes enumerated, its gallant exploits and its deeds of infamy depicted by far more skilful hands than mine. The plan of this work, however, requires the exhibition of the last scene in that great and thrilling drama which, for a period of almost eight centuries, attracted the attention and inflamed the proselyting zeal of Christian Europe, and without which it would be manifestly incomplete. It is therefore from necessity that I enter upon this task, profoundly conscious of its difficulty, yet with the hope that the reader may not be unwilling to again peruse a story of surpassing interest and pathos,—this time viewed from the Moorish stand-point,—and with no design of attempting to improve that which is popularly regarded as historically perfect or of imitating that which is beyond all imitation.
In the year 1475 of the Christian era, that portion of the Spanish Peninsula bounded by the Christian provinces of Cordova and Murcia, by the Sierra Elvira and the sea, was the richest and most highly civilized region of corresponding area on the globe. Every advantage of soil, of climate, and of geographical position contributed to multiply its resources and increase its power. Its agricultural system, invented in Mesopotamia, extended in Syria, and perfected under the khalifs, had been developed by the industry and experience of many generations until the territory which it controlled appeared a marvel of diversified and luxuriant fertility. The earth yielded in inexhaustible profusion the choicest products of every portion of the world susceptible of cultivation and improvement. The date, the fig, and the pomegranate grew side by side with the cherry and the lemon, none of these fruits being indigenous, and all having been introduced into Europe by the curiosity and enterprise of the Arabs. The vineyards, whose grapes were seedless and for nine months retained unimpaired their exquisite and delicious flavor, covered the slopes of every hill and mountain-side. Such was the extent of the olive plantations, and so unusual the size of the trees, that they were compared by travellers to vast forests of oaks. An endless succession of harvests was produced by the crops of barley, wheat, and millet which grew upon the table-lands. Thousands of acres in every district were covered with mulberry-trees, planted as food for the silkworm, for the manufacture of silk was the most profitable industry of the people of Granada. From the flax and cotton grown near the coast fabrics of remarkable fineness and durability were produced, which found a ready market in all the ports of the Mediterranean. The rice and the sugar plantations, the almond-groves, the citron- and orange-orchards, the forests abounding in valuable woods, the pastures affording constant subsistence to immense droves of cattle and flocks of sheep, constituted no inconsiderable portion of the agricultural wealth of the kingdom. The intelligent cultivation of medicinal herbs furnished to the pharmacopœia many excellent remedies, still used by the modern practitioner. The propagation of the cochineal afforded a dye far surpassing in beauty and brilliancy the famous purple of the ancients. In the number and value of its minerals, this land, so favored by nature, was excelled by no other country at that time known to man. The sierras abounded in extensive beds of jasper, variegated marble, agates, onyx, chalcedony, lazulite, and alabaster. The mines, whose richness had early attracted the attention of the Phœnicians, yielded annually great quantities of gold, silver, iron, tin, mercury, and lead. Valuable gems, such as the ruby, the sapphire, and the hyacinth, contributed to the adornment and pleasure of woman and the exhibition of feminine taste and vanity. Along the coast of the Mediterranean the pearl-fisher, as in classic times, plied his dangerous but lucrative calling.
In the development and adaptation of these extraordinary natural advantages a laborious and intelligent people had profited by all the expedients suggested by human experience and ingenuity. A complete and intricate system of reservoirs and canals distributed the mountain streams, by myriads of tiny channels, through every orchard and plantation. Gigantic walls, which the credulity of the ignorant ascribed to supernatural agency controlled by talismans in the hands of royal magicians, formed terrace upon terrace rising along the sides of every acclivity, and the ground, thus painfully reclaimed by art, equalled in productiveness and value those more fortunate localities whose bounties had been lavished by the prodigal hand of Nature alone. Every country, from Hindustan to France, from Syria to Arabia the Happy, had paid tribute to the investigating spirit and botanical knowledge of the Spanish Moslem. Under a sun of almost torrid intensity, in a soil of inexhaustible richness, the rarest exotics grew with a luxuriance not surpassed in the lands from whence they derived their origin. The graceful palm, whose drooping branches had suggested to the architects of the Great Mosque of Cordova that interminable series of mysterious arches which at once awe and enchant the traveller, had been introduced by Abd-al-Rahman I. as a souvenir of Damascus, the city of his birth, From India had come the cubeb and the aloe; from Yemen the balm and the frankincense; from Persia the myrtle and the oleander. The pomegranate, from which Granada was supposed to have obtained its name, the cotton-plant, and the sugar-cane were imported from the coast of Africa. Europe itself furnished many contributions to the vegetable products of the kingdom, among them the pear, the apple, the peach, and the quince, which had long before been known to the Romans. In short, there was no plant of culinary value or medicinal virtues, no grain whose harvests promised an adequate return for the toil of the husbandman, no fruit whose flavor might tempt the palate of the epicure, which was not cultivated with success by the Moors in the closing days of the empire.
The geographical extent of that empire, at the beginning of the war which terminated with its conquest, was inconsiderable when compared with its commerce, its wealth, and its population. In area it scarcely equalled a modern European principality. At no time did its dimensions exceed seventy-five by two hundred and ten miles; fully one-fourth of its territory was rendered useless for agricultural purposes by the ranges of steep and barren mountains that intersected it, but which more than compensated for this loss by the value of their quarries and mineral deposits. The population exceeded three million souls. As has been previously mentioned, the new economic and social conditions resulting from the ever-contracting boundaries of the Moslem dominion, while they diminished its original territorial area, enormously increased the resources of the remaining provinces. From the conquered cities of Seville, Xerez, and Cadiz, alone, three hundred thousand families had emigrated to Granada. Every town and every hamlet subsequently occupied by the Castilians furnished its proportion of Moslem refugees, who, bearing their household goods and animated with undying hatred of the Christian faith, sought an asylum in the last stronghold of their race and their religion. The discerning wisdom of the emirs saw in the industry of these unhappy exiles a prolific source of future opulence and strength. The increase of military power arising from their numbers was prodigious. The property which the indulgent policy of the conqueror permitted them to retain was often of immense value. But greater than all was the accumulation of wealth represented by the capacity, the skill, the diligence, of these unwilling emigrants. There were few of them, indeed, unpractised in the science of husbandry or in the mechanical trades. Their intelligence and thrift were revealed by the flourishing condition of the country which they were compelled to abandon, much of it originally but little indebted to nature and largely reclaimed from barrenness, now covered with fragrant gardens and magnificent plantations, watered by crystal streams, adorned with sumptuous edifices, wherein were displayed all the resources of unbounded opulence, all the splendid embellishments of Oriental taste, all the wanton caprices of unbridled luxury,—a country destined soon to relapse into its pristine barbarism, a prey to sloth, to superstition, to ignorance; the home of mendicancy and imposture; the chosen field of the inquisitor and the monk.
With the welcome accession of material wealth and untiring energy came the no less valuable contributions of literary genius and intellectual culture. Civil war and Castilian aggression had not yet entirely destroyed the libraries of the great Moslem cities which had been formed in the glorious age of the Western Khalifate; and these inestimable legacies of ancient learning were, one by one, added to the stores of knowledge already existing in the city of Granada. From the lofty gallery of the minaret, not yet purified by Pagan lustration or resounding with the clangor of Christian bells, the Moorish astronomer, elevated far above the sleeping city, still observed the aspect of the heavens with their gorgeous constellations and their mysterious and interesting phenomena. The genius of poetry, whose influence was ever paramount with the romantic and imaginative Arab, found renewed inspiration amidst the beautiful surroundings of the capital of the Alhamares,—the scene of so many heroic achievements, the home of so many fascinating legends, transformed by the credulous into tales of enchantment, celebrated by the learned in poem, in disquisition, in chronicle.
In this charming region, where were concentrated the last remains of a civilization whose development had aroused the wonder and provoked the hatred of barbaric Europe, every merchant and every traveller found a cordial welcome. The Genoese had great factories in Malaga and Almeria. The enterprising Catalan, already noted for his shrewdness and in whom the spirit of proselytism and conquest was always subservient to the temptations of avarice, owned extensive mulberry plantations and was largely interested in the manufacture and exportation of silk. In Granada, the Hebrew, ever prosperous, was engaged in banking, in commerce, in the exercise of every mercantile occupation which suggested a substantial return to his proverbial and insatiable rapacity. Even the Castilian, oblivious of the hereditary prejudices of thirty generations of unceasing hostility, did not hesitate to accept the hospitality of the infidel, and to profit by the advantages afforded by the enlightened policy of the emirs of Granada. What a prospect was presented to the observing stranger who, for the first time, passed the frontiers of the Moorish dominions! He saw great cities whose streets, obstructed by an immense traffic, exhibited the costumes and displayed the commodities of every country accessible to commercial enterprise. At Malaga he beheld the ships of every nation possessing a maritime power; stupendous warehouses; admirably cultivated districts, where, for three days’ journey, he could traverse an uninterrupted succession of pomegranate and fig plantations. In Almeria were thousands of factories, furnishing employment to tens of thousands of artisans, where were produced fabrics of silk, of wool, of linen, and of cloth of gold,—some of gauze-like texture, others stiff with exquisite embroidery, all of unrivalled excellence; potteries where were formed those vessels of metallic lustre famous in the Middle Ages, the secret of whose composition was so jealously guarded that its tradition alone remains; hundreds of vast caravansaries swarming with the traders of the Orient and their caparisoned camels and other beasts of burden; bazaars filled with every ornament demanded by pampered wealth and every article of prime necessity, where even the utensils of the household were damascened and embellished with delicate arabesques; suburbs, where for forty miles the eye was charmed by an expanse of tropical verdure and innumerable orchards and gardens, dotted at frequent intervals with the palatial villas of the wealthy merchants of Almeria, whose reputation for prodigality and voluptuousness had spread to the remotest confines of the East. He saw a land enriched by a system of cultivation without parallel in the annals of horticultural industry; which, adopting the principles of antiquity and profiting by the experience of centuries, had surpassed in the value and importance of its practical results the efforts of all nations, ancient and modern; which had brought the science of irrigation to such a degree of perfection that the effects of its application could be computed with all the accuracy of a mathematical problem; which, as far as the eye could reach on every side, displayed the apparatus which had evoked these marvels of intelligent husbandry,—that art which forms the indispensable foundation and bond of society,-water-wheels a hundred feet in diameter; reservoirs on whose ample surface naval spectacles might be exhibited; dikes of prodigious height and of cyclopean masonry; canals not inferior in their length and volume to rivers; a maze of siphons, sluices, and rivulets which, by concerted signals, at regular intervals, discharged their rushing waters through field and garden and into bath and fountain; majestic aqueducts which in dimensions and massiveness might vie with even the gigantic and imperishable monuments of Roman antiquity. On the face of the cliffs, hewn in the solid rock, were spacious galleries and caves, wherein were deposited the surplus of the harvests, as a security against siege and a resource in time of famine.
In addition to the great seaports,—each a commercial metropolis and once the capital of an independent principality,—three hundred towns and villages, many of them of considerable size, acknowledged the authority of the kings of Granada. Of these, fifty were of sufficient importance to be provided with mosques, presided over by the expounders of the Koran. In accordance with the customs of the Orient, the inhabitants of each manufacturing district exercised a single occupation, the knowledge of which had been transmitted from father to son through many generations. Baza produced the finest silks, whose beauty and delicacy of texture surpassed the famous fabrics of the Chinese and the Byzantine looms,—those destined for the use of royalty being interwoven with the portrait and the cipher of the monarch in threads of many colors and of gold; in Albacete were forged weapons not inferior in temper and design to the scimetars and daggers of Toledo, and damascened with all the skill of the Syrian artificer; from the shops of Hisn-Xubiles came furniture of ebony and sandal-wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory, and filigree jewelry of exquisite patterns; Granada was renowned for its enamels, its mosaics curiously wrought and fused with the precious metals, its woollens, its silk brocades, and its coral-colored pottery whose polished surface was flecked with particles of gold. Other towns were distinguished for manufactures of equal utility and beauty; castings and implements of bronze; silken veils and mantles; leathern hangings embossed and gilt with all the elegance of a sumptuously covered volume,—a legacy of the Ommeyade capital, from whence the material derived its name of Cordovan; paper of great fineness and durability made from flax and cotton; and mats of palm and esparto, soft and flexible, and dyed with brilliant colors.
The culminating point of this marvellous development of architectural magnificence, commercial prosperity, and intellectual culture was the ancient Moorish capital. From its peculiar situation and the color of its buildings, it had early received the romantic and appropriate appellation of Hisn-al-Romman, The Castle of the Pomegranate. The plain, or Vega, which extended in a semicircle before it, for a distance of ten leagues, resembled a garden evoked by the genius of enchantment. The roads which traversed it were bordered with hedges of myrtle, mingled with orange- and lemon-trees, and overshadowed by the palm and the cypress. Everywhere the ear was greeted with the grateful sound of murmuring waters, whose channels were concealed by the dense vegetation that grew along the banks. Above the foliage of laurel and oleander appeared the red-tiled roofs of picturesque cottages, whose snowy walls were often entirely covered with the roses trained upon them. In the poetic imagery of the Arab they were likened to “so many Orient pearls set in a cup of emerald.” Towering above all other structures, and projected against the azure depths of an Andalusian sky, were the minarets of numerous mosques, inlaid with colored tiles, belted with gorgeous inscriptions, sparkling with gold. In the spacious court of each of these temples was a marble fountain, and rows of orange-trees and odoriferous shrubs, whose fragrance, wafted through lofty doors and stucco lattices, permeated the interior. A hundred and thirty mills, whose wheels were turned by the swift currents of the Genil and the Darro, were required to grind the produce of the abundant harvests and to supply the capital with bread. Within the walls of that capital, which, with their thousand towers, enclosed a vast and thickly settled area, were the homes of more than five hundred thousand people. Access was obtained by means of twenty gates. The principal ones of town and palace were those of the Tower of the Seven Stories, and of Justice. The former, of grand and imposing dimensions, was faced with the beautiful marble of Macael, exquisitely carved. The latter, still one of the most striking memorials of the Moorish domination, faced the holy shrine of Mecca.
In the mercantile portion of the city the streets were so crooked and narrow that a single armed horseman could barely traverse them, a condition attributable to climatic and defensive precautions; the interminable bazaars were composed of a multitude of little shops modelled after those of the great Moslem communities of the East; the public buildings—the mosques, the colleges, the hospitals, the insane asylums—were upon a scale of magnificence elsewhere unknown, and scarcely exceeded by those of the khalifate during the period of its greatest splendor. The baths, whose institution and adornment the luxurious Moslem regarded as a part of his religion, were embellished with precious mosaics and many-colored marbles, and surrounded by beautiful gardens filled with fragrant and delicious flowers. The Spanish Moslem never suffered himself to forget that water had ever been the most precious treasure of his Bedouin ancestors. Its offer was the first and an indispensable courtesy to a guest. Always in sight in private houses, it dripped from the sides of porous alcarrazas; or, in the palaces of the emirs, filled exquisite vases standing on either side of the portal in niches where the prodigal fancy of the Moorish architect had exhausted all the resources of his decorative skill. There was not a dwelling, even of the humblest character, in Granada unprovided with an abundant supply of the purest water. The streets, always clean, were sluiced at frequent intervals. Around the fountains, in every court-yard, grew aromatic plants. In the mansions of the wealthy, the refreshing jets that cooled the summer air in winter were replaced by the hypocaust, which diffused a genial warmth through apartments hung with silken tapestry and glittering with rich enamels.