No description can convey an adequate idea of the splendors of this peerless city. Built upon the sloping sides of the Sierra Nevada, whose lofty peaks protected it from the winter blast and tempered the torrid air of summer, it stood three thousand feet above the level of the sea. Its walls, models of mediæval fortification, were nearly seven miles in circumference. Far above the roofs of the houses and the groves of palm, of elm, and of cypress, scattered through the parks and gardens, rose graceful minarets, observatories, cupolas, towers, to the enormous number of fourteen thousand. Of these, some were incased in many-colored mosaics; others were covered with lace-like arabesques gilt and painted; all were furnished with arched windows divided by columns of marble; some were roofed with porcelain tiles of brilliant colors, others with plates of gilded bronze.
The suburbs of the city, seventeen in all, were occupied by the royal villas and the mansions of the nobles, which not infrequently vied with the palaces of the Sultan in the magnificence of their appointments and the elegance of their surroundings. The quarter of the Albaycin, so called from the refugees of Baeza to whom Mohammed I. had afforded an asylum, had presented with homes, and had exempted from tribute, contained ten thousand houses. Its defences had been largely constructed by Don Gonzalo de Zuñiga, the Bishop of Jaen, from whom the erection of the stupendous wall had been exacted as a ransom. The mosque of the Albaycin was one of the most exquisite structures of the kind in the kingdom.
In the centre of the city was the Alcazaba, at once fortress and palace, its frowning bulwarks and crenellated towers in close juxtaposition to the orchards of tropical fruits, labyrinths of verdure, and sparkling fountains which formed the delight of its inmates and the admiration of foreigners,—an edifice long antedating the Alhambra and whose origin is lost in antiquity; for centuries the seat of government, the source of military, political, and religious influence; a building which, swept away by the violence of the conqueror, is now remembered only in barbarous chronicles and uncertain traditions. Here also was the castle of Habus,—that monarch to whom popular credulity, unable otherwise to account for his prodigious wealth, attributed the possession of the philosopher’s stone,—surmounted by the bronze effigy of a Moorish warrior on horseback, armed with a double-headed lance, which turned with every breeze, whose existence, ascribed to enchanters, was supposed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the city, and which the fears of the superstitious had invested with the virtues of a powerful talisman. In the very centre of the population, surrounded by the turmoil of a great commercial capital, stood the Djalma, or principal mosque. While vastly inferior in dimensions, splendor, and sanctity to the great temple of Cordova, it was long one of the holiest shrines of the Moslem world. Its arches were supported by columns of marble and jasper. Its floor was formed of blue and white enamelled tiles. From its shallow cupolas, glittering with golden stars, were suspended innumerable lamps. Its mihrab was encrusted with mosaics. In its court-yard the waters gushed from pipes of bronze and silver into a basin of alabaster.
Adjoining the mosque, in accordance with the custom which always placed institutions of learning and places of worship together, was the famous University of Granada. Founded by Yusuf I., under whose personal supervision its building was erected, its treasury had been enriched by the munificence of every succeeding sovereign. In its general appearance that building resembled those elsewhere raised for public uses by the piety or the ostentation of the emirs of Granada. As if in open defiance of the rule of the Koran, which sternly prohibited the representation of animal forms, the portals of an edifice largely devoted to the study of that volume were guarded by lions carved in stone. Its apartments, admirably adapted to the purposes for which they were designed, were almost destitute of ornamentation, in order that the attention of the scholar might not be diverted from his studies. Appropriate texts and legends from the works of celebrated writers were inscribed upon the walls in letters of gold. Here were taught the natural and the exact sciences,—law, theology, philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, and medicine. A great number of eminent men, renowned in every branch of literature and in every useful profession, are mentioned by Arab biographers as having received their education at the University of Granada. The halls were open even to the national enemy, and the Castilian obtained in a hostile capital those principles of knowledge which his native country was unable to afford.
It was the last institution of learning worthy of the name left in the Peninsula. It was the exponent of scientific method, of intellectual advancement, of liberal thought, of enlightened toleration; the final refuge of Moorish culture which, expelled by armed force from its ancient seat upon the Guadalquivir, had implored the protection of a race of kings who emulated with distinguished success the noble example of the khalifs, it represented the flickering ray of a civilization which, during an epoch most conspicuous in the history of national development, had illumined with noonday splendor the darkness of mediæval Europe.
Originally settled by members of the military division of Damascus who served in the army of Musa, Granada ever loved to boast a fanciful and traditional resemblance to the famous capital of Syria. But that capital, with all its magnificence, rising like an enchanted vision from the desert, could never compare in picturesqueness of situation, in productiveness of soil, in salubrity of climate, in architectural splendor, with the beautiful city of the Spanish emirs. Attracted by the purity of its atmosphere, the inhabitants of Africa sought, amidst its verdant groves and refreshing waters, relief from the ailments induced by the sultry and malarial vapors of the coast. The fame of their kinsmen frequently prompted the sultans of Fez to cross the sea, and become sometimes suppliants for favor, sometimes suitors for the hand of Moorish princesses, traversing with their swarthy retinues the streets upon carpets of flowers and under canopies of silk and gold.
The fate of the Hispano-Arab empire had always been closely associated with the policy of the states of Northern Africa. Thence had come the invading army which, like an irresistible tempest, swept away the Visigothic monarchy. Thence came the Almoravides, who seized the throne of the Ommeyade Khalifate, and the hordes of fanatics who had levelled the remaining monuments of civilization with the dust. The princes of Granada had been alternately the vassals and the allies of the sultans of Fez, Tunis, and Tlemcen, but never their masters. For generations African garrisons occupied the keys of the Peninsula,—Algeziras, Gibraltar, Tarifa.
The political sagacity of Mohammed I. had early recognized the necessity of maintaining amicable relations with his Mauritanian neighbors. From his reign the prayer for the Sultan was offered daily in every mosque. Magnificent embassies, bearing valuable gifts, frequently solicited his friendship. His intervention was sought in settlement of the pretensions of rival claimants to the throne. The fiercest warriors of the Atlas Mountains were enrolled in the guard of the emirs. The Gomeres, the Zegris, and the Abencerrages were permanently established in different quarters of the city which were long distinguished by their names; and the African influence represented by the bloody feuds of these jealous tribesmen exerted no inconsiderable effect upon the ultimate fate of the kingdom of Granada.
The general attractions of the populous and luxurious capital, manifold as they were, paled, however, before the splendors of the royal palaces. Of these, nine in number, the chief in extent and beauty was the Alhambra. Rising upon a jutting promontory of the Sierra, its highest point towered five hundred feet above the city. A double wall surrounded it; the outer line of circumvallation enclosing an oval half a mile in length by seven hundred and thirty feet in its greatest diameter. Here were domiciled all the numerous officials and retainers of an Oriental court and the ministers of religion, the viziers, the faquis, the muftis, the kadis, the guards, the relatives of the monarch, and the discarded sultanas. Oxide of iron in the plaster which covered the walls had imparted to them a coral hue, from whence the imposing pile derived its name of Medina-al-Hamra, The Red City. The battlements were painted white, and, projected against the brilliant green of the mountain-side, were visible for a distance of many leagues. The palace itself, isolated by a wall and a moat, was of vast dimensions and of quadrangular form. In the centre and at each corner was a court with encircling galleries, charming: pavilions, and innumerable fountains. At the right of the entrance, in accordance with Oriental custom, was the apartment where the Emir, or, in his absence, the kadi, daily dispensed justice. Beyond, opening upon the largest court in the palace, was the great hall of audience, devoted to grand ceremonials,—coronations, royal festivals, and the reception of foreign ambassadors. Its dome, inlaid with ivory and gold upon a surface of blue, green, and scarlet, was sixty feet in height. Its walls were covered with gilded stucco-work upon a ground of brilliant colors; its floor was of great slabs of white marble; in its centre was a fountain of beautiful design. Constructed by the pride and emulous ostentation of many sovereigns, the Alhambra presented an epitome of the progress and the perfection of Arab decorative art. To its magnificence the taste and invention of every Oriental nation had contributed, but the utmost efforts of their skill had been eclipsed by the genius of the native Moorish architects. The arcades of every court, the walls of every apartment, afforded unmistakable evidences of the foreign origin whence was derived the civilization that erected them. In the slender marble pillars could be discerned the tent-poles which sustained the fragile and temporary shelter of the nomad of the Desert. The mural decorations, which in the marvellous delicacy of their intricate patterns resembled silk and gold brocade, were copied from the shawls of Cashmere. In the blue domes, studded with shining stars, the Moslem recognized a representation of the firmament under whose boundless expanse his Syrian ancestors watched their flocks or followed with weary steps the midnight march of the plodding caravan. The grotto-like stalactitic arches and cupolas, modelled after a section of a pomegranate from which the seeds had been removed, were also symbolical of the cave which sheltered the Prophet during his flight from Mecca. In all the truly characteristic and distinctive features of this ornamentation the precepts of the Koran were generally, but not universally, observed. The tracery, fairly bewildering in its complexity, was composed of an infinite variety of combinations of simple, geometric forms. The segments of graceful curves were blended in a thousand fantastic designs with the rich foliage of tropical plants and flowers. The ceilings were made up of different sections of the cube,—triangles, prisms, rhomboids. The interior of an apartment in this gorgeous edifice suggested the influence of the supernatural rather than the ingenuity of man. Its doors, ten feet in height, were inlaid, painted, and gilt. The floor was of glazed tiles and marble; the ceiling of stalactites, resplendent with crimson and gold. The walls were hung with brocaded tapestry and decorated leather. Light was admitted through windows of stained glass on which appeared pious texts and the cipher of the sovereign. Silver censers of globular form diffused everywhere the smoke of rare perfumes. The divans were covered with rich silks striped with many colors. On one side the eye fell upon a court-yard paved with broad slabs of alabaster, in its centre a great fountain supported by twelve grotesque lions; on the other, it was charmed by a panorama of unequalled grandeur and beauty,—a view of hill and valley, of palace and hamlet, of villa and plantation, refreshed by a myriad of sparkling rivulets, fragrant with the intoxicating odors of countless gardens, framed in a gorgeous setting of empurpled mountains, verdant plain, and firmament of the clearest blue. Not without reason did the Emir of Granada liken his abode to Paradise!
In the decorations of this enchanted palace nothing exceeded in elegance the inscriptions, in which might be read its history and the sentiments and aspirations of its royal founders. Some were texts taken from the Koran. Others were selections from the poems of famous writers. On the capitals of columns appeared the cheerful greetings, “Prosperity,” “Happiness,” “Blessing.” The Cufic and the Neshki characters lent themselves with peculiar facility to this method of ornamentation. Artistic ingenuity had so disposed the letters that they could be read in either direction; and skilfully inserted in many legends of double significance were the names and the nationality of the craftsmen who had executed the work. Amidst the maze of tracery were emblazoned the arms of the kings of Granada, bestowed upon the first of the Alhamares by Ferdinand III.,—a shield of crimson crossed by a golden bar held in the mouths of dragons and inscribed with the motto, “There is no conqueror but God.”