The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

Antonio Aguilo ’y Fuster, Conseije del Palacio Arabe, Alhambra, gave me his card, as we entered a small door in the side of a plain wall, and were informed that we were now in the palace of the Moors, the veritable Alhambra itself! The important personage whose card was in my hand was the guardian of this mysterious realm, and would, for the usual consideration of a dollar to him paid, introduce us to the several apartments. The contract was concluded, and the porter led the way.

He brought us first into the Court of Myrtles. It is a vast open oblong, 170 feet by 74, with a lake in the centre, surrounded by a marble pavement and myrtle-trees, from which it takes its name. In this lake the wives of the Moorish monarch bathed, of course secluded from all eyes but his own, and the eunuchs, whose “sentry boxes” still remain. Light and beautiful columns, with graceful arches springing from the capitals, support a gallery on all sides. Out of this court open many rooms, whose floors and walls and ceilings, with their inscriptions, their delicate tracery work, not worth the name of sculpture, but beautiful as perishable, are the types of the race that revelled here in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Right here Mohammed III. had his head cut off, and his body was pitched into the water where the usurper king Nasr often enjoyed the luxury of a bath with his wives.

The governor, or more properly the janitor, made brief comments on the architecture and uses of the various apartments, and then led us to the Court of Lions. Above all other portions of the Alhambra this gives the most correct idea of the palace as it was in its ancient and early glory. A process of restoration has been going on for some years, under the direction of government, and Sr. Contreras having the work in charge, has succeeded so happily that Yusef himself, who was the first monarch to indulge in these Oriental shawl-pattern tracery and tawdry designs, would have been delighted to have the modern architect to help him from the beginning. And the Emperor of Russia has heard such reports of the wonderful restorative powers of this skilful manipulator of plaster, that he has ordered an Alhambra for himself, a copy of this series of ruined palaces, which he will keep for a curiosity on the banks of the Neva. In the midst of the court is a fountain supported by twelve marble lions, in the centre of a vast alabaster basin. Standing on the four sides of it are 124 white marble pillars, sustaining a light gallery and a pavilion projecting into the court, elaborately adorned with filagree-worked walls, and a domed roof that admits the tempered light and excludes the heat of the sun. This fountain too has been filled with blood, for here in the midst of all this luxury of splendid decorations the children of Abu Hazen were beheaded by the order of their own father. One only was spared, and he lived to regret it; for he lived to be the famous and unhappy Boabdil, the last of the Moorish kings of Granada. The next hall into which we will enter is that of the Abencerrages, an illustrious family, who fell under suspicion of disloyalty to the throne. The wily monarch invited all the leaders of this line to a feast, and when they had been sumptuously entertained, they were invited, one by one, to the Court of Lions, which we have just left, and each man’s head was cut off as he entered. The dark spots on the marble floor are, of course, kept sacredly dark from year to year, in memory of the treacherous punishment of imaginary treason.

The most magnificent of all the halls is that of the Ambassadors. It is the largest of the apartments, and is seventy-five feet high. It was the grand reception-room, where the throne of the Sultan was placed, and around the sides of the room are niches where each one of the ambassadors of foreign courts was seated in state, on great occasions. The ceiling is curiously wrought in different colors,—blue, white, and gold, inlaid wood in crowns and stars and wheels. All around are inscriptions celebrating the praises of the kings, and couched in the panegyric imagery of the Oriental style.

It would be tedious to read, if I had patience to describe, the many courts and halls and baths, saloons and chambers, the galleries leading to them, the little gardens where the sun looks kindly down upon a few plants and flowers, and to tell you of the thousand-and-one tales with which so many of these towers and chambers have been made historic. Murder has followed close on the heels of jealousy, in all ages, and under a system that makes intrigue and lust the great amusement of life, the history of the harem has always been a story of suspicion and blood.

Portion of a Door.

Bensaken is the guide to the Alhambra. Others are willing to lead you through the labyrinth, and will talk to you as they go, in a mixture of Spanish, Italian, French, and English, with a dash of Arabic, which they have picked up from the translations of inscriptions on the walls; but they are all ignorant fellows, who live by the ignorance of those to whom they tell their stories. Now Bensaken is an Englishman, born in Gibraltar, and has lived to be seventy years old in Spain; has been through all these years adding to his knowledge of the country, its history and its condition, especially all that relates to the Moors, Granada, and the Alhambra, until he has grown into a walking cyclopedia of Spanish lore. And this learning of his he guards so cautiously that when other guides and interpreters, with travellers so unhappy as to have fallen into their hands, would come near to us while our learned Bensaken was discoursing to us of the wonderful mysteries of the Alhambra, its legends and its uses, he would suddenly pause in his interesting narrations, and begging pardon for his silence, would wait until they had passed beyond hearing; for, said our veracious and most agreeable Bensaken, “I cannot afford to let them fellows know what I have been learning all these years of my life, I have forgot enough to set all of them up in business.”

“Did you know our countryman, Washington Irving, when he was here?” I inquired.

“Oh yes, and a nice, worthy gentleman he was: so kind, so pleasant always; but he did not keep very closely to the facts: to tell you the truth, those are very beautiful stories of Mr. Irving, but the most of them are all in your eye, sir.”