CORDOVA AND ITS MOSQUE.
S. P. SCOTT.
[The following selection we owe to Scott’s “Through Spain: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the Peninsula,” a work of unusual interest, and which reproduces in picturesque language most of the attractions of that favored peninsula. The Moorish inhabitants of Spain have left in that country numerous monuments of their graceful architecture, notably the Alhambra of Granada and the Mosque of Cordova. The latter, to the description of which this selection is mainly devoted, is one of the most magnificent examples of Saracenic architecture extant, and despite the efforts of ecclesiastics to ruin it, still remains a worthy object of pilgrimage for the lovers of art.]
Once more we turn our faces southward over the bleak and lifeless plains. Estremadura and La Mancha are soon left behind, as the flying train darts through the passes of the Sierra Morena, and descends into the beautiful province of Andalusia. It is almost like another world. The country is thickly settled, green fields take the place of the barren steppes, hedges of aloe and cactus enclose the extensive olive plantations, and, here and there, overtopping the orange groves, are seen the feathery branches of the palm. The costumes grow bright and odd, and the people become more swarthy in complexion.
The water-carrier, with her Arab alcarazza lightly poised upon her head, approaches the car window, and deals out the crystal fluid to the thirsty traveller at the moderate price of one-fifth of a cent a drink. A few miles farther, and, entering a long and irregular city, with tortuous streets reeking with villanous smells—each of which seems considerably worse than the one you have just escaped—and squares overrun with indefatigable beggars, all startling specimens of horrible and loathsome deformity, we are informed that this is at last the renowned capital of the Khalifs.
If Cordova at first sight is so unprepossessing, a better acquaintance is hardly calculated to produce a more favorable impression upon the stranger. It is a sleepy old town, substantially paved with stone blocks laid down by the Moors, whose notions of comfort and taste are further manifested in the shady courts, surrounded by latticed galleries resting upon graceful horseshoe arches,—peculiarities of the Arab style of architecture. The innumerable canals, aqueducts, and fountains that embellish the various squares reveal the predilection of its ancient citizens for an abundant supply of water, an advantage not recognized by the present inhabitants. The streets are so crooked, and pay such a disregard to the points of the compass, that three minutes after you have left the hotel you are helplessly lost, and wonder whether you will be able to find any one of whom to ask the way. You approach one of the houses that, barred like so many castles, line the streets, and knock. After some delay the gate opens, and discloses the leather-clad portero rubbing his eyes, and half asleep. You explain your misfortune; he laughs, and with a volubility that is perfectly amazing delivers himself of a string of directions intended to be explicit, but which soon involve you more deeply in the labyrinth than before. Then you commit yourself to the tender mercies of a boy who has providentially appeared, and who knows nothing of what you wish to see, but will gladly repel the attacks of the beggars, a service which no one who has had the benefit of it will be disposed to underrate.
The bigoted character of the people of Cordova is betrayed by the number of shrines, and the swarms of well-fed priests that congregate in the neighborhood of the Cathedral and the parish churches. In the Jewish quarter—where the Hebrews, persecuted by other nations, enjoyed complete liberty of worship, as well as the confidence of their Saracen rulers—stands the mosque. It is on the shore of the Guadalquivir, and opposite the Alcazar of the Khalifs, which is now a military prison, and destitute of even a suspicion of its ancient grandeur. It is impossible to realize that this spot, now steaming with noxious vapors, smeared with filth of every description, and haunted by ghastly representatives of vice and misery, was once the abode of science and art, the seat of the wealthiest court of mediæval Europe, the refuge of the oppressed of every creed in Christendom, and the home of the most polished society of the age.
The city contains but little to attest its former greatness, whose story reads like an exaggerated romance of the Orient. The mosque remains, indeed, sadly defaced by the hand of religious fanaticism; a few of the baths are intact, though long disused and abandoned; the wheels of the primitive stone mills are still turned by the rapid current of the Guadalquivir; and the venerable bridge erected by Augustus has survived the uninterrupted traffic and strange vicissitudes of nearly twenty centuries. There are a few handsome palaces, once curious on account of their minute and grotesque ornamentation, but now weather-beaten and decayed. The orphan asylum, built in the sixteenth century, offers the best example of the Gothic, but the churches are abominable, with the exception of San Nicolas, which possesses the only minaret left out of the seven hundred that once adorned the Saracen metropolis. The sight of the crumbling relics of an empire which once overshadowed all Europe with its power naturally recalls the circumstances under which that power was obtained, and suggests a brief notice of the wonderful civilization that, emanating from a people but a few removes from the Bedouins, communicated new life to the nations brought within the sphere of its authority, contributing so much of value to the common stock of human knowledge, and imparting an extraordinary impulse to scientific thought.
[This historical notice we omit, and proceed with a description of the celebrated mosque of Cordova.]