Virgin Spain

by Waldo David Frank

The Spanish is the fusion of the warring elements of Spain into dramatic wholes. As the proportions of these elements change, the wholes change: and yet are Spanish. Granada, then, is the least Spanish of the towns of Spain; for, with all the elements there, they have remained disparate. Even physically, Granada does not resolve its discords. It is cast in confusion. Two steep spurs come down from the Sierra Nevada. They are divided by the gorge of the río Darro. Smaller, arid gorges break them, they expire in a plain. And within this broken sea of rock and ridge and wood, Granada sits uneasily. One height is Al-Hambra, palace of kings. From its towers the precipice cuts to the river; and in the west rises Al-Baicín, a populous suburb. North, beside the river straggles a gypsy village. And eastward, on another height, is the cascaded, terraced, tawdry splendor of the Generalife. Physically chaos; culturally, spiritually chaos.

For near five hundred years, Granada was the capital of a Moslem state. After the fall of Córdoba, it was independent. And in 1492, when Boabdil fled from Ferdinand and Isabel, there died the last political body of Spanish Islam. For close three hundred years, Granada was the richest and most populous state of Spain. Castile, Aragon, Catalonia were rustics beside it. But the barbarous states spread; and Granada had energy neither to spread nor to glow. The barbarous states had fused their differences in the terrific lust of religious conquest. Castile and León were closer then to the spirit of Mohammed than the Andalusian Town in which the muedzins called his name and the people spoke his tongue. Toledo, Valencia, Badajoz, Seville, Córdoba fell: Granada came to be the last resort in Spain of the driven Moslems. A veritable city state it was, going north to Baza, west to Málaga, east to Almería. Meantime, Spain had converged into an austere camp. Her forests became deserts, her towns were empty of men, her women suckled warriors, her churches were the centers of recruiting. And Granada shone with ease. In Granada, the wide lands were gardens; husbandry was an art. The cities sang with ceramic and jewels. The mosques were models for the mosques of Africa.

Córdoba had been the seat of Arab Spain. Granada was the heart of the Moor. When the Arabs were too wasted by peace and thought and quarrel to withstand the pressing Christians, they turned to the south whence four hundred years before they too had come, clad only in the harsh will of the Prophet. In the Moroccan mountains and the deserts, dwelt still virgin tribes in whom the Idea of Islam worked with the virulence of birth. This was the need of Spanish Islam. So the Moors came to Spain to do what the Arabs had done and could do no longer. The Moors drove back the Christians. Then they turned and subdued the Arabs. Arab Andalusia was Moorish.

(And here we must digress for definitions.... The greatness of Granada came with the Nazrite dynasty whose founder, Al-Ahmar, captured the town in 1238 from the Moorish Almohades. And Al-Ahmar, born in Córdoba, claimed descent from the pure Yemen Arabs of Kharzrej and Ansár. Which is important, since it displays the dangers of speaking, biometrically, of a race. The family that reigned in Moorish Granada was perhaps as Arab as the dynasties of Córdoba and Seville! And of course, the very first Arabs in Spain brought with them Berbers, negroes, Copts. Why then was Córdoba Arab, and Granada Moorish?... We require the names, and for them there are reasons. The first Moslem invasion was Arab: for its impulse, its energy, its leadership came straight from the Arabs. And that first Moslem culture which from Córdoba held all Spain north to Toledo, south, west, east to the seas was also Arab for the identical reason. Now come fresh leaders to defend Moslem Spain; and when they have driven back Castile they disperse the Arab masters who bade them in. These hosts come in two waves: the Almoravides—men of religion—are Berbers from the Senegal, and the Almohades—men of the Unity—are Berbers from the Atlas. It is right to call them Moors since they rose to power in Morocco. And it is right to call their dominance in Spain the Moorish epoch since, after their coming, the culture of all Moslem Spain not only differed from that of Córdoba but was deeply homogeneous within itself despite political chaos.) ...

In the towns of Spain lived still the Spaniard with his absorption of Semite, African, Latin, German. But the difference of the Moor from the Arab was a change in his Idea and in the ways of life begotten by it. The Christian forces were vastly stronger than they had been. Their own Idea had been enhanced by Moslem contact. They were come a long ways from the invertebrate Christianity of the Visigoths. The first Moslem sweep to Biscay and the Pyrenees had planted a germ of resistance which with the ages grew to be this vital Christian body, a body stripped and ruthless as ever had been Islam. So the Moor could not, like the Arab, dismount from his saddle to invite his soul. The Moor did not become tolerant under pleasant skies. He welcomed no Jewish thinkers and statesmen, he housed no Christian convents. Under the benignity of peace he made no introverted, rational culture. When the Moor rested, it meant that he was weary; and then he invited his body. Arab refinement became voluptuousness; Arab ease became prostration. The energy of the Idea of Islam had by the Arab been transformed into a contrasting culture. Under the Moor it became at best a reposing culture. And indeed, the Idea did not change. Christian armies saw to that. But the need of Islam—to expand—could not be fulfilled. The Christian armies saw to that, as well. Here then was a warlike energy that could not spread and yet could not transform. It turned against itself. Moor fought Moor. Granada alone held long to the appearance of a dignified state. And the appearance was false. Moorish Granada helped the Christian San Fernando to march against Moorish Seville, as a century before Moorish troops had helped the Cid win Moorish Valencia. A hundred years ere its fall, dynastic quarrels had split Granada into a chaos of tiny states; the Catholic Kings needed to take it piecemeal in a series of raids on petty princes.

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The Idea of Islam is no more within this lovely world. But high and low, strewn through the summits and the troughs of the Sierra, lives the wreckage of the Moorish body. Across a gorge, Al-Baicín and Al-Hambra face each other. Al-Hambra! all that may be said of the skill of the goldsmith may be said of this Palace, with its scores of patios and halls. It brings to mind, not other architectures but the triumphs of the Cellinis of the Renaissance, the delicate perfections in Pompeii and in Egyptian tombs. In minute and marvelous grace, it transcends them all: and yet it is a building!

Within the patio de los arrayanes there is a pool enclosed in myrtle as a sapphire within emerald. Overhead is the soft pale sky. Beyond the sala de la barca, arched like a ship, is the Ambassadors’ Hall, its dome an incessancy of carven woods, columns and walls so tooled that they seem lace threaded with gems. Myriad patios on either side are myriad surprises of wood, plaster, stone that flows with arabesques and softens to the creaminess of linens.

Some architectures make one think of man; some make one think of God; some, of the tragic struggle in men’s flesh between the man and the god. Al-Hambra exiles both the earth and heaven. That a palace lacks high poetry, movement of aspirance, is not amiss. But Al-Hambra lacks as well the sense of being made for men to dwell in. It is cold as a jewel and as a jewel hard. Yet unlike other jewels, it adorns no breast and no altar. It is faëry. Yet unlike other visions of surprise, it does not entice the mind. It is no outward form of the old dreams. Nor is it strong, save as some stellar gem, fallen in the mud of our world, has its impregnable strength. It is immaculate of men. It is too far from man, too far from God. It is not strong, yet it is not poetic. Poetry must pay its tribute. If it sing a blade of grass, a kingdom, a divinity—yet it must make its tribute to the world: man in giving music gives himself. Al-Hambra, for all its matchless grace, is incarnate of no warmth, no joy, no agony, no love.... It is a jeweled monster; a sort of dissociate birth of human will. Although its tints are magic, its curves delicate as a woman’s mouth, its forms courteous, and its stuffs transfigurations of the elements into the radiance of silk and the sweetness of wool, yet it is but a fragment. Its rapture parts not from itself. It is Narcissus. It is a Golem of the Moors.

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