The Alhambra

by Washington Irving

They vied with each other in filling their capitals with poets and learned men, and rewarded them with boundless prodigality. Such were the Moorish kings of Seville of the illustrious line of the Beni Abbad, “with whom,” says the same writer, “resided fruit and palm-trees and pomegranates; who became the centre of eloquence in prose and verse; every day of whose reign was a solemn festivity; whose history abounds in generous actions and heroic deeds, that will last through surrounding ages and live forever in the memory of man!”

No place, however, profited more in point of civilization and refinement by the downfall of the Western Caliphat than Granada. It succeeded to Cordova in splendor, while it surpassed it in romantic beauty of situation. The amenity of its climate, where the ardent heats of a southern summer were tempered by breezes from snow-clad mountains; the voluptuous repose of its valleys and the bosky luxuriance of its groves and gardens all awakened sensations of delight, and disposed the mind to love and poetry. Hence the great number of amatory poets that flourished in Granada. Hence those amorous canticles breathing of love and war, and wreathing chivalrous grace round the stern exercise of arms. Those ballads which still form the pride and delight of Spanish literature are but the echoes of amatory and chivalric lays, which once delighted the Moslem courts of Andalus; and in which a modern historian of Granada pretends to find the origin of the rima Castellana and the type of the “gay science” of the troubadours.[20]

Poetry was cultivated in Granada by both sexes. “Had Allah,” says Ash-Shakandi, “bestowed no other boon on Granada than that of making it the birthplace of so many poetesses, that alone would be sufficient for its glory.”

Among the most famous of these was Hafsah; renowned, says the old chronicler, for beauty, talents, nobility, and wealth. We have a mere relic of her poetry in some verses, addressed to her lover, Ahmed, recalling an evening passed together in the garden of Maumal.

“Allah has given us a happy night, such as he never vouchsafes to the wicked and the ignoble. We have beheld the cypresses of Maumal gently bowing their heads before the mountain breeze,—the sweet perfumed breeze that smelt of gillyflowers; the dove murmured her love among the trees; the sweet basil inclined its boughs to the limpid brook.”

The garden of Maumal was famous among the Moors for its rivulets, its fountains, its flowers, and above all, its cypresses. It had its name from a vizier of Abdallah, grandson of Aben Habuz, and Sultan of Granada. Under the administration of this vizier many of the noblest public works were executed. He constructed an aqueduct by which water was brought from the mountains of Alfacar to irrigate the hills and orchards north of the city. He planted a public walk with cypress-trees, and “made delicious gardens for the solace of the melancholy Moors.” “The name of Maumal,” says Alcántara, “ought to be preserved in Granada in letters of gold.” Perhaps it is as well preserved by being associated with the garden he planted; and by being mentioned in the verses of Hafsah. How often does a casual word from a poet confer immortality!

Perhaps the reader may be curious to learn something of the story of Hafsah and her lover, thus connected with one of the beautiful localities of Granada. The following are all the particulars I have been able to rescue out of the darkness and oblivion which have settled upon the brightest names and geniuses of Moslem Spain.

Ahmed and Hafsah flourished in the sixth century of the Hegira; the twelfth of the Christian Era. Ahmed was the son of the Alcayde of Alcala la Real. His father designed him for public and military life, and would have made him his lieutenant; but the youth was of a poetical temperament, and preferred a life of lettered ease in the delightful abodes of Granada. Here he surrounded himself by objects of taste in the arts, and by the works of the learned; he divided his time between study and social enjoyment. He was fond of the sports of the field, and kept horses, hawks, and hounds. He devoted himself to literature, became renowned for erudition, and his compositions in prose and verse were extolled for their beauty, and in the mouths of every one.

Of a tender, susceptible heart, and extremely sensible to female charms, he became the devoted lover of Hafsah. The passion was mutual, and for once the course of true love appeared to run smooth. The lovers were both young, equal in merit, fame, rank, and fortune, enamored of each other’s genius as well as person, and inhabiting a region formed to be a realm of love and poetry. A poetical intercourse was carried on between them that formed the delight of Granada. They were continually interchanging verses and epistles; “the poetry of which,” says the Arabian writer, Al Makkari, “was like the language of doves.”

In the height of their happiness a change took place in the government of Granada. It was the time when the Almohades, a Berber tribe of Mount Atlas, had acquired the control of Moslem Spain, and removed the seat of government from Cordova to Morocco. The Sultan Abdelmuman governed Spain through his Walis and Alcaydes; and his son, Sidi Abu Said, was made Wali of Granada. He governed in his father’s name with royal state and splendor, and with despotic sway. Being a stranger in the country, and a Moor by birth, he sought to strengthen himself by drawing round him popular persons of the Arab race; and to this effect made Ahmed, who was then in the zenith of his fame and popularity, his vizier. Ahmed would have declined the post, but the Wali was peremptory. Its duties were irksome to him, and he spurned at its restraint. On a hawking-party, with some of his gay companions, he gave way to his poetic vein, exulting in his breaking away from the thraldom of a despotic master like a hawk from the jesses of the falconer, to follow the soaring impulses of his soul.