[18] Introduction à l'Histoire Naturelle de l'Espagne, traduite par Flavigny, (Paris, 1776,) p. 411.
[19] See a sensible essay by the Abbé Correa da Serra on the husbandry of the Spanish Arabs, contained in tom. i. of Archives Littéraires de l'Europe, (Paris, 1804.)—Masdeu, Historia Crítica, tom. xiii. pp. 115, 117, 127, 131.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. i. cap. 44.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. i. p. 338.
An absurd story has been transcribed from Cardonne, with little hesitation, by almost every succeeding writer upon this subject. According to him, (Hist. d'Afrique et d'Espagne, tom. i. p. 338,) "the banks of the Guadalquivir were lined with no less than twelve thousand villages and hamlets." The length of the river, not exceeding three hundred miles, would scarcely afford room for the same number of farm-houses. Conde's version of the Arabic passage represents twelve thousand hamlets, farms, and castles, to have "been scattered over the regions watered by the Gaudalquivir;" indicating by this indefinite statement nothing more than the extreme populousness of the province of Andalusia.
[20] Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 38, 202.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 88.
[21] Storia della Letteratura Italiana, (Roma, 1782-97,) tom. iii. p. 231.—Turner, History of the Anglo-Saxons, (London, 1820,) vol. iii. p. 137.—Andres, Dell' Origine, de' Progressi e dello Stato Attuale d'Ogni Letteratura, (Venezia, 1783,) part. 1, cap. 8, 9.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. p. 149.—Masdeu, Historia Critica, tom. xiii. pp. 165, 171.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, part. 2, cap. 93.—Among the accomplished women of this period, Valadata, the daughter of the caliph Mahomet, is celebrated as having frequently carried away the palm of eloquence in her discussions with the most learned academicians. Others again, with an intrepidity that might shame the degeneracy of a modern blue, plunged boldly into the studies of philosophy, history, and jurisprudence.
[22] Garibay, Compendio, lib. 39, cap. 3.
[23] Zurita, Anales, lib. 20, cap. 42.
[24] L. Marineo, Cosas Memorables, fol. 169.
[25] Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. ii. p. 147.—Casiri, Bibliotheca Escurialensis, tom. ii. pp. 248 et seq.—Pedraza, Antiguedad y Excelencias de Granada, (Madrid, 1608,) lib. 1.—Pedraza has collected the various etymologies of the term Granada, which some writers have traced to the fact of the city having been the spot where the pomegranate was first introduced from Africa; others to the large quantity of grain in which its vega abounded; others again to the resemblance which the city, divided into two hills thickly sprinkled with houses, bore to a half-opened pomegranate. (Lib. 2, cap. 17.) The arms of the city, which were in part composed of a pomegranate, would seem to favor the derivation of its name from that of the fruit.
[26] Pedraza, Antiguedad de Granada, fol. 101.—Denina, Delle Rivoluzioni d'Italia, (Venezia, 1816,) Capmany y Montpalau, Memorias Históricas sobre la Marina, Comercio, y Artes de Barcelona, (Madrid, 1779-92,) tom. iii. p. 218; tom. iv. pp. 67 et seq.—Conde, Dominacion de los Arabes, tom. iii. cap. 26.—The ambassador of the emperor Frederic III., on his passage to the court of Lisbon in the middle of the fifteenth century, contrasts the superior cultivation, as well as general civilization, of Granada at this period with that of the other countries of Europe through which he had travelled. Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen-Age, (Paris, 1818,) tom. ix. p. 405.