Part 11

We left the story of Seville somewhat abruptly to deal in detail with the alcazar. Under Almohade rule, and while the alcazar and the mosque were in course of construction, the city knew peace, and its commerce flourished. But the days of its security were limited; the end of the Moslem domination in Seville was drawing to its close. The revived prosperity of the Mohammedans spurred the Christian Spaniards to renewed efforts to encompass the overthrow of the infidels. Pope Innocent III. declared a crusade, and numbers of adventurous French and English free-lances travelled to Spain in answer to the call. But in 1195 the Christians were defeated at Alarcos, near Badajoz, and again the ambitious projects of San Fernando were temporarily frustrated. In 1212 the Almohade army, it is said to the number of 600,000 men, was almost destroyed on the disastrous field of Las Navas, and the work of the expulsion of the Moors from Spain was begun. City after city was captured by the soldiers of Fernando III., Cordova fell in 1235, and the conqueror, with the help of the King of Granada, who had sworn allegiance to the Christian monarch, marched against Seville.

The army brought by the holy king to Seville was the most brilliant and numerous ever seen in Christian or Mohammedan Spain. No smaller force would have been sufficient for the taking of a city which contained 12,000 Mussulman families divided into twenty-four tribes, and which had been in the hands of the followers of Islam for more than five centuries. In the spring of the year 1235 the army was moved from Cordova and divided into two parts, one under the command of the Prince of Molina and the Master of Santiago, which was to march to the Ajarafe; and the other under the direction of the King of Granada and the Master of Calatrava, which was to harass the country near Jerez. The attack on Seville and its territories commenced immediately, and a series of uninterrupted victories prefaced the happy termination which was to crown the constant and generous efforts of the Christian warriors.

Seville, at this period the court and seat of the Islamite empire, was a city calculated to defy the strategy of the most skilful generals, the valour of the most devoted men at arms. In form it would resemble a shield, stretching from north-east to south-west. Its head and right side were formed by the walls with its towers, defended by a barbican and a moat, with eight gates and a narrow side entrance. These gates were veritable fortresses. They were defended by towers and bastions. Their exits were narrow, and never in front; the exterior passages to the city had angles and turnings, and very often the first turning opened into a square armed place, with narrow doorways at both sides. “The gates of Seville,” says Morgado, “were constructed of planks of iron, fastened on to strong hides with steel bolts. And because it was best defended on its west side by the river Guadalquivir, which protected more than half the city, with the six gates in that side, it was thought well to place the strongest walls and the best fortified towers, with as many barbicans, and the widest and deepest moats on the other side.”

The left side of the shield boasted the majestic curve of the river, the arsenal, and another series of walls and gates; but at this part, there were no moats nor false entrances, because it had the strong towers of the Ajarafe opposite to defend it. There were four gates on this side, not counting

that of Bib-Ragel, which occupied the north angle of the city; and, in addition to these, it is believed there was a small postern, afterwards called the “atarazanas,” through which it is supposed that Axataf, or “Sakkáf” his Moorish name, went out to receive King Ferdinand, and to deliver up the keys of Seville. The old wharf of Saracen Seville came as far as this; and in all the space, which to-day is called El Barrio de los Humeros, or the Chimney Quarter, the Mohammedans had their arsenal and shipbuilding yard, while the sailors and fishermen of the Guadalquivir were also housed in this district. The Gate of the Triana must have been in the vicinity; and the Gate of Hercules was directly opposite the Ajarafe, which was also called the Garden of Hercules. With the gardens and orchards of the Macarena, which adorned it to the north, the plains and woods of Tablada, which supplied it with corn and wood to the east and south, with an abundant supply of fresh water brought from Carmona by the aqueduct, with the river which was its principal commercial artery to the west, with the castles on the opposite side of the Guadalquivir, protecting the river and its bridge, and occupying all the heights from Azalfarache nearly as far as Italica, Seville was one of the best situated, best supplied, best defended, and most prosperous cities of the Mussulman empire in Andalusia. To attack her she must be cut off from the Ajarafe, and her bridge of boats must be taken. It would have been useless to descend to Italica and be exposed to the assaults of the city and of Triana, as long as the bridge existed, and this task was thought to be beyond the power and ingenuity of any enemy.

The bridge of boats, protected by a great wooden chain, linked by iron rings, kept the communication open between the city and the Ajarafe, that vast and fertile district from which the Sevillians received all sorts of supplies, and where the Saracen magnates had their country villas. This delightful Garden of Hercules, in whose praise many Arab writers have exhausted the treasure of their rich and exalted imagination, has been described in the following manner by an anonymous poet, in some verses dedicated to the Abbadite Sultan Almutamed: “Seville is a young widow, her husband is Abbad, her diadem the Aljarafe, her collar the winding river.” Indeed, says the poet Ibn Saffar, “the Aljarafe surpasses in beauty and fertility all the lands of the world, the oil of its olives goes even to far Alexandria, its farms and orchards are superior to those of other countries on account of their extension and convenience; and, always white and pure, they seem to be so many stars in a sky of olive gardens.” Travelled Arab historians recall with pleasure the delights of Andalus; preferring Seville to either Baghdad or Cairo, saying: “The Aljarafe is a luxuriant wilderness without wild beasts, and its Guadalquivir is a Nile without crocodiles.” One of the authors, quoted by El-Makkari, gives the following exact description of the Aljarafe: “It is an immense district, measuring forty miles long, and almost as many broad, formed of pleasing hills of reddish earth, on which there are woods of olive and fig-trees, which offer a delicious shade to the traveller in the hours of the mid-day heat. This district contains a numerous population, scattered in beautiful farms or collected in villages, none of which are wanting for markets, clean baths, fine buildings, and other conveniences, such as are usually only to be found in cities of the first order.”

This fertile territory, which the Saracens called the “Orchard of Hercules,” rose gradually to the west of Seville, after stretching along the right bank of the river.

Its heights were covered with farmhouses and hamlets, as the Arab writer indicates, which formed, as it were, a continuous population, rich in provisions, from which Seville usually received abundant supplies of all necessaries. There were four principal villages: Aznalfarche (to-day, San Juan de Alfarache), Aznalcazar, Aznalcollar, and Solucar de Albayda, strong walled places, where the Mohammedans collected the revenues of the district. The fringe, formed by the heights of the Aljarafe, was given the name of “Mountain of Mercies” (Jebl arrahmah) by the Mohammedans, on account of its extraordinary fertility, a surprising abundance of figs, known as “Al-kuiti” and “Ash-shari,” being produced there.

The Sevillians faced the Christian attack with boldness, bred of confidence, and a determination to strain every nerve, and exhaust every resource, in repelling the invaders. They were engaging upon their last throw for the sovereignty of Andalusia. Fernando’s warships encountered the Moorish fleet at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, and drove them from their position, and the infidels collected their forces to make a last stand on land. But their stubborn front was broken by the Christian host, and the war-worn remnant of the Moorish army prepared to withstand a siege. Even when the bridge of boats was destroyed, and all communications with the suburb of Triana and the surrounding country was cut off, the Moors still fought on within the city walls, and it was not until fifteen months had elapsed that Seville was starved into submission. On the 23rd February, 1235, Fernando entered the city, and Abdul Hassan, rejecting the king’s invitation to become a dependent officer of the Spanish Crown, retired with thousands of his vanquished Almohades to Africa.

Fernando’s first act was to have the mosque purified for the celebration of a high and imposing Mass; he took up his quarters in the alcazar; divided the Moorish possessions among his knights, and rested his army after their long and arduous campaign. Four years later he died of dropsy. He was succeeded by Alfonso X., who founded the University of Seville, devoted his leisure to the study of poetry, history, and ancient laws, and merited the title of “El Sabio,” “the Learned.” But although the beautiful alcazar appealed to the studious temperament of “El Sabio,” the fortress-palace is more closely associated with his son, Pedro I., Pedro, “the Cruel,” the most renowned of all the Christian sovereigns who ruled Andalusia from Seville.

Pedro’s character has been made the study of many biographers and historians, and he has not been without his literary whitewashers, but the “incidents” which illuminate his career do not place him in a favourable light. His Bohemianism endeared him to the people, and a certain sense of justice, in cases in which his own interests were not concerned, has gained for him the title of “The Justiciary.” It may be that the plottings of Albuquerque, his father’s chancellor, and the perfidious behaviour of his relatives, including his own mother, served to warp and embitter his nature; but he had no sooner, at the instigation of his mistress, Maria de Padilla, taken up the reigns of government, than he revealed the cruelty and malignity of his character. Leonora de Guzmar, the mother of Alfonso’s illegitimate son, Enrique, was done to death in his prisons; Abu Said, the King of Granada, was seized by treachery, robbed, and executed; Urraca Osorio, for refusing Pedro’s addresses, was burned to death in the market-square of Seville; his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, was mysteriously murdered; Don Fadrique, his half-brother, was assassinated with Pedro’s dagger; and he himself was eventually defeated

in battle by the troops of his brother Henry and Bertrand du Guesclin, and killed in single combat by Henry.

Pedro wearied of his first wife, Blanche of Bourbon, in forty-eight hours; and, having had his marriage annulled, he espoused the handsome Juaña de Castro, only to desert her a few days later to return to his beautiful mistress, Maria de Padilla. This woman appears to have been the only person who inspired Pedro with more than a transitory passion, and the courtiers testified to the power she wielded by chivalrously drinking the waters of her bath in El Jardin del Crucero. But Pedro’s passion for his mistress, though lasting, was not monopolising, and his amours supply us with an incident which reveals at once the king’s ferocity, his humour, and his alleged respect for justice. It was his custom at night to muffle himself in a cloak and adventure alone into the city in quest of entertainment. On one of these excursions he encountered a hidalgo serenading a lady, whose favours he himself coveted. Cloaked by the dim light, and made secure by the emptiness of the street, the king fought and slew his rival, in defiance of his own order, which made street fighting punishable upon the officers of the city when they failed to bring the disturbers of the peace to justice. He had not bargained for the noise to disturb the rest of an old lady in the vicinity; he had not observed a venerable head protruding through an upper window. Believing the incident to be “wrapped in mystery,” he summoned the alcade of the city to his presence, acquainted him with the fact that the body of a hidalgo, pierced to the heart, had been found in the street, and gave him the option of discovering the murderer within forty-eight hours, or of being hanged in his stead. And hanged he doubtless would have been but for the timely confidence of the old lady who had witnessed the fight. The alcade came again to the king with the news that the murderer had been found, and would be on view upon the gallows within the time specified by Pedro. Curious to see who had been secured to expiate his sin, or eager to fasten a new dereliction of duty upon the alcade, the king went to the place of execution and found, suspended from the gallows, an effigy of himself. “Good,” said the king, “justice has been done! I am satisfied.” There is a street in Seville which is called the Calle della Cabeza del Rey Don Pedro, to commemorate the duel; and the alley from which the old lady observed the issue is known as the Calle del Candilejo, “the street of the candlestick.”

The alcazar extends along the river as far as the Golden Tower, built during the reign of Yusuf Almotacid Ben Nasir, by the Almohadan governor Abulala. The view of Seville, from the Christina promenade, the famous thoroughfare, which extends from the palace of the Duke of Montpensier to the Golden Tower, is a spectacle of which the Sevillians never tire, and visitors are never weary of praising. The tower itself, which took its present name either from the fact that it held the gold which the Spanish ships brought from America, or because Don Pedro secreted his treasures there, is octagonal in shape, with three receding floors, crowned with battlements, and washed by the Guadalquivir. The shimmering Torre del Oro, reflecting its light upon the broad bosom of the rose-coloured river beneath the setting sun, has inspired poets and painters of every age and nationality. George Borrow believes it probable that it derived its name from the fact that the beams of the setting sun focussed upon it makes it appear to be built of pure gold; and then, carried away by the loveliness of the picture, he cries: “Cold, cold must the heart be which can remain insensible to the beauties of this magic

scene, to do justice to which the pencil of Claude himself were barely equal. Often have I shed tears of rapture whilst I beheld it, and listened to the thrush and the nightingale piping forth their melodious songs in the woods, and inhaled the breeze laden with the perfume of the thousand orange gardens of Seville.”

Of the great mosque of Seville, which was built by Abu Yakub Yusuf in 1171, and completed by the addition of the tower in 1196 by his son, only the barest traces now remain. It is impossible to determine who really designed the famous Tower, now called the Giralda; but historians favour the claims of the renowned architect, whose name is variously spelt Gever, Hever, or Djabir, and who is erroneously supposed to have been the inventor of algebra. In its original state this structure was an immense and stately pile, planned on the model of the mosque of Cordova, and decorated with lavish magnificence. In 1235 it was dedicated to the service of God and the Virgin, but it retained all its Moorish characteristics until 1401. The Moors would have destroyed the building and the beautiful Muezzin tower before it fell into the hands of San Fernando’s soldiers, and thus save their sacred temple from desecration by the “infidels,” but the king’s son, Alonso “el Sabio,” threatened to visit such spoliation upon the garrison by sacking the city. This threat had the desired effect, and for nearly two centuries the religious spirit of Seville found expression in a temple which had been built to the glory of Allah. But at the beginning of the fifteenth century the mosque was razed to the ground, and Seville cathedral began to take that huge and splendid form which, in the words of the pious originators, was to inspire succeeding generations with the idea that its designers were mad. It was to be the greatest cathedral in Spain, and it ended in being second only to that of Cordova, but still the third largest Christian church in the world. Its area of 125,000 square feet is 35,000 square feet less than Cordova cathedral, and 105,000 square feet less than St. Peter’s at Rome; but it is 15,000 square feet greater than that of Milan Cathedral, and greater by 41,000 square feet than St. Paul’s in London.

The Moors, in building their mosque, employed the remains of ruined Roman and Gothic structures, and the Spaniards in 1401 used the Arab foundations in the construction of their cathedral, while the Moorish tower was preserved to do duty as a spire. In its original form the Giralda was only 250 feet high, the additional 100 feet which forms the belfry being added by Fernando Ruiz in 1567. In 1506 the cathedral was completed. Five years later the dome collapsed, and was re-erected by Juan Gil de Hontanon. Extensive restoration work was carried out in 1882, under the superintendence of Cassova; but six years after this work was completed, the dome again gave way, and workmen have been constantly employed ever since in reconstructing this part of the vast building.

According to Contreras, the Giralda is the most expressive monument of the Mohammedan dominion; and, despite all that has been said of its Moorish structure and primitive African style, it is in his opinion a perfect work of Arab art. The construction is anterior by four centuries, at least, to that of any tower of Granadian architecture such as that which to-day belongs to the Church of St. John of the Kings, but there is not the slightest difference in the manner of their ornamentation, and the rhomboids of painted bricks, the festoons of terra cotta, the windows with double arches, following the segments of a circle, present all the variety of the alcazar of Granada.

“Here one sees plainly,” Contreras says, “the origin of the superposed arch of the belvedere of Lindaraja of the Alhambra, of the hanging arch of the three entrances of the Lions’ Court, of the festoons of the Court of the Fountain, and of all those forms, so delicate and so luxurious, that they are without equal in architecture. It is in the Giralda that one finds the beginning of truly decorative art. Built of varnished bricks, with a stout construction, as is demanded by the façade of a very high tower, it is to be regretted that such a beautiful edifice should be crowned by so strange a body as its gilded frontages and painted porcelains.”

With the exception of the Giralda, and part of the lower portions of the walls, the Moorish remains that are to be recognised in the cathedral are few and not remarkable. The Puerta del Perdon in the Calle de Alemanes was reconstructed by Alfonso XI., after the victory of Salado, and the plateresque ornamentations were added by Bartolome Lopez about 1522. But although the bronze-covered doors have been disfigured by paint, their Moorish character is still distinctly traceable. Through the gateway we enter the old Moorish courtyard, the Patio de los Naranjas (Court of Oranges), robbed of its former grandeur, but still distinguished by its beautiful Arabic fountain, with an octagonal basin, which occupies the centre of the court. From this spot we get a splendid view of the cathedral and the massive yet delicate Giralda tower, which has been declared to be even more to Seville than Giotto’s Campanile is to Florence, or that of St. Mark’s to Venice. “Long before the traveller reaches the city,” writes an imaginative admirer, “the Giralda seems to beckon him onwards to his promised land; during all his peregrinations through the intricate streets and lanes it is his trusted guide, always ready to serve him, soaring as it does far above all surroundings, it is a thing of unfailing beauty and interest as day by day he passes and repasses it, or wanders about its precincts; it tells him even afar off, how the day moves on, and how the night; and it dwells in his thoughts the fairest memory of his sojournings in the queen of the Southern cities.”

From the Court of Oranges to the Giralda the way leads through the Capilla de la Granada of the cathedral. A solitary horseshoe arch reminds us of the Moorish origin of the building; and the huge elephant’s tusk suspended from the roof, a bridle that tradition declares belonged to the Cid’s steed, and a stuffed crocodile, are Oriental rather than Christian relics. And the Giralda, in spite of its added belfry--its surmounting figure symbolic of the Christian faith--and the fact that it is under the special patronage of the two Santas Justa and Rufina, “who are much revered at Seville,” is still a Moorish monument. At its base the tower is a square of fifty feet, and it rises by a series of stages, or cuerpos, which are named after the architecture, decoration or use for which they are designed. At the Cuerpo de Campanas is hung a peal of bells, of which the largest, Santa Maria, eighteen tons in weight, and referred to in the vernacular as “the plump,” was set up in 1588 by the order of the Archbishop Don Gonzola de Mena, at a cost of ten thousand ducats. Above, we come to the cuerpo of the Azucenas, or white lilies, with which it is embellished; and, going still higher, we reach El Cuerpo del Reloj, the clock-tower, in which was erected, in 1400, the first tower-clock ever made in Spain. Portions of this old timepiece were employed by the Monk Jose Cordero in making, in 1765, the clock which is working to this day. The belfry, which is the home of a colony of pigeons and hawks, is girdled with a motto from the proverb, “Nomen Domini fortissima turris”--(“The name of the Lord is a strong tower.”) The