Part 5
It was about this time, towards the middle of the thirteenth century, and just after his return from the siege of Seville (1248), that Mohammed commenced the splendid Palace of the Alhambra, superintending the building of it in person, mingling frequently amongst the artists and workmen, and directing their labour. He stored the gardens with the rarest plants, and with the most beautiful aromatic shrubs and flowers. Amid these scenes he delighted in reading histories, or in causing them to be related to him; and sometimes, in intervals of leisure, employed himself in the instruction of his three sons, for whom he had provided the most learned and virtuous masters. Mohammed ever remained loyal to Ferdinand, giving him repeated proofs of fidelity and attachment. When that renowned monarch died at Seville in 1254, Mohammed sent ambassadors to condole with his successor, Alonzo X., and with them a gallant train of Moorish cavaliers of distinguished rank to attend the obsequies. This grand testimony of respect was repeated by the Moslem monarch during the remainder of his life on each anniversary of the death of King Fernando el Santo, when a hundred Moorish knights repaired to Seville, and took their stations with lighted tapers in the Cathedral, around the tomb of the illustrious deceased.
Mohammed retained his vigour to an advanced age. In his seventy-ninth year he took the field on horseback, accompanied by the flower of his chivalry, to resist an invasion. As the army sallied forth from Granada, one of the _adalides_, or guides, who rode in the advance, accidentally shivered his lance against the arch of the gate. The counsellors of the king, alarmed by the circumstance, which was considered an evil omen, entreated him to return. The king persisted, and at noontide the omen, say the Moorish chroniclers, was fatally fulfilled. Mohammed was suddenly seen to fall from his horse. He was placed on a litter and borne towards Granada, but his illness increased to such a degree that they were obliged to pitch his tent on the _Vega_. His physicians were filled with consternation, and in a few hours he died; the Castilian prince, Don Philip, brother of Alonzo X., being by his side when he expired. His body was embalmed, enclosed in a silver coffin, and buried in the Alhambra, in a sepulchre of precious marble, amidst the unfeigned lamentations of his subjects, who bewailed him as a parent.
Such was the enlightened prince who founded the Alhambra, whose name remains emblazoned amongst its most delicate and graceful ornaments, and whose memory is calculated to inspire the loftiest associations in those who tread these fading scenes of his magnificence and glory.
Abu-el-Hejaj (Yúsuf I.), King of Granada, 1333-1354, who completed the Alhambra.
In the royal Mosque, where the escutcheons of the Moorish kings hang side by side with those of the Castilian sovereigns--for the Mosque was, after the subjugation, consecrated as a Catholic chapel--perished the illustrious Yúsuf Abu-el-Hejaj, the high-minded prince who completed the Alhambra, and who, for his virtues and endowments, deserves almost equal renown with its magnanimous founder. Washington Irving was, perhaps, the first to draw forth, from the obscurity in which it had too long remained, the name of another of those princes of a departed and almost forgotten race, who reigned in elegance and splendour in Andalusia, when all Europe was in comparative barbarism.
To Yúsuf I. the Alhambra owes much of its splendour; he not only constructed the _Gate of Justice_ and the _Wine Gate_, leading into the Palace, as appears from the inscriptions over their respective archways; but he must also have built, or decorated, many of the interior apartments, for his name appears frequently in _The Hall of the Two Sisters_, in that of the _Baños_, in the _Court of the Fish-pond_, and in the _Hall of the Ambassadors_.
Yúsuf ascended the throne of Granada in 1333. He is said to have been of noble presence, possessing great bodily strength united to manly beauty. He had the courage common to all generous spirits, but his genius inclined more to peace than to war; and, though repeatedly obliged to take up arms, he was generally unfortunate. Amongst other ill-starred enterprises, he undertook a campaign in conjunction with the King of Morocco, against Castile and Portugal, but was defeated in the memorable battle of Salado; a reverse which nearly proved a death-blow to the Moslem power in Spain.
A long truce, after this defeat, enabled Yúsuf to devote himself to the instruction and improvement of his people. He established schools in the villages, with uniform systems of education; he obliged every hamlet of more than twelve houses to have a Mosque, and reformed abuses which had crept into the religious ceremonies and festivals of the people. The Alhambra was now completed. Yúsuf constructed the beautiful Gate of Justice, forming the grand entrance, which he finished in 1348. He likewise adorned many of the Courts and Halls of the Palace, as may be seen by the inscriptions in which his name repeatedly occurs. He built also the Alcázar, or Citadel of Malaga, of which, alas! only crumbling traces remain.
The genius of the sovereign stamps a character upon his time. The nobles of Granada, emulating the graceful taste of their monarch, filled the city with magnificent palaces, the halls of which were adorned with mosaics, the ceilings wrought in fretwork, and delicately gilded and painted, or inlaid with precious woods; they had lofty towers of wood or stone, carved and ornamented, and covered with plates of metal that glittered in the sun. So refined was the taste in decoration prevailing amongst this elegant people that, to use the simile of an Arabian writer, “Granada, in the days of Yúsuf, was as a silver vase filled with emeralds and jacynths.”
One anecdote will be sufficient to show the magnanimity of this generous prince. The long truce which succeeded the battle of Salado was at an end, and every effort of Yúsuf to renew it was in vain. His deadly foe, Alonzo XI. of Castile,
took the field with great force, and laid siege to Gibraltar. Yúsuf reluctantly took up arms, and sent troops to the relief of the place; when, in the midst of his anxiety, he received tidings that his dreaded foe had fallen a victim to the plague. Instead of manifesting exultation, Yúsuf called to mind the great qualities of the deceased monarch, and was touched with sorrow--“Alas!” cried he, “the world has lost one of its most excellent princes; a sovereign who knew how to honour merit, whether in friend or foe!” The Spanish chroniclers, themselves, bear witness to this magnanimity: according to their accounts, the Moorish cavaliers shared the sentiment of their king and put on mourning for the death of Alonzo. Even those Moors of Gibraltar, which had been so closely invested, when they learned that the hostile monarch lay dead in his camp, determined that no aggressive movement should be made against the Christians during the observance of his obsequies.
Upon the day on which the camp was broken up, and the army departed bearing the corpse of Alonzo, the Moors issued in multitudes from Gibraltar, and stood mute and melancholy, watching the mournful pageant. The same reverence for the deceased was observed on the frontiers by all the Moorish commanders, who suffered the funeral cortège to pass in safety with the body of the Christian sovereign, from Gibraltar to Seville.
Yúsuf did not long survive the enemy he had so generously deplored. In the year 1354, as he was one day at prayer in the royal Mosque of the Alhambra, a maniac suddenly rushed upon him and plunged a dagger in his side. The cries of the king brought his guards to his assistance: they found him in convulsions, weltering in his blood. He was borne to the royal apartments, and expired almost immediately. The assassin
was cut to pieces, and his limbs burnt in public, to gratify the fury of the populace.
The assassination of Yúsuf is described by an eye-witness in a letter addressed to Fárris, Sultán of Western Africa, which is printed by Pascual de Gayangos from the chronicle of Al-Makkarí--an elegant Moorish writer who flourished towards the end of the sixteenth century:--“As Abu-el-hejaj (Yúsuf) was performing the last prostration of his prayer, a madman rushed upon him and wounded him with a _khanjar_, or yataghán. The assassin was immediately secured. The Sultán, who had been mortally wounded, made some signs as if he wished to speak;
but, after uttering some unintelligible words, he was carried senseless to his apartments, where he shortly died. The assassin, meantime, was given up to the infuriated mob, who slew him and burned his body. The Sultán was interred within the Alhambra. He left three sons: Mohammed, who succeeded him; Isma’íl, and Kays.”
The body of Yúsuf was interred in a superb sepulchre of white marble; a long epitaph, in letters of gold upon an azure ground, recorded his virtues: “Here lies a king and martyr, of an illustrious line, gentle, learned and virtuous; renowned for the graces of his person and his manners, whose clemency, piety and benevolence were extolled throughout the kingdom of Granada. He was a great prince; an illustrious captain; a sharp sword of the Moslems; a valiant standard-bearer amongst the most potent monarchs.”
The Mosque, which once resounded with the dying cries of Yúsuf, still remains, but the monument which recorded his virtues has long since disappeared. His name, however, yet abides among the ornaments of the Alhambra, and will be perpetuated in connection with this renowned pile, which it was his pride and delight to adorn.
The Towers, Courts, and Halls of the Alhambra.
“As an Englishman approaches the Alhambra,” says Ford, “he rubs his eyes, for he finds himself in a park of real English elms. Delicious green roofs they form, but no more in keeping with the old Moorish Palace than Bolton Abbey would be with the Pyramids. But why English? Why; because this wood was the present of the Iron Duke, who had the estate of Soto de Roma, with its four thousand once pheasant-haunted acres given him reluctantly by the grateful Ferdinand VII., and who sent out these elms from England.”
The first feeling which strikes a visitor on entering the Alhambra is one of amazement to find himself suddenly transported to fairly-land. Arches bearing upon pillars so slender that the wonder is they are able to sustain the superincumbent weight--the style differing from all regular orders of architecture--ceilings and walls incrusted with fretwork so minute and intricate that the most patient draughtsman finds it difficult to follow. Yet, although the patterns present so great variety, the compotent parts are, in their origin, the same; and it is by changing the colours and juxtaposition of the several pieces that the astonishing diversity is produced. This exquisite Moorish work appears to have been accomplished by means of moulds applied successively, the continuity of the design being preserved with greatest care. Amidst or around the complex forms are constantly disposed Arabic sentences of moral and religious tendency, the most oft-repeated homily being, “Wa la ghálib ila Alá,” that is, “There is no conqueror but God:” the sentence being sometimes enclosed within Cufic characters written twice, and forming the words signifying “Grace,” and “Blessing,” the letters so curiously interwoven that the text may be read from left to right, and from right to left.
PUERTA DE JUSTICIA--THE GATE OF JUSTICE.
The Gate of Justice has ever been the principal entrance into the fortress. Like all the other towers of the Alhambra, it is built of concrete, the jambs of the doorway being of white marble, and the elegant horseshoe arch and spandrils of brick.
The Gate of Justice was erected in 1338 by the Sultán Yúsuf, and was so called because (in accordance with ancient practice all over the East) the Kings of Granada occasionally sat under it to administer justice to every class of their subjects. The hand and key, which are seen in relievo upon the stone, have given rise to a variety of conjectures, more or less plausible.
The quaint open hand, carved over the outer arch, has a talismanic and Arabian Nights effect. Some authorities say it typifies the hand of God, the symbol of power and providence; others suppose it to be a type of the five commandments of Islam--to fast; to give alms; to smite the infidel; to make the pilgrimage to Mecca; and to perform purifications. But it is, in all likelihood, the old Roman talisman against the Evil Eye, such as we see in coral on Neapolitan lockets. The Evil Eye is especially dreaded by Orientals, and the Spaniards tremble at its influence even now.[8]
Over the inner arch is a sculptured key: there was an old legend believed in through the centuries anterior to the Expulsion, that the Christians would never take the “red castle” until the outer hand had grasped the inner key. It was also agreed that the key was an emblem of the Prophet’s power to open the gates of hell or heaven. The truth is, that the key was an old Cufic emblem, intimating Allah’s power to open the hearts of true believers. It was also a badge on the Almohades’ banners, and is seen in many Moorish castles.
Washington Irving says of these strange symbols: “According to tradition, the hand and key were magical devices on which the fate of the Alhambra depended. The Moorish king who built it was a great magician, or, as some believed, had sold himself to the devil, and had laid the whole fortress under an evil spell. By this means it had remained standing for several hundred years, in defiance of storms and earthquakes, whilst almost all other buildings of the Moors had fallen to ruin and disappeared. This spell, the tradition went on to say, would last until the hand on the outer arch should reach down and grasp the key, when the whole pile would tumble to pieces, and all the treasures buried beneath it by the Moors would be revealed.”
SALA DEL TRIBUNAL--HALL OF JUSTICE.
The Hall of Justice has three court-rooms, or apses, now blazoned with the royal Spanish badges of the yoke and the bundle of arrows, familiar to us as the badge of Katharine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the first queen of our much-married monarch, Henry VIII.
Of the many beautiful arches which adorn the Palace, the one forming the entrance to the central alcove, or divan, of the Hall of Justice is perhaps the most remarkable; the exquisite form of the arch and richly-ornamented spandril with the poetic inscription which encloses it--“May power everlasting and imperishable glory be the destiny of the owner of this Palace”--and the slender porcelaine columns from which it springs, exciting the deepest admiration.
In this Hall are the famous paintings on leather, ascribed to the end of the fourteenth century. The painting of a group of Moslems, apparently congregated in Council, merits close attention, as giving the veritable costume of the Moors in Granada of the fourteenth century, at which period the delineations were certainly made, and, in all probability, by an Italian artist working under Moslem direction. Other paintings portray various chivalrous or amatory subjects; or they may be taken to represent romantic episodes as legendary as the story of the Chinese lovers on a willow-pattern plate. One scene (see p. 47) represents a wicked magician, or wild man of the woods,
coercing a Christian maiden, who, nevertheless, is holding a docile lion by a leading chain; the compliant animal meanwhile permitting domestic fowl and other pretty wantons to play undismayed around him. A Christian warrior on horseback makes short work of the wild man; but, alas! for the maiden, a valiant Moor comes galloping up, at once transfixes the Christian rescuer with his spear, and presumably claims the beautiful captive as the reward of his prowess. This episode of a Moor killing a Christian may be taken as a strong presumption of the paintings being wrought under Mohammedan influence, as it appears most unlikely that it would have been so represented by a Spaniard after the conquest of Granada. Some spectators in the upper chamber of a tower in the background seem to heartily approve of the whole proceeding.
However fantastic these pictures may be, they are at least unique, and, as such, must be regarded with the utmost interest. We may conjecture that the painter fell into the hands of the Moors by the fortune of war; or, on the other hand, came by invitation to Granada.
Much difference of opinion exists amongst writers who have described the Alhambra with respect to these three curious paintings on leather which are found in the domes of the alcoves of the Hall of Justice. It is said by many that they are not the work of Moorish artists, but were executed posterior to the Conquest of Granada by Spanish painters. This opinion is founded chiefly on the injunctions contained in the Korán, forbidding the representation of animated beings; but that this law was disregarded by the builders of the Alhambra is fully proved by the fountain of the Court of Lions, and the bas-relief which forms part of a fountain now in the Museum of the Palace.
There is evidently much more analogy between these paintings and the bas-relief than between them and the works of the Spaniards after the Expulsion; witness the bas-reliefs from the royal chapel of Granada, built by Ferdinand and Isabella, which represent their entrance into the Alhambra, and evidently belong to a later period of Art.
The ornaments, moreover, which are introduced into these paintings are strictly of a Moorish character.
The subject on the centre alcove is considered by the Spaniards to represent a Tribunal, whence they have called this Hall. From the different colours of the beards and dresses of the figures, they would appear to represent the chiefs of the
tribes of Granada. One head traced from this picture is given on page 48.
These paintings are of bright colours, but in flat tints, without shadow, and were first drawn in outline of a brown colour. They are painted on skins of animals sewn together, and nailed to the wooden dome; a fine coating of gypsum forming the surface to receive the painting. The ornaments on the gold ground are in relief.
PAINTING ON THE CEILING OF THE LEFT ALCOVE.
To determine whether the subject of this picture be legendary or historical is difficult. Christians appear to be engaged in hunting the lion and the bear, while the Moslems confine their attentions to the wild boar. The spoils of the chase are presented at the feet of both Christian and Moslem ladies--the humility with which the Christian knight, who is upon his knees, offers his share of the spoil to his lady, may be contrasted with the more commanding attitude of the Moslem, as finely exhibiting the estimation in which women were held by their respective nations. Many hounds--one of which has the luck to fall in with a stray fox--take part in the
chase, and the ladies are attended by lap-dogs. The huntsmen are on horseback and on foot. When the wild boar is slain, he is hoisted on the back of a mule by attendants, and borne triumphantly home. A great variety of birds and trees--amid the branches of which monkeys partially conceal themselves--make up the various scenes. In spite of the want of perspective, there is much spirit in the details, and the female figures especially are most graceful.
That these unique relics should be taken from their present
position and preserved under glass, is a consummation devoutly to be wished.
LAS DOS HERMANAS--THE TWO SISTERS.
Perhaps the most interesting, as it certainly is the loveliest apartment in this palace of enchantment, is the HALL OF THE TWO SISTERS, a title, the guide books would fain have us believe,
conferred by reason of two enormous slabs of white marble laid in the pavement, precisely alike in form, and without flaw or stain; but the surpassing splendour of this chamber forbids us to accept a reason so inadequate for the designation. There is nothing so very extraordinary in two huge blocks of stone, be they never so faultless; that is only a matter of quarrying: if such objects are to excite wonder, we may turn, with more profit, to the Pyramids of Egypt. Let us rather concern ourselves with the beauty and symmetry of this unequalled spot.
First, then, the gate of the tower exceeds all other gates in
profusion of ornament, and in the beauty of the prospect from the entrance through a range of apartments, where a multitude of arches terminate in a large window affording a view of open country. In sunshine, the variety of tints thrown upon this _enfilade_ are surprisingly beautiful. In all probability the Hall of The Two Sisters formed part of the private apartments of the Moorish kings. The alcoves, or divans, on either side of the Hall, with the charming retiring rooms on the upper floor, give it the character of a residence; just as the Hall of Ambassadors, as its aspect shows, and its traditional name implies, was destined only for public receptions. It may reasonably be declared that the Hall of The Two Sisters, together with the corridors and alcoves which surround it, cannot be equalled even by other parts of the Palace. Its stalactite ceilings are the most perfect examples remaining of this curious and interesting kind of decoration. To preserve them, the outer walls are raised ten feet above the dome, and support an encasing roof over all. Nothing can exceed the glory of the honeycomb vaultings, with thousands of fantastic cell formations, each one differing from the other, yet all combining in uniformity. The effect