Part 6

is as if the architect had been assisted in his work by swarms of Brobdingnagian bees.

At the upper end of the Hall of The Two Sisters, but separated from it by a corridor, is an alcove, once overlooking a beautiful garden, as we learn from a verse in the room. It is known as The _Mirador_ or Balcony of “Lindaraja.” On this favoured spot the poets, painters, and architects of that day lavished their most exalted efforts. All the varieties of form and colour which adorn other portions of the Palace have here been blended with the happiest effect. The delighted observer is spell-bound, and finds it difficult to remove himself from the fascination of the place.

The lattice window of the upper story gives light to a corridor leading to apartments appropriated to the fair odalisques. It was through these lattices that the beauties of the hareem viewed

the splendid fêtes enacted for their entertainment in the great hall below, but in which they could participate only as distant spectators. These gratings are precisely similar in their construction to those which are now seen in the hareems of the East.

The long series of inscriptions in the Hall of The Two Sisters were much mutilated, and in some cases utterly destroyed, in a barbarous attempt at decoration--_rien n’est sacré pour un sapeur_--made by the Ayuntamiento of Granada in 1832, when the Infante, Don Francisco de Paula visited the city. Fortunately, so far as the text goes, the sentences may be found in _Antigüedades Arabes de España_.[9] The greatest pains have been expended upon the inscriptions which address themselves to the eye of the connoisseur by the beautiful forms of the characters; exercise his intellect by the effort of deciphering their curious and

complex involutions, and reward his imagination by the beauty of the sentiments and the music of their composition.

Many will be grateful to see some specimens of the verses from the Hall of The Two Sisters:--

“I am the garden, and every morn am I revealed in new beauty. Observe attentively how I am adorn’d, and thou wilt reap the benefit of a commentary on decoration;

“For, by Allah! the elegant structures around me assuredly surpass all other edifices by the happy presage attending their foundation.

“How many delightful prospects I enfold! Prospects, in the contemplation of which a mind enlightened finds the gratification of its desire.

“Look upon this wonderful cupola, at sight of whose perfection all other domes must pale and disappear;

“To which the Constellation of the Twins extends the hand of salutation; and, for communion, the Full Moon deserts her station in the heavens.

“Nay, more; were they to take these aisles for their abiding place, those heavenly bodies would render constant homage to their beauty.

“No wonder, then, if the stars grow pale in their high stations, and if a limit be put to the duration of their light.

“Here also behold the portico, unfolding every beauty. Indeed, had this palace no other ornament, it would still surpass the firmament in splendour:

“For manifold are the gorgeous habilaments in which thou, O Sultán! hast arrayed it, surpassing in brilliancy the lustrous robes of Yemen!

“To look at them, one would imagine them to be planets revolving in their orbits, and throwing into shade the sunburst of morning.

“Here are columns ornamented to absolute perfection; the beauty of which has become glorified: columns

“Which, when struck by the earliest beam celestial, may be likened, notwithstanding their vastness, to many blocks of pearl.

“Indeed, there is no palace more imposing in its elevation, nor so brilliantly decorated; nor having more extensive apartments;

“They may be compared to markets where the richest comers are overpaid in beauty, and where the arbiter of elegance presides eternally to pronounce his award;

“And where the sigh of the zephyr is inhaled by the noontide ray whose scintillating beam is more refulgent than all other light.

“Between myself and the most high fortune the closest relationship exists, and the greatest resemblance between us lies in the splendour of our destiny.

“Every art has laid its gifts upon me; nay, all have united in conferring perfection.

“By those who are permitted to behold me I am regarded as the Queen of Beauty who bestoweth the prize upon her well-beloved;

“Indeed, when the enraptured observer has feasted his eyes upon me, he will find reality surpassing the most extravagant flights of fancy;

“He will see the moon-beam start from my orbs, and its scintillation leave me only to enter the mansions of the blest.

“The palace is a palace of transparent crystal; it appears to be illimitable as the boundless ocean;

“And yet I am not the sole marvel of this heaven upon earth; for I overlook with ecstacy a garden, the like of which no human eye has contemplated.

“I was built by the Imam Ibn Nasr. May Allah uphold his majesty as a pattern to other kings!”

The last half-dozen verses, printed _supra_, are inscribed on the jambs of the doorway which gives entrance to the exquisite little chamber already described. The windows of the _Mirador_ still overlook the garden eulogised in the penultimate verse. The dado of the Hall of The Two Sisters is a most beautiful Mosaic, presenting the same general form on all four sides of the Hall, but differing considerably in the filling up of the patterns.

In the Hall of The Two Sisters formerly stood the famous Arab vase (_el jarro_) [see pp. 77 and 95] which tradition says was discovered in one of the subterranean chambers of the palace, “full of gold.” It is now placed in the Museum. The vase is of the fourteenth century, and is exquisitely enamelled in white, blue and gold. The decorations are Hispano-Moresque, and are fully described in the work on pottery by Peter Davillier. Another lovely amphora, is engraved in the Spanish work _Antigüedades Arabes de España_,[10] the equal, indeed, the companion

to _el jarro_, formerly existed in the Palace, but it was unfortunately broken about the year 1837, and the pieces sold to a passing traveller. It is here figured from Murphy’s _Arabian Antiquities_, 1815.

The Hall of The Two Sisters fairly intoxicates one with the fragile yet imperishable beauty of the place. The eye soars upward, and flutters in and out of those flower-cup cells which seem the first creative types of some fresh world. Architects--Owen Jones amongst the number--inform us that the thing is very simple: it is a beauty put together by mere receipt proceeding from three primary figures--the right-angled triangle, the rectangle, and the isosceles triangle: capable of millions of combinations, just like the three primary colours, or the seven notes of the musical scale. “A simple receipt,” says an anonymous writer on the glories of the Alhambra; “but who, nowadays,

can cook anything like it?” The same writer goes on to say that in devising the Alhambra, the Moors were always thinking of the Arab tent. They wanted air and lightness. The marble pillars are the tent spears, but of stone. The net-work lace veil that filigrees every wall with cobwebs of harmonious colour, is the old tent tapestry, the Córdovan-stamped leather hangings are the Indian shawls that canopied the wandering and victorious horseman’s tent. They wanted mere pendant flowers woven together into roof and gossamer-pierced panels that hardly

arrest the air. Everything must float and sway; they would not bar out the chirp of the dripping silver water. They thinned and shaved the pillars till they were no longer cylinders of marble, but tender saplings, or flower-stalks, slender as spear-shafts. The spandrils are not corbelled beams, faced with gargoyle monsters, but perforated supports as to some fairy’s cabinet. There is nothing to hold up, only ivory-patterned walls, and a honeycombed dome that seems to float in mid-air.

HALL OF THE ABENCERRAGES.

Here it is said that thirty-six cavaliers of the heroic line of Abencerrage were sacrificed to appease the jealousy or allay the fears of a tyrant. The fountain ran red with the noblest blood of Granada; and a deep stain on the marble pavement is pointed out by the _cicerone_ of the pile as a sanguinary record of the massacre. The discolourations must be regarded with the same perfect faith with which one looks upon the traditional stains of Rizzio’s blood on the floor of the chamber of the unhappy Queen Mary at Holyrood. Who desires to be sceptical on such points of popular belief? The enlightenment of the happy reader of De Foe’s immortal romance--happy in the masterly illusion of the author--robbed him of one of the chief delights of his life. If there is any country in Europe where it is easy to live in the romantic and fabulous traditions of the past, it is in legendary, proud-spirited, romantic Spain, where the old, magnificent, barbaric spirit even now contends with modern innovation.

In the silent halls of the Alhambra, surrounded with the insignia of regal sway, and vivid with traces of Oriental voluptuousness, everything speaks and breathes of the glorious days of Granada when under the dominion of the Crescent. In the proudest days of Moslem domination, the Abencerrages were the soul of everything noble and chivalrous. The veterans of the family, who sat in the royal Council, were the foremost to devise those heroic enterprises which carried dismay into the territories of the Christian; and what the sages of the family devised, the young men of the name were prompt to execute. In all services of hazard, in all adventurous forays, the Abencerrages were sure to win the brightest laurels. In those noble recreations, too, which bear so close an affinity to war, still the Abencerrages carried off the palm. None could equal them in splendour of array, in gallantry of device, or in their noble bearing and glorious horsemanship. Their open-handed munificence made them the idols of the populace, while their lofty magnanimity and perfect faith gained them golden opinions from the generous and high-minded; the “word of an Abencerrage” was a guarantee that never admitted doubt.

The main facts connected with the fate of the chieftains of that generous but devoted race seem to have been ascertained, leaving little doubt of this hall having been the scene of their calamitous end. Alas! that boudoirs made for love and life should witness scenes of hatred and of death; and let none presume to “peep and botanize” over-much, for nothing is more certain than that heroic blood can never be effaced, still less if shed in most unnatural murder. Nor, according to Lady Macbeth, will “all the perfumes of Arabia” serve to sweeten the foul deed. The blood at least is genuine to all intentions of romance as that of “the gentle Lutenist” at Holyrood, or of Becket at the shrine of Canterbury. It behoves us to beware of those dull people who, deprived of imagination, pretend to judgment; and who would abolish the midsummer fairies, or proscribe old Æsop; there is no faith in them.

All who visit the Alhambra are sure to make for the fountain

where the Abencerrages were beheaded, the more credulous looking with interest upon the natural reddish-brown veins of the marble, which are supposed to be indelible blood-stains. It is said that Boabdil resolved upon the extirpation of the noble family of the Abencerrages in consequence of the alleged discovery of an intrigue, including a false charge of infidelity against his gentle queen, and directed the decapitation of thirty-six of

them in this Hall. The story has passed into ballads, dramas, and romances, until it has grown too strong to be eradicated. Boabdil, however, was of a mild and amiable character, if wavering and irresolute; and too gracious to have ordered so inhuman a massacre as the execution of thirty-six of not only a gallant, but a powerful and numerous family, with many friends. The truth is, it was Boabdil’s father, Muley-Abu-l-Hasen, represented by both Christian and Arabian chroniclers as of a cruel and ferocious nature, who unjustly put to death some cavaliers of the illustrious line upon suspicion of their being engaged in a conspiracy to dispossess him.

It so happens that the fame of Boabdil the Unlucky can be cleared of such infamy as the wholesale massacre of the Abencerrages through direct evidence afforded by a contemporary Hispano-Moresque ballad, “_Ay de mi Alhama!_” written in 1482, and which Lord Byron has made familiar by his version, “_A very mournful Ballad on the siege and conquest of Alhama._”

The fact that Muley-Abu-l-Hasen in vain invested the castle and town of Alhama[11] after its capture by the Marquis of Cadiz, and the direct reference in the ballad to its loss, ascribed to the wrath of Allah at the wickedness of the King, clearly exonerates Boabdil from the crime of his father.

* * * * *

“By thee were slain, in evil hour, The Abencerrage, Granada’s flower; And strangers were received by thee Of Córdova the Chivalry. Woe is me, Alhama!

“And for this, oh king! is sent On thee a double chastisement: Thee and thine, thy crown and realm, One last wreck shall overwhelm. Woe is me, Alhama!”

* * * * *

With the loss of the two “Keys” to Granada--Loja and Alhama--both being forthwith heavily garrisoned by the

Christians, the reduction of the last stronghold of the Moors became only a question of time. As we know, the surrender of Granada took place within four years after the fall of Loja.

But it is not the history of the Dominion and Expulsion, so much as the description of the Hall of the Abencerrages, that demands attention at present.

After the glories of the _Sala de las Dos Hermanas_, the Hall of the Abencerrages, elegant as it is, pales somewhat in interest. There are but few inscriptions here. It has been repeatedly “restored,” and much of the ornament which decorates the walls seems to have been transferred from the Hall of The Two Sisters. The arches, however, appear in their original state, and are most beautiful in general form, as in their surface decoration. The manner in which the arch-form gradually grows out from the shaft of the column is exquisite. In the centre of the Hall is the famous “Fountain,” with the waters of which the blood of the Abencerrage chieftains is said to have mingled.

The beautiful wooden doors to the Hall of the Abencerrages existed in their places, and in perfect condition till the summer of 1837, when they were removed and sawn in halves by the then resident Governor of the Alhambra for the purpose of stopping a gap in another part of the Palace; and, as they proved too large for the openings to which they were applied, the superfluous parts were broken up for firewood!

The doors are of white wood, with similar mouldings and ornaments on either side; the decorations were originally in colour, traces of which may still be discovered. The folding doors are hung on pivots, which are let into the socket of a marble slab below, and above into the soffit of a beam which crosses the colonnade of the Court of the Lions. This method of hanging the doors is precisely similar to that adopted in ancient temples, and is still practised throughout the East. The manner in which the bolt secures, at the same time, both flaps of the larger doors and the wicket, is full of ingenuity.

Don Rafaél Contreras caused these doors, or what remained of them, to be replaced in the position for which they were originally intended. He found the fragments amid the lumber of the palace! His own words are: “Nous l’avons restaurée en 1856, l’ayant trouvé _brisée en quatre morceaux, abandonnée dans les magasins du palais_”--They were found, broken into four pieces, in the lumber rooms of the palace.

PATIO DE LA ALBERCA--THE COURT OF THE FISH-POND.

This Court was called in former times _Patio de los Arrayanes_--the Court of the Myrtles--by reason of its beautiful flowering shrubs which gem either side of the Fishpond; trim myrtle hedges, and orange trees rising beside the water.

To enter the Court of the Fish-pond is to be straightway translated to the palace of Haroun-al-raschid: Granada changes to Damascus. The Moorish arches, springing from slender palm-tree shafts, are of bewildering beauty; the walls, no longer forbidding blocks of stone, but pierced trellises, that turn sunlight and moonlight into patterns resembling so much Venetian filigree. “Surely they are needle-work turned to stone,” says a traveller of long ago; “or some great Sultán has built them with panels cut from caskets of Indian ivory, though the piecing be not seen. The myrtles grow green and glossy round the great marble tank, 150 feet long, which flows with mellow water, in which burnished fish--some apparently red-hot, others of molten silver--steer, flirt, skim, and splash. Never stop to think that the dry, whity-brown, tubular-tiled, sloping roofs

EXPLANATION OF THE LETTERS OF REFERENCE IN THIS PLATE.

A A A. Entrances to the quarter of the Palace containing the baths.

B B B B B B. Passages communicating with the different apartments and baths.

C C. Apartments, looking into.

D D. A Court with a fountain in its centre.

E E Baths and dressing-rooms.

F F F. Warm baths.