Part 18

If Cordova at first sight is so unprepossessing, a better acquaintance is hardly calculated to produce a more favorable impression upon the stranger. It is a sleepy old town, substantially paved with stone blocks laid down by the Moors, whose notions of comfort and taste are further manifested in the shady courts, surrounded by latticed galleries resting upon graceful horseshoe arches,--peculiarities of the Arab style of architecture. The innumerable canals, aqueducts, and fountains that embellish the various squares reveal the predilection of its ancient citizens for an abundant supply of water, an advantage not recognized by the present inhabitants. The streets are so crooked, and pay such a disregard to the points of the compass, that three minutes after you have left the hotel you are helplessly lost, and wonder whether you will be able to find any one of whom to ask the way. You approach one of the houses that, barred like so many castles, line the streets, and knock. After some delay the gate opens, and discloses the leather-clad _portero_ rubbing his eyes, and half asleep. You explain your misfortune; he laughs, and with a volubility that is perfectly amazing delivers himself of a string of directions intended to be explicit, but which soon involve you more deeply in the labyrinth than before. Then you commit yourself to the tender mercies of a boy who has providentially appeared, and who knows nothing of what you wish to see, but will gladly repel the attacks of the beggars, a service which no one who has had the benefit of it will be disposed to underrate.

The bigoted character of the people of Cordova is betrayed by the number of shrines, and the swarms of well-fed priests that congregate in the neighborhood of the Cathedral and the parish churches. In the Jewish quarter--where the Hebrews, persecuted by other nations, enjoyed complete liberty of worship, as well as the confidence of their Saracen rulers--stands the mosque. It is on the shore of the Guadalquivir, and opposite the Alcazar of the Khalifs, which is now a military prison, and destitute of even a suspicion of its ancient grandeur. It is impossible to realize that this spot, now steaming with noxious vapors, smeared with filth of every description, and haunted by ghastly representatives of vice and misery, was once the abode of science and art, the seat of the wealthiest court of mediaeval Europe, the refuge of the oppressed of every creed in Christendom, and the home of the most polished society of the age.

The city contains but little to attest its former greatness, whose story reads like an exaggerated romance of the Orient. The mosque remains, indeed, sadly defaced by the hand of religious fanaticism; a few of the baths are intact, though long disused and abandoned; the wheels of the primitive stone mills are still turned by the rapid current of the Guadalquivir; and the venerable bridge erected by Augustus has survived the uninterrupted traffic and strange vicissitudes of nearly twenty centuries. There are a few handsome palaces, once curious on account of their minute and grotesque ornamentation, but now weather-beaten and decayed. The orphan asylum, built in the sixteenth century, offers the best example of the Gothic, but the churches are abominable, with the exception of San Nicolas, which possesses the only minaret left out of the seven hundred that once adorned the Saracen metropolis. The sight of the crumbling relics of an empire which once overshadowed all Europe with its power naturally recalls the circumstances under which that power was obtained, and suggests a brief notice of the wonderful civilization that, emanating from a people but a few removes from the Bedouins, communicated new life to the nations brought within the sphere of its authority, contributing so much of value to the common stock of human knowledge, and imparting an extraordinary impulse to scientific thought.

[This historical notice we omit, and proceed with a description of the celebrated mosque of Cordova.]

There has probably never been an edifice erected by the piety of any sect whose materials were gathered in as many different countries, or which could boast such a variety of superb decorations, as the _Djalma_ of Cordova. The stones for its foundations were transported upon the shoulders of Christian captives from Narbonne in France. Pagan altars and Romish churches were alike despoiled of their precious marbles. Barbary gave her odoriferous woods, Egypt her ivory, Syria her stuccoes, Persia her tapestry, Constantinople her elegant mosaics.

The expenses of construction were defrayed by the appropriation of one-fifth of the spoils of battle, which amount, important in itself, was from time to time largely increased by contributions from the wealthy, tribute of conquered nations and munificent gifts from the royal treasury. The building measured six hundred and forty-two feet from north to south by four hundred and sixty-two feet from east to west; the walls were generally thirty-five feet high, except on the side towards the river, where they reached an altitude of seventy feet and a thickness of nearly twenty. They were strengthened by buttresses and crowned by battlements painted in brilliant colors. Over all towered the shapely minaret of Abderrahman III., inlaid with sculptured stone-work and enamelled tiles, and bearing upon its summit three huge gilded apples of bronze rising from the petals of silver lilies, the whole surrounded by a pomegranate of massy gold.

There were twenty-one entrances, encircled by legends from the Koran, interspersed with scarlet and gilded arabesques; the doors were very heavy, and covered with plates of polished brass. A subdued light came through the interstices of marble lattices, carved in fantastic patterns, imparting a mystic solemnity to the vast interior.

A spacious garden or court, called then, as now, the Court of the Oranges, planted with choice exotics and tropical trees, contained the fountains where the Moor performed the ablutions prescribed by his religion. One of these basins, still perfect, is a monolith hewn in the quarries of the distant sierra, and requiring the combined efforts of seventy oxen and hundreds of men to convey it to its present position. The nineteen naves of the mosque opened upon the court,--none of them had doors,--and through the fretted arcades were wafted odors of rose and jasmine, which, mingling with incense and the smoke of perfumed tapers, gave to the fanatic believer a reminiscence of Araby the Blest. Some of these tapers weighed sixty pounds, and the largest chandelier, used only during the feast of Ramadan, held fourteen hundred and fifty-four lights. Lamps of gold and silver were suspended from the richly-ornamented ceiling, and among them, memorable trophies of the conquest of Galicia, swung the bells of the church of Santiago.

Stretching around on every side was an endless forest of columns, the horseshoe arches arranged in tiers increasing the resemblance to a grove of palms,--that most primitive of temples,--which evidently served as a model for the interior of the mosque. Not far from the centre was the tribune, where, on Fridays, the Imam called the worshippers to prayer. Elevated a few feet above the floor, it was surrounded by engrailed, interlacing arches, and stood opposite the Kiblah, or point facing Mecca. The latter was indicated by three chapels, the Mihrab being placed in the central one.

The Byzantine mosaics, with which both walls and domes are incrusted, give to this part of the mosque an indescribably gorgeous appearance. They contain no piece larger than the top of a lead-pencil, and, being coated with glass like those of the church of St. Mark at Venice, which are of about the same date, have been preserved in all their original beauty. A noble horseshoe arch, opening in the mosaic, forms the entrance to the Mihrab, a little grotto faced with marble slabs, towards which the Moslem always turned to pray, and then made its circuit seven times upon his knees; the evidences of this act of devotion remaining, deeply furrowed in the pavement, after the lapse of six centuries. The Mihrab is hexagonal in shape, and twelve feet in diameter. Exquisitely carved, as became its sacred character, and the reverence with which it was universally regarded, the skill of its architects was exhausted upon its panels and its vaulted ceiling, cut from a single block of snowy marble in the exact representation of a shell. Here was kept the most precious relic of Mohammedan Spain, the Koran written by the Khalif Othman, which he was reading when assassinated. It was studded with jewels of immense value, and was so heavy that it required four men to lift it.

Great and important are the changes that have taken place in the arrangements of the mosque since the Spanish domination.

It was first purged of its heretical pollutions by the assembled clergy, and then lined with chapels presided over by ugly idols glittering with tinsel.

The marble pavement was next removed and replaced by coarse red tiles. The minaret, damaged by a storm in the sixteenth century, has been metamorphosed into an ordinary spire; thirteen of the exterior entrances, and sixteen of those in the Court of the Oranges, have been walled up; and many of the mosaics and stuccoes have been so daubed with whitewash that both colors and designs have disappeared. The carved ceiling was long since removed, and sold to guitar-makers and carpenters; the balustrades, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and tortoise-shell, were utilized as fuel. The outside has suffered less, and there still remain numerous tokens of its Oriental origin,--the flame-shaped battlements of Persia, typical of the adoration of fire; the Syrian ornamentation of the door-ways, where can also be traced familiar symbols of ancient Egypt; and the suastika, or Indian cross, a mysterious emblem of the highest antiquity, which Layard found upon the palaces of Nineveh, Cesnola in the tombs of Cyprus, and Schliemann on the walls of Troy.

But even these "purifications" were not sufficient to satisfy the demands of an orthodox and iconoclastic priesthood. In 1523 a zealous bishop of Cordova, named Manriquez, wishing to distinguish himself, determined to build a cathedral in the very centre of the mosque. The people in vain protested against this outrage; the bishop appealed to the emperor, who sustained him; and though Charles afterwards, when visiting Cordova for the first time, sharply criticised the action of the prelate, the remonstrance came with a bad grace from one who had wrought such irreparable mischief in the Alhambra. The church was built, and, though in itself elegant, has destroyed the proportions of the unique structure, once the model of Saracen architecture and the pride of all Islam....

The Moorish city of Cordova was divided into five wards, each isolated by a fortified wall. Beyond these were the twenty-one suburbs, which--as well as the central part of the capital, where were located the palace and the Djalma--were paved and lighted, and furnished with mosques and markets. To accommodate a population that exceeded a million there were nine hundred public baths, more than are now to be found in all Europe.

Of the suburbs, that of Medina-Azzahra was the most celebrated. It enclosed a palace built by An-Nassir for a favorite of his harem, and we are told that its decorations surpassed those of the mosque at the period of its greatest magnificence. The most expensive marbles and jaspers were used in its construction; Byzantine mosaics covered its walls; the ceilings of its pavilions were composed of alternate plates of gold and silver. In the principal hall stood a porphyry basin full of quicksilver, so contrived that it could be agitated by hidden mechanism, reflecting the rays of the sun with dazzling brilliancy, and striking with terror the mystified beholders. Over this curious toy was a miniature temple, with a dome of ebony and ivory, incrusted with pearls and rubies, and sustained by columns of polished crystal. Attached to the palace were delightful flower-gardens, orchards, labyrinths, lakes, and fountains. There were six thousand three hundred women of all ranks in An-Nassir's harem, who were guarded by an army of twelve thousand eunuchs clothed in silk, and wearing girdles of gold. In the neighborhood of the Khalif's residence stood the villas of the nobility, which, with the houses of their slaves and retainers, constituted of themselves a town of no inconsiderable dimensions.

Having read much of Medina-Azzahra, I was naturally desirous to visit the site of this luxurious retreat of the Khalifs, which is known as "Cordoba la Vieja," or Old Cordova; and taking a carriage, the driver of which assured me he was perfectly familiar with the locality, I rode out to the mountains, a distance of about three miles. The carriage stopped; I got out, and, seeing a few steps away a low wall of masonry, evidently the enclosure of a pasture, I asked the driver what place this was.

Touching his hat, he replied, "This, senor, is Cordoba la Vieja."

"But the ruins you promised to show me,--where are they?"

"The ruins, senor--yes--there they are!" And he pointed to a row of dilapidated stables in the centre of the pasture, not far from where a herd of fierce Andalusian bulls were grazing. I would not have crossed that field for all the antiquities in Spain.

"And this is all that is to be seen here?"

"Yes, senor, this is all."

Re-entering the carriage, I returned to the city, with a feeling of disgust, which was not diminished by my honest coachman's demanding an exorbitant fee for his services as guide....

Among the many revolutions which have affected the manners and formed the society of Europe, none is entitled to more credit, or has been more completely ignored, than the occupation of Spain by the Saracens. This neglect is almost inexplicable, considering the prestige the invaders acquired by their extensive conquests, long a menace to the peace of Christendom, as well as by their invaluable services to literature, whose influence is even now to be traced in the language, the theology, the science, and the laws of distant countries, loath to acknowledge the debt they owe to this most ingenious and polished people. For the ambition and versatility of the Moor were boundless, and he labored with the same persevering energy in the solution of some abstruse mathematical problem as in the prosecution of every useful discovery and the encouragement of every branch of trade.

The importance of his foreign commerce is shown by the wealth and size of his seaports. Of these Almeria stood first in rank; its merchants not only maintained the closest intimacy with the nations of the Mediterranean, but penetrated as far as Persia and China. It employed three thousand eight hundred looms in the fabrication of damasks and brocades; the gardens and plantations of its environs embraced an area of four hundred square miles. Each city had its specialty: Baeza was famous for woollens, Murcia for coats of mail, Valencia for perfumes, Malaga for pottery and glass, Xativa for paper, Toledo and Seville for swords of perfect temper. In the early part of the twelfth century there were six hundred villages engaged in the manufacture of silk. Granada was the chief mart of this industry, and soon after the accession of Charles Fifth, when the Inquisition had already driven thousands of skilful artisans into exile, the crown revenues from this source alone amounted annually to one hundred and eighty-one thousand five hundred gold ducats, or seven hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars of our money.

The luxurious tastes of the East caused the introduction of many useful plants and fruits, among them the buckwheat, the sugar-cane, the peach, and the pomegranate, and the first palm ever seen in Andalusia was brought from Damascus by Abderrahman, in memory of his native land. In his control over water, the most valuable treasure of his forefathers, the Moor displayed a power little short of marvellous, and a reverence as for something peculiarly sacred. Every drop of the precious fluid was utilized, and its distribution protected by a code of stringent regulations, causing its benefits to be felt in the remotest hamlets of the kingdom. This code is still in force in Valencia, and the ancient tribunal of seven judges, chosen from the farmers of the province, holds its sessions in that city every Thursday, the last day of the Mohammedan week, to hear and decide without appeal all questions involving the laws of irrigation.

The rapid progress made by the Spanish Arabs in those arts that tend to diminish the burdens and increase the enjoyments of life, unexampled as it was in history, was not more remarkable than the diligence with which they applied themselves to literary and scientific pursuits, studies destined to exert such lasting effects upon the happiness and well-being of mankind....

In the personal appearance and mode of life of the Andalusians, and particularly in those of the inhabitants of Cordova, can be detected unmistakable signs of their Arab ancestry. Their skins are darker, and the women especially have larger and more lustrous eyes than those of the other provinces of Spain. Their dialect, full of proverbial expressions, and unintelligible by its elision of consonants, seems a barbarous jargon to the Castilian of Salamanca or Valladolid. The popular cloak is the burnous; the hat of the muleteer a degenerate turban; the haick, under whose folds Eastern jealousy required the features of all females to be concealed, survives in the mantilla, that once covered the face, and does yet in certain towns, as Tarifa, and which has even travelled to Spanish America as the _tapada_ of Lima. The sandal is much worn by the poorer classes, and the silken sash, or girdle, passes yet under its Arab name of _faja_. The irrigating apparatus, the cart, the plough,--which is nothing but a crooked stick,--are all Oriental; the mills were either actually built by the Moors, or modelled after those of that industrious people. Grain is still tramped out by cattle upon the primitive threshing-floor, and winnowed by the wind. The charcoal vender, with his panniers and his scales, is identical in all save costume with the vagrant charbonnier of Cairo.

The clapping of hands to call servants reminds one of the "Arabian Nights;" the seclusion of women savors strongly of the restraints of the harem.

Instances might be indefinitely multiplied to show the derivation of similar customs interwoven with every act of social and domestic life. And, notwithstanding the untold advantages and invaluable practical knowledge--the results of ages of experience--bequeathed by the Saracen to his conqueror, with the ruins of massive castles, and of palaces unrivalled in magnificent decoration, scattered all over the land; with the museums crowded with priceless relics of Arab art; with the fields watered by an ingenious yet simple system of irrigation, yielding prodigious returns with but trifling labor; it is the greatest insult you can offer a Spaniard to call him a "Moor," or insinuate that in his veins courses a drop of the blood of that despised race whose industry was once the boast, as its neglected souvenirs are now the glory, of his country.

THE SPANISH BULL-FIGHT.

JOSEPH MOORE.

["Outlying Europe and the Nearer Orient," by Joseph Moore, Jr., a work devoted to descriptive sketches of Egypt, the Holy Land, and the various countries of Europe, is the source of the following selection, which excellently delineates that ancient, though hardly time-honored, institution of Spain, which has long been its most distinctive form of public recreation. Happily, no other race than the Spanish has adopted this cruel sport.]

Nothing in the popular mind is more closely associated with Spain than the bull-fight. To travel in that country without witnessing the spectacle would imply the loss of an invaluable opportunity to study Spanish life. The people of all classes throughout the kingdom are unremitting in their enthusiasm for this favorite amusement, and no political or social prerogative could be guarded with more zealous devotion.

This species of gladiatorial contest took its origin at a remote period, and long before it assumed its present form exhibition combats of one bull against another were not uncommon. Pictorial sculptures at Beni Hassan and Thebes prove the latter to have been among the sports of the Egyptians nearly three thousand years before the Christian era. Strabo states that the bulls employed on these occasions were carefully trained for the purpose, and the encounters generally took place in the dromos, or avenue of approach to the temples. These displays, however, were probably abandoned under succeeding dynasties, as no such representations exist on walls of later periods. We have reasonable evidence to assume that bull-fights which included men and beasts as combatants were first instituted by the Thessalians more than three hundred years before Christ. As a people, they were skilled in horsemanship, and the spectacle was not unlike that of modern Spain. Julius Caesar is believed to have noticed such exhibitions in Thessaly, which led to their appearance in Rome about B.C. 45. In later ages they were generally prohibited in the Latin empire, both by the emperors and the popes. Gibbon, however, describes a feast celebrated at Rome in 1332, which included a bull-fight in the Coliseum, with the Roman nobles as participants. The bull-fight was introduced into the Spanish peninsula by the Moors in the eighth century, and when those people were finally expelled in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella, Catholic Spain adopted the cruel sport of her Mohammedan predecessors. In the sixteenth century Pope Pius V. vainly decreed its extinction, and two hundred years later Charles III. practically failed to accomplish the same by persuasion. Late in the last century Charles IV. suppressed the bull-fight, but Joseph Bonaparte soon after restored the privilege to ingratiate himself with the nation whose throne he had usurped. Since then the ancient diversion has flourished despite the unanimous condemnation of the outer world. The present monarch, Alfonso XII., is said to favor its abolition, but such an attempt, it is declared, would be attended with the risk of engendering a revolution.

Bull-fights are popular throughout Spain, but, with the exception of Madrid, they are more frequent in the southern provinces. In fact, Seville is regarded as the centre of _tauromachia_. The season extends from the close of Lent to November, with Sundays and religious _fiestas_ as the favorite days. The Plaza de Toros, or bull-ring, is an extensive hypaethral amphitheatre resembling the Coliseum on a reduced scale. The new one at Madrid is located near the driving-park, or Gardens of the Buen Retiro, and will seat about fifteen thousand people. That at Seville is an older building, situated near the Guadalquivir, and estimated to accommodate from ten to twelve thousand spectators. The stone Plaza de Toros of Jerez is credited with a capacity of thirteen thousand. The seats are of various grades, and the charges for them range from ten reales (fifty cents) to forty-six reales (two dollars and thirty cents). The choicest are those in the shade and in the boxes which form the upper tier. Not unfrequently during holy week in Seville the demand for places is such that speculators will realize fifty pesetas (ten dollars) for a single ticket.