Chapter XI: The Moors at Cordoba

At Cordoba we come upon the full splendour of the Moors, a whole world of chivalry, _jonglerie_, magic, and song, from the old East, their home. What noble devotion to their race! What unalterable faith! What generous courage in life, and silent constancy in death! What knowledge, could we but grasp it!

We know but what is left to us of their outward life in Andalusia and Granada. Their exquisite sense of proportion and colour, in palaces vermilion walled and vocal with many waters; the massive grandeur of barbicans of defence, the sensuous charm of lace-covered chambers and gigantic leap of arch, tower, and minaret, destined to live as their mark for ever.

Their whole existence in Spain is a romance anomalous but dazzling; a nation within a nation, never amalgamated; a people without a country; a wave of the great Moslem invasion cast into Europe; a brilliant phantasmagoria, various and rare!

The Moors took no solid root in Spain as the

Saxons in England or the Arabs in Sicily, but lived as an exotic race, divided from the Christians and from the Jews by impassable barriers of religious customs and laws; their occupation but a long chivalric struggle for a foothold in the land they had _gained_ but never conquered.

Not all the fiery valour of the African was proof against the obstinate resistance of the Goths. Never was defence more complete! In the midst of apparent victory loomed defeat!

A new era opens in Cordoba, with its million inhabitants and three hundred mosques, in the reign of the Caliph Abdurraman, of the race of the Ummaÿa, who overthrew the rival princes sent by the Sultan of Damascus.

After him from A.D. 756 to A.D. 1000, ten independent sultans reigned in Cordoba, their wealth and luxury like the record of a tale.

Most notable among these were three other Abdurramans, Hakin, surnamed “the bookworm,” Hisham, and Hazin, not to forget the great Sultan and statesman Almanzor, a Moorish Lorenzo de’ Medici, collecting books all over the world, and drawing learned men to his court even from remote Britain.

While the north, in perpetual warfare, was plunged in the darkness of the Middle Ages, solid learning, poetry, and elegant literature charmed the minds of the enlightened Moors, the pioneers of civilisation in Europe.

At Cordoba Averroës, the great Grecian scholar, translated and expounded Aristotle. Ben Zaid and Abdulmander wrote histories of the people at Malaga. Ibn el Baal searched the mountains and plains to perfect a knowledge of botany; the Jew Tudela was the successor of Galen and Hippocrates; Albucaris is remembered as a notable surgeon, some of whose operations coincide with modern practice; and Al Rasi and his school studied chemistry and rhetoric.

Not only at Cordoba, but at Seville, and later at Granada, colleges and schools were endowed, and libraries founded in which the higher sciences were taught, which drew the erudite of the Moslem world from all parts of the globe, and became the resort of Christian students anxious to instruct themselves in superior knowledge.

And Christian knights came also to perfect themselves in chivalric fashions and martial exercises, as well as to master the graceful evolutions of the “tilt of reeds” in the tourneys of the Moors.

From the court of the first Abdurraman came _la gaya ciencia_, poetic discussions of love and chivalry transplanted later to the Court of Provence.

In architecture no building that ever was erected can compare to the elegance of his Mesquita (come down to us almost entire) as a monument of the taste and culture of the age. The most mystic and astounding of temples, with innumerable aisles of double horseshoe arches, suspended like ribbons in mid-air, resting on pillars of jasper, _pavonazzo_, porphyry, and verd antique crossing and re-crossing each other in a giddy maze of immeasurable distances, red, yellow, green, and white dazzling the eye in a very rainbow of colour!

No windows are visible, and the light, weird and grim, comes as from a cave peopled by demons; no central space at all, but vistas of endless arcades, which for a time the eye follows assiduously, then turns confused, and the brain reels.

Deep hidden in the heart of the temple is the throne or _macsurah_, a marvel of embroidered stone, where the Sultan takes his seat. Here the Koran is read in the pale light of scented tapers and torches, and those ecstatic visions evoked by the Faithful of a sensual paradise of dark-haired houris.

Opposite is the Zeca, or holiest of holies, turned towards Mecca, where the gorgeous decorations of the East blend with Byzantine mosaics of vivid colours on a gold ground; a most lovely shrine, a great marble conch-shell for the roof, the sides dazzling with burnished gold, and round and round, deep in the pavement, the footprints of centuries of pilgrims.

Such is the Mesquita of Cordoba in our day, the desecrated shelter of an old faith, a sanctuary rifled, a mystery revealed!

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But how glorious in the time of the great Abdurraman when the blaze of a thousand coloured lanterns, fed with perfumed oil, played like gems upon jewelled surfaces, vases, and censers filled with musk and attar, making the air heavy with fragrance, golden candelabra blazing among mosaics, crescent banners floating beside the _almimbar_ or pulpit, where green-turbaned Almuedans mount to intone the Selan, as the Sultan emerges from a subterranean passage leading from the Alcazar, treading on Persian carpets sown with jewels, to take his place on a golden throne within the _macsurah_, surrounded by swarthy Africans, bare-armed Berbers, helmeted knights bristling with scimitars, Numidians with fringed head-bands and golden armlets, superb Emirs, wandering Kalenders, who live by magic, the dervish of the desert, and hoary Imaums in full gathered robes.

Then the talismanic words are heard from the open galleries of the Giralda from which the Muezzin calls to daily prayer: “There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his prophet.” To which the prostrate multitude echoes: “God is great,” each one striking the pavement with his forehead, and the sonorous chant answers, “Amen.”

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When Abdurraman reigned, the lonely quarter beyond the Mesquita swarmed with Alcazars, Bazars, Cuartos, Zacatines, Baños, and Alamedas.

Three miles to the north, sheltered under the green heights of the Sierra Morena, rose the plaisance of Medina-a-Zehra, created by him, a _congerie_ of kiosks and pavilions entered by gates of blue and yellow porcelain, overtopping woods of exotic shrubs, choice plants, and rare fruit-trees--here the Safary peach (nectarine) was first ripened in Europe--divided by the fountains, canals, and fish-ponds so dear to the Arab fancy; twelve statues in pure gold set with precious stones spouting perfumed water within a _patio_ girt in by crystal pillars.

Hither came emirs, ambassadors, merchants, and pilgrims, all agreed that nothing could be compared to these matchless gardens. And besides Ez-Zahra there were other monuments, which have all disappeared under the mantle of green turf that lines the banks of the Guadalquivir. Not a stone left of the pavilion of Flowers, of Lovers, and of Content, the palace of the Diadem, evidently destined for the royal jewels, and another called after the city of Damascus.

About were many noble streets and plazas with baths and mosques, for next to the mosque stood the bath in credit among the Moslem, and as such despised by the Christians to that point, that after Ferdinand and Isabella drove the Moors out of Spain, their grandson, Philip II., ordered the destruction of all public baths as relics of Mohammedanism.