Chapter II: The Pearl of Andalusia (1)

Seville, in the glory of the Andalusian summer, is a city of white and gold. Her brilliancy dazzles you, as it dazzled those who wrote of her, a little wildly, as the eighth wonder of the world. Luis Guevara, a poet born within her walls, declared that she was not the eighth but the first of those wonders. In our own day, men of genius have felt her spell. "Seville," says Valdés, "has ever been for me the symbol of light, the city of love and joy." So much few northerners would feel justified in saying. To them this must be the city that most closely corresponds to their preconceived ideas of the sunny and romantic South. To Seville belong the sweep of lute-strings, the click of the castanets, the serenade, and above all, the bull-fight. There is something feminine about the radiant city, compared with the masculine strength of Toledo and Avila, and the harsh decadence of Granada. You will agree that no town is prettier, except perhaps Cadiz. So Byron said, and by him and all the poets of his school--Alfred de Musset for one--the city by the Guadalquivir was ardently loved. Yet though so conventionally romantic of aspect, Seville is busy, prosperous, and well peopled, before all other Andalusian towns. The blood still courses hotly through her veins--her vitality intoxicates. If you come from Cordova or Granada, you feel as though you were returning to the world. Here is life, here is gaiety; yet your driver the next instant takes you into a narrow, winding street, no broader than an alley, where absolute silence reigns. The windows are shuttered, no one seems to stir in the patios. There reigns a Sabbath-like calm. A minute later you are in a broad plaza, where electric cars boom and whirr, where all is animation and bustle. Such contrasts are very sharp in this city, where the streets exist simply for folk to dwell in, the squares and paseos for them to gather in and do their business. There are notable exceptions, it is true. There is no want of life in the Sierpes, the narrow street which is the Strand and Charing Cross of Seville. Here you return again and again, feeling it is the focus of the city's life. Little better than a lane is the Sierpes, where no wheeled traffic can pass. It is amazingly dark in the summer, when awnings are drawn right across it from roof to roof, and penetrating into it from the sunny plaza, it is a little time before you can accustom your eyes to the shadow. Here are the best shops, the banks, and those elegant and ostentatious casinos, where the aristocracy and leisured class lounge and smoke, and survey at their ease the unceasing procession of passers by. There are cafés here of a different sort, some of which are frequented by the bull-fighters and their admirers. Here too may be seen in all his glory that peculiar type of Andalusian, the "Majo," a curious blend of the English "masher" the "sporting man" and the "troubadour"! The people sit in the cafés to see the others pass, and the others walk down the street to see the people in the cafés. This is a form of amusement and exercise common on the Continent, and acclimatized already at our English seaside towns. Selling lottery tickets is a great industry in the Sierpes, the sale of tickets for the next _Corrida de toros_ even more so. The boot-blacking saloons remind the American visitor of his native land. For his delectation the _New York Herald_ is displayed in the windows of the few booksellers. There is nothing about this gay little thoroughfare to remind us of the past. The history of Seville is more easily recoverable by the fancy, when you are seated by the Guadalquivir, in sight of the Torre del Oro, on the spot perhaps where George Borrow, in an unwonted fit of hysteria, wept over the beauty of the scene before him.

Phœnician, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, Goth, and Moor--the city has known them all and outlived them all. There seems to have been a settlement of the Turdetani here, before the first Phœnicians came. The name at all events was bestowed by the Tyrian traders, if it is really derived from "sephela," a plain. Then came the Carthaginians, whom the Spaniards accuse of having corrupted the pure and simple-minded natives. The city became known to the little world of civilization, and was spoken of by Grecian geographers as "Ispola" and "Hispalis." The terrible Hamilcar reduced the greater part of Spain to the Punic yoke. He and his successor Hasdrubal filled Andalusia with their massive ungainly fortresses. Salambo, the Semitic Venus, was worshipped on the banks of the Guadalquivir. From time to time, we doubt not, human sacrifices stained the altars of Baal. One wonders if the descendants of the Carthaginians became identified with the other great Semitic people, and passed as Jews. Certainly it is otherwise a little difficult to account for the presence in Spain of the Israelites in such numbers at a very early period.

The Carthaginians fought hard for the province of Bætica, but Punic force and fraud were alike powerless before the sword of Scipio. The dominion of the province of Iberia passed to Rome. When the conquering hero turned his face homewards to claim his triumph, he was mindful of his warworn veterans. For them the journey back to Italy was too long and wearisome; they were content to die in the land they had conquered. Outside Hispalis a place of rest and refreshment was found for them in the village of Sancios. Scipio laid there the foundation of a colony, bestowed it on his veterans, and named it Italica, in memory of their fatherland. And thus was founded the first Latin-speaking settlement outside Italy. It lies--all that remains of it--on the slopes of the hills that bound the prospect westwards.

Hispalis, not overshadowed by its new neighbour, flourished under the Roman sway. Julius Cæsar besieged the city, which was garrisoned by Pompey's partisans, and inscribed the date of its capture in the calendar of the Republic (August 9, B.C. 45). His fleet, they say, lay in the river between the Torre del Oro and the Palace of San Telmo. The townsfolk were devoted to him, and he renamed the place Julia Romula. As a Roman colony the town had a senate and consuls, ediles and censors. The wall Cæsar built endured intact until the time of Juan II., so that monarch wrote in his Chronicle.

While its Punic physiognomy was hard to efface, Seville soon became in spirit a Latin town. All Andalusia was in course of time thoroughly Romanized. Seneca, Lucan, the Ælii, as most of us remember, were Spaniards--if Spaniards could be said, as yet, to have existed.

Then came the era of persecutions, the establishment of Christianity and the disappearance of Astarte and Baal from the forum and the temple--to be worshipped, perhaps, for a little while longer in the recesses of the mountains, where Islam lingered in after times. Presently came the Vandals, and their fury having spent itself, they made Seville their capital, though they did _not_ give their name, as some have thought, to Andalusia. When they passed over--a whole nation--to Africa, the barbarous Suevi took possession of their old camping-ground. The Suevian king, Recchiarus, became a Catholic, at the persuasion of Sabinus, Bishop of Seville, in the year 448. We next hear of him murdering the Byzantine ambassador Censorius, in this city, and of being defeated and slain by the Visigoths in 456. Now comes an interregnum of seventy-five years. The Suevi were expelled from Seville, but their conquerors did not occupy the town. It must have been governed by its Catholic bishops, who are spoken of as miracles of wisdom and sanctity. Under Theudis the Gothic king, Seville again rose to the rank of a capital--or at any rate shared the dignity with Toledo. Here Theudis was assassinated, and his son and successor Theudisel also, a few months later. The latter sovereign is described as a detestably wicked person. He was of course an Aryan, and gave a shocking example of his hard-hearted incredulity. Among the hills where lies Italica is a village called San Juan de Aznalfarache. Near this in the sixth century was a tank which was miraculously filled once a year, when the Catholics resorted to it to baptize their catechumens. Theudisel had the tank, when it was dry, thoroughly investigated, and, satisfied that it was fed by no spring, had a lid fastened over it and sealed with his own seal. But next Easter it was full of water! Not to be baffled, the king dug a ditch to the depth of twenty-five feet all round the tank, but found no trace of a spring. He would perhaps have gone on digging for years had not his nobles rid the world of so sceptical a monarch.

We come now to the days of good King Leovgild, who consolidated the Visigothic monarchy and warred successfully against the Greeks and barbarous Suevi. His son, Ermengild, being sent to govern Seville, was converted by Leander, the bishop of the city, to the Catholic faith. The prince thought he could give no better proof of his zeal for his new creed than by revolting against his father. A bloody war resulted. Ermengild was worsted and was shut up in Seville, while his father occupied Italica and pressed him closely. The rebels capitulated and were treated leniently. The prince afterwards headed a second revolt against his father, was captured and executed. He has been enrolled among the saints of the Catholic Church.

It is quite conceivable that a man of fanatical temperament should feel himself called upon to effect the conversion of his fellows to what he believes to be the true faith, even at the cost of his kinsfolk's blood; but unfortunately for the Visigothic prince, his interests so coincided with his principles that worldly people not unnaturally suggest that the desire to wear his father's crown had as much to do with his action as the desire to convert his father's subjects.

When Spain from Aryan became Catholic, Seville became the Metropolitan See, and Leander its Archbishop. He was succeeded in that office by his brother Isidore, a much better man than he, and renowned as a doctor of the Church and writer on things generally. But by the end of the seventh century the primacy had passed to Toledo, and before the next century was fourteen years old the last of the Visigoths had reigned over Spain.

After the victory over Roderic near Jerez, Tarik, the Moorish commander, marched straight upon Toledo. The reduction of Seville he left to his superior officer, Musa. The citizens offered, it is said, a stout resistance, and then retired to Beja, on the other side of the Guadiana. During the absence of the Moorish commander they recovered the city, only to be dispossessed and finally subjugated by his son, the famous Abd-el-Aziz, the Abdalasis of Spanish story. Thenceforward for 536 years Seville was known as Ishbiliyah, one of the fairest cities of Islam.

When Musa was recalled to Damascus his son remained beside the Guadalquivir (as the river Bætis had now come to be called). He espoused, according to tradition, Roderic's widow, Exilona, who, legend says, had originally been a Moorish princess. For a brief period he dwelt in splendour in the old Acropolis, near where the Convent of La Trinidad now stands. But his enemies had been busy far away at the khalifa's court. While he was in the act of prayer in the mosque he had built adjacent to his palace, the messenger of death appeared. Exilona was left a second time a widow, and to the aged Musa was shown, months later, the lifeless head of his valiant son. Under Abd-el-Aziz's immediate successors the seat of government of the latest province of the Moslem Empire was transferred from Seville to Cordova. From all parts of the East, but especially from Syria, men came flocking to Andalusia. Quarrels arose as to the partition of the conquered land between the Berbers, who had composed the hordes of Tarik and Musa, and the new Saracen settlers. Finally it was decreed that each tribe or nationality should be allotted that region which bore the most resemblance to its original place of abode. Under this arrangement Ishbiliyah was assigned to the people of Homs, the ancient Emesa, a Syrian town on the Orontes. (We are reminded of the parallel between Macedon and Monmouth.) But in the course of time the original derivation of the Spanish Moslems was half forgotten, and the classification was rather into pure-blooded Arabs and Muwallads or half-breeds.

Here at Seville the young Abd-er-Rahman arrived, to restore the empire of his forefathers, the Umeyyas, and under these walls the horde of the Abbassides was cut to pieces. Yet despite the prosperity she enjoyed under the Western Khalifate, the city murmured against Cordova, and more than once essayed to throw off the yoke. In Abdullah's reign (888-912) a chief named Ibrahim Ibn Hajjaj assumed semi-regal state at Ishbiliyah. When he rode forth he was attended by five hundred cavaliers, and he ventured to wear the tiraz, the official insignia of the amirs. He was a liberal patron of the arts and letters. "In all the West," exclaimed a delighted bard, "I found no noble man but Ibrahim, and he was nobility itself! When you have once lived within his shadow, to live elsewhere is misery." Such flattery did not delude Ibrahim into too great a confidence in his own power. He readily submitted to the great khalifa, Abd-ur-Rahman III., by whom the city was greatly favoured. The channel of the Guadalquivir was narrowed and deepened, the palm-tree introduced from Africa, and the city adorned with gardens and fine edifices. The splendour of the court of Cordova was reflected on Seville, which became famous as a seat of learning. In those days flourished Ahmed Ben Abdallah, surnamed "El Beji," or "The Sage," the author of an Encyclopædia of Sciences which was long esteemed a piece of marvellous erudition.

Some strange and unexpected figures about this time flit across the stage of Andalusian history. The Northmen, or "Majus" as they were called by the Arabs, appeared in the year 844 off Lisbon. After spreading dismay through Lusitania they sailed their long ships southwards to Cadiz, and disembarked. They vanquished the khalifa's troops in three pitched battles, and penetrating into Seville sacked the rich city from end to end. Luckily they remained but a day and a night, and after sustaining several desperate attacks from the inhabitants of the country, with varying results, they retired overland to Lisbon, where they re-embarked. They came again fifteen years later, and this time sailed up the Guadalquivir, burnt the principal mosque, and threw down the Roman walls. Then they made sail for the eastern coasts of Spain, where they were attacked and routed by the Saracen fleet. An army of demons must these strange uncouth pirates have seemed to the Andalusians, who knew not whence they came nor to what race of men they belonged.

On the break-up of the Western Khalifate in 1009, the shrewd and powerful kadi, Mohammed Ben Abbad, secured the sovereignty of the city for himself and his descendants. He contrived to give his usurpation the appearance of legality. He espoused the cause of an impostor who personated the deposed khalifa, Hisham, and pretended to govern the city in his name. His power once firmly established, Ben Abbad disposed of his puppet, and announced that the khalifa was dead and had designated him his lawful successor. For the second time Seville rose to the rank of an independent State.

The dynasty of Abbad, emulous of the glories of Cordova, outshone all the other rulers of Spain in elegance and culture. The city was adorned with beautiful gardens and buildings. Learning was held in honour, and the amir disputed the palm with a swarm of fellow-poets. Walking one day with his courtiers, on these very banks of the Guadalquivir, the Amir Mut'adid-billah observed the water lying glassy beneath the waving light. He improvised a line comparing the surface of the stream to a cuirass, and called on the poet Aben Amr to complete the verse. This the laureate found some difficulty in doing, and to his chagrin he was anticipated by a girl of the people standing by, who contributed these lines:

"A strong cuirass, magnificent in combat,
Like water frozen over."

The amir, far from resenting this intrusion of a bystander into the royal circle, bade the girl draw nearer and asked her name. She said that her name was Romikiwa and that she was the slave of Romiya. The prince then asked if she were married. The maiden replied that she was not. "It is well," said Mut'adid-billah, "for I propose to buy you and to marry you." It is to be presumed that Romiya had no objection to offer to this plan.

This monarch, the son of the first Abbadite amir, could do other things than make verses. He was a mighty warrior in Islam, and kept a kind of garden planted with the skulls of his enemies, in the contemplation of which he took great delight. With a view to adding to his collection he made extensive conquests in what are now the provinces of Ciudad Real, Badajoz, and Alemtejo, and undertook successful expeditions against Cordova and Ronda. It was the misfortune of his son and successor, Mote'mid, to be the contemporary of those great and vigorous Castilian kings, Fernando el Magno and Alfonso VI. Conscious of the weakness of his little State, the Amir of Ishbiliyah neglected no means of humouring his powerful neighbour. Fernando sent an armed mission to his court to demand the body of the holy martyr, Justa. But though Mote'mid eagerly extended all the assistance in his power, no trace of the relics could be obtained. The mission would have been obliged to return empty-handed had not St. Isidore (the brother of St. Leander) appeared in a dream to one of the Christian envoys and commanded him to convey his remains to Leon, instead of St. Justa's. The venerable prelate's body was discovered at Italica and carried off to the north, fragrant with balsamic odours and wrapped in costly silks. Mote'mid loudly lamented the loss of the remains. "Oh! venerable brother," he was heard to exclaim, "dost thou then leave me? Thou knowest what has passed between me and thee, and the love I bear thee. I pray thee to forget me never." Very remarkable words indeed, to fall from the lips of a Mohammedan sovereign in reference to a Catholic saint.

In truth the Spanish Moslems of that day were sadly wanting in zeal for their religion. "In those days," writes an Arab chronicler, "men of virtue and principle were rare among the people of Mohammed. The majority scrupled not to drink wine and to give themselves up to every kind of dissipation. The conquerors of Andalusia disputed about their slaves and singing girls, passing their time in debauchery and pleasures, wasting the treasure of the State on amusement, and oppressing the people with exactions and tributes that they might buy the friendship of the tyrant Alfonso with costly presents. So things went on among the quarrelsome Mussulman chiefs, until, the conquerors and the conquered alike prostrated and the kings and captains having lost their pristine worth, the warriors became cowards, the people vegetated in misery and dejection, the whole of society became corrupt, and the lifeless, soulless body of Islam was only a decaying carcase. The Moslems who did not bow beneath the yoke of Alfonso consented to pay him annual tributes, constituting themselves in this manner mere tax collectors for the Christian king on their own territories. Meanwhile the affairs of Islam were directed by Jews, who obtained the offices of wizir, hagib, and khatib, reserved in another age to the most illustrious of the citizens. The Christians devastated the beautiful land of Andalusia, and carried off captives and booty, burning villages and threatening the towns."

In pursuance of his policy of conciliation, Mote'mid gave his daughter Zayda in marriage to Alfonso VI., her dowry being all the towns Mut'adid had conquered in New Castile. Lucas of Tuy says the damsel was taken "quasi pro uxore ut præmissam est." But this ambiguous union did not avert a serious rupture between the sovereigns a year or two later. When the Castilian king sent two ambassadors to Seville to collect his tribute, one of them, a Jew, conducted himself so haughtily that the exasperated Moslems stabbed him to death, letting the Christians escape without serious injury. This outrage meant war. Mote'mid cast about him for an ally. No help was to be found in Spain, and with inward misgivings, no doubt, the Abbadite amir called on the Almoravides of Africa to uphold the cause of Islam. Warned of the danger of this course, Mote'mid is said to have replied, "Better be a camel driver in the African desert than a swineherd in Castile." The Almoravides came and routed the Christians. They returned to Africa, and then came again, this time reducing all the petty Mussulman States beneath their sway. In 1091 Ishbiliyah became a mere provincial centre, the seat of a Berber governor. Mote'mid was sent in chains to Africa, where he died four years later.

The Almoravide rule was of scant duration. Fifty-five years later all Andalusia was annexed to the empire of the Almohades. The third sovereign of the new dynasty dealt what seemed a decisive blow to the allied Christians at Alarcos in the year 1195. But the conquerors knew not how to follow up their victory. The Spaniards rallied, and in 1212 was fought the battle of "Las Navas de Tolosa." The Mussulmans were totally defeated, and left, it is said, six hundred thousand dead upon the field. Yet the knell of Ishbiliyah had not yet sounded. The authority of the Almohade khalifas was nominally recognized in the city sixteen years longer. In 1228 the last of the race of Abd-ul-Mumin to rule in Spain was expelled by the famous Ben Hud, who was himself slain by his rival Al Ahmar, the founder of the Nasrite dynasty of Granada, ten years later. In their despair the people of Seville turned once more to the African Almohades. But no new army of Ghazis crossed the strait to do battle with the Unbeliever. The Andalusians were left to fight their last fight unassisted. Cordova had fallen before St. Ferdinand, and the Sevillians provoked his anger by the murder of one of their chiefs who was devoted to his interests. At the eleventh hour the defence was entrusted--strangely enough for a Mohammedan community--to a junta composed of six persons. Their names are worth being recorded: Abu Faris Ben Hafs, Sakkaf, Ben Shoayb, Yahya Ben Khaldun, Ben Khiyar, and Abu Bekr Ben Sharih.

Thus driven to bay, the Moors offered a determined resistance. They were attacked not only by the Castilians, but by their own co-religionists; for Al Ahmar, the new Amir of Granada, was serving with his followers under the banner of Ferdinand. The siege lasted fifteen months. A fleet was brought round from the shores of Biscay under the command of Admiral Ramon Bonifaz. The Moorish ships were dispersed and the chain which the defenders had stretched across the river broken. The besieged were thus cut off from their magazines in the suburb of Triana. Meanwhile all the outlying posts had been taken by the Castilians, and the Moors were driven to take refuge within the walls. Only when threatened with famine did the garrison ask for terms. They offered to capitulate if they were allowed to destroy their principal mosque to save it from profanation. The Infante Alfonso replied that if a single brick was displaced, the whole population would be put to the sword. The terms finally accorded the besieged were, for that age, not ungenerous. A limited number of families were to be allowed to remain in the city, the lives and property of these and of the rest were to be respected, and the means of transport to Africa and other parts of the peninsula were to be provided for those who were to leave. Probably only a few thousand Moors remained in Seville. Abu Faris, magnanimously declining an honourable post offered him by the conqueror, retired to Barbary. Thither he was followed by thousands of his fellow-townsmen, while others accepted Al Ahmar's invitation to settle at Granada.

Ferdinand took possession of the city on December 22, 1248. He took up his residence at the Alcazar, and allotted houses and lands to his officers, not forgetting even his Moorish auxiliaries. Among his first cares was the purification of the mosque and its conversion into a Christian church. It is interesting to note that the first of his knights to mount the Giralda Tower was a Scotsman named Lawrence Poore.

Seville had remained in the power of the Mussulmans five hundred and thirty-six years. We, who see all Spain Spanish and remember it was so at the beginning, are apt to look on the Moorish occupation as a mere episode or interlude in the history of the country. It is difficult to realize that the sway of the Crescent lasted in Seville for as long a period as has passed with us since the death of King Edward III.

Yet there are few monuments remaining to-day to commemorate a civilization which endured five centuries. The Moors have left their impress, it is true, in a scarcely definable way on the city, the physiognomy of which is more Oriental than that of Granada, a later seat of Mohammedan empire. But this is in great part due to the men who lived under the Christian kings, who had caught the spirit of the Moors and perpetuated their traditions of art and culture. Here we have no such mighty memorials of the vanished race as the Mezquita or the Alhambra. Still, a few memorials of that far-off age there are; and we will go in search of them.

Here on the quays of the Guadalquivir rises a polygonal tower of three storeys, poetically termed the "Torre del Oro." But here we find no Danaë awaiting a rescuer, but only the harbour master and his assistants. When the Almohades ruled in Seville a great iron chain was drawn across the river, and a tower built on either side to support it. The tower on the Triana side has long since disappeared, but the "Torre del Oro" remains as it was built in 1220--except, indeed, for the small turret or superstructure added in the eighteenth century. It is said, too, that it was once adorned with beautiful glazed tiles, from which (though this seems unlikely) it derived its name. In the days when it stood the brunt of the attack from the squadron of Ramon Bonifaz, it was connected with the Alcazar by a wall, called, in military language, a curtain. This was not demolished until the year 1821. At the same time disappeared the main entrance to the Alcazar.

The Almohades did much to embellish and to improve the city during their century of sovereignty. The only important Mohammedan work remaining to us in Seville belongs to that period, and illustrates the victory of the African or Berber over the Byzantine influences traceable in earlier Moorish architecture. The new conquerors of Andalusia were a virile, hardy race, and there is something vigorous and coarse in their handiwork. They developed an excessive fondness for ornamentation which mars much of their work, and were too much addicted to the use of painted stucco and gilding. To them we owe the stalactite roofing, afterwards developed with such success at the Alhambra. "It is certain," says Don Pedro de Madrazo, "that the innovations characteristic of Mussulman architecture in Spain during the eleventh and twelfth centuries cannot be explained as a natural modification of the Arabic art of the Khalifate, or as a prelude to the art of Granada, for there is very little similarity between the style called Secondary or Mauritanian, and the Arab-Byzantine and Andalusian; while on the other hand it is evident that the Saracenic monuments of Fez and Morocco, of the reigns of Yusuf Ben Tashfin, Abdul Ben Ali, Al Mansûr, and Nasr, partake of the character of the ornamentation introduced by the Almohades into Spain."

The most important example of this style is the far-famed Giralda Tower, at the north-eastern corner of the Cathedral, the most renowned of minarets and one of the strongest buildings in the world. It was built in the reign of Yakûb al Mansûr by an architect whose name is variously written Gabir, Hever, and Yever. Quantities of Roman remains and statuary were used in making the foundations. The wall at the base is nine feet in thickness, which increases with the height. The lower part is of stone, the upper part of brick. For the first fifteen metres the four faces of the tower are plain; at that height begins a series of vertical windows, mostly of two lights, some with the horseshoe, others with the pointed arch; while on either side the masonry is carved into what seem panels of trellis work. There is much in the details of this decoration to interest the student of Moorish art, who will recognize in them the inception of many forms developed (and not always to advantage) at Granada.

But the Giralda as we now see it is a third as high again as it was left by the Almohades. In their time it was crowned by a pinnacle to which were attached four balls of gilded copper--one of which was so large, we are told, that the city gate had to be widened that it might be brought hither. The iron bar supporting the balls weighed about ten hundredweights, and the whole was cast by a Sicilian Arab named Abu Leyth at a cost of about fifty thousand pounds of our money. The balls were thrown down by an earthquake in 1395, when their proportions were carefully ascertained.

It was not till 1568 that the upper stage of the fabric, a graceful Renaissance superstructure, was added by Fernando Ruiz. In the same year Morel's great statue of Faith, cast in bronze, was placed on the apex to symbolize the triumph of Christianity over the creed of Islam. It is a clever piece of workmanship, for though it weighs twenty-five hundredweights and measures fourteen feet in height, it sways and turns with every wind. Hence the name applied to the Tower--Giralda, from _que gira_, "which turns."

The first thing you will be asked to do by the guides at Seville is to mount the Giralda, which you do by means of thirty-five inclined planes, up which a horse might be ridden with ease to the very top. Each stage of the ascent is named: "El Cuerpo de Campañas," after its fine peal of bells, one of which weighs eighteen tons; "El Cuerpo del Reloj," after the clock first set up in 1400--the earliest tower-clock in Spain. Then there are the prettily-named floors of the Lilies and the Stars. Some of the rooms are inhabited by the bell-ringers, who may at times be heard practising not only the chimes but the peculiar guitar-playing of Andalusia.

The view from the summit of the tower I think, on the whole, disappointing. The principal buildings of the city are too closely grouped below the spectator to give a very fine effect to the panorama, and the country round is not beautiful. Looking across the arid region beyond the river, it is hard to believe that in Moorish times it was renowned for its beauty and fertility and compared by Arabic writers to the Garden of Eden. Looking down we scan the white city, a labyrinth of lanes and alleys, only here and there a plaza opening like a lake among the closely-set roofs. Far away to the north the Sierra Morena limits the prospect. How often, when from this tower the muezzin proclaimed the Islamic profession of faith, his eyes must have lingered apprehensively on those mountains from whose crests the Christian seemed to hurl back defiance and repudiation.

For the Giralda was the minaret of the great mosque begun by Yusuf, the son of Abd-ur-Rahman, in 1171, and completed by his son and successor, Yakub al Mansûr. The earlier mosque on the same site had been destroyed by the Normans, but some portions of it seem to appear in the horseshoe arches of the Puerta del Lagarto and the northern wall of the Patio de los Naranjos. This latter court, which shuts in the Cathedral on the north side, contains the fountain at which the devout Moslems performed their ablutions. The picturesque Puerta del Perdon, through which you pass on your way into the town, is a Mudejar, not a Moorish, horseshoe arch, erected by Alfonso XI. to commemorate the victory at the Salado in the year 1340. The doors with bronze plates, despite their Arabic inscriptions, also date from that time. The gate was restored in the sixteenth century and adorned with sculptures. The terra-cotta statues of St. Peter and St Paul on the outer side are the work of Miguel Florentin, one of the earliest of the apostles of Renaissance sculpture to settle in Spain. The relief over the arch, representing the expulsion of the money-changers from the Temple, is also by him, and commemorates the substitution of the Lonja or Bourse for this gate as a rendezvous for merchants. The belfry storey is modern. At the little shrine just inside, to the left on entering, may be seen a "Christ bearing the Cross," by Luis de Vargas. The money-changers and brokers have gone, but this gate remains a favourite haunt of the gossips and loungers of Seville, and in the cool of the evening is occupied by some pleasant little family groups from the adjoining houses. The southern side of the patio is occupied by the Cathedral, the western by the church or chapel of the Sagrario. The house on the north side inside the old Moorish wall, to the right of the Giralda gate (on entering), is occupied by the Biblioteca Colombina, bequeathed by the son of Columbus. The pulpit from which St. Vincent Ferrer, the "Angel of the Judgment," thundered forth his terrific fulminations against sinners, Jews, and heretics, I omitted to notice.

Everyone who reaches the Patio de los Naranjos for the first time is sure to enter the Cathedral, which he should not do until the Alcazar at least has been visited. Not that the two great buildings of Seville exhibit any transition of style from the one to the other, but because, having begun the consideration of Moorish architectural work, we ought naturally to pass on immediately to the Mauresque work of the first century of Castilian rule.

The group of buildings which for greater clearness we will call, with the Spaniards themselves, the Alcazares lie to the south of the Cathedral, and are surrounded by an embattled wall built by the Arabs. This enclosure, it should be understood, includes a great many private houses and open spaces besides the Alcazar proper. Immediately inside the wall are two squares called the Patio de las Banderas and Patio de la Monteria. At the far end of the former is the office of the governor of the palace, and to the right of this is an entrance whence a colonnaded passage called the Apeadero leads straight through to the gardens, or, by turning to the right, to the Patio del Leon. On one side this latter square communicates with the Patio de la Monteria; on the other side is the Palace of the Alcazar itself. I hope this will make the rather puzzling topography of the place a little more intelligible.

Whether or not the Roman "Arx" stood on this spot, as tradition avers, I cannot pretend to say. But there is no room for doubt that a palace stood here in the days of the Abbadite amirs, and that this building was restored and remodelled by the Almohades. To outward seeming the Alcazar is as Moorish a monument as the Alhambra. In reality, few traces remain of the palace raised by the Moslem rulers of either dynasty, and the present building was mainly the work of the Castilian kings--especially of Pedro the Cruel. But though built under and for a Christian monarch, it is practically certain that the architects were Moors and good Moslems, and that their instructions and intentions were to build a Moorish palace. Historically, you may say, the Alcazar is a Christian work; artistically, Mohammedan.

The actual palace occupies only a small part of the site of the older structures, and incorporates but a few fragments of their fabrics. Since Pedro the Cruel's day, so many sovereigns have restored, remodelled, and added to the building, that it is far from being homogeneous, though we can hardly agree with Contreras that it is "far from being a monument of Oriental art."

Pedro built more than one palace, or, more correctly, two or three wings of the same palace, in this enclosure. Traces of his Stucco Palace (Palacio del Yeso) remain. Pedro looms very large in the history of Seville. He plays as prominent a part here as Harûn-al-Rashid in the story of Bagdad. He was fond of the Moors, and affected their costumes and customs. He also favoured the Jews, and was alleged by his enemies to be the changeling child of a Jewess. His treasurer and trusted adviser was an Israelite named Simuel Ben Levi. He served the king long and faithfully, till one day it was whispered that half the wealth that should fill the royal coffers had been diverted into his own. Ben Levi was seized without warning and placed on the rack, whereupon he expired, not of pain, but of sheer indignation. Under his house--so the story goes--was found a cavern in which were three piles of gold and silver, twice as high as a man. Pedro on beholding these was much affected. "Had Simuel surrendered a third of the least of these piles," he exclaimed, "he should have gone free. Why would he rather die than speak?"

Stories innumerable are told of this king, a good many, no doubt, being pure inventions. There is no reason to question the account of his treatment of Abu Saïd, the Moorish Sultan of Granada. This prince had usurped the throne, and being solicitous of Pedro's alliance, came to visit him at the Alcazar with a magnificent retinue. The costliest presents were offered to the Castilian king, whose heart, however, was bent on possessing the superb ruby in the regalia of his guest. Before many hours had passed, the Moors were seized in their apartments and stripped of their raiment and valuables. Abu Saïd, ridiculously tricked out, was mounted on a donkey, and with thirty-six of his courtiers, hurried to a field outside the town, where they were bound to posts. A train of horsemen appeared, Don Pedro at their head, and transfixed the helpless men with darts, the king shouting, as he hurled his missiles at his luckless guest: "This for the treaty you made me conclude with Aragon! This for the castle you took from me!" The ruby which had been the cause of the Moor's death was presented by his murderer to the Black Prince, and now adorns the crown of England.

Nor did Pedro confine his fury to the sterner sex. Doña Urraca Osorio, because her son was concerned in Don Enrique's uprising, was burned at the stake on the Alameda. Her faithful servant, Leonor Dávalos, seeing that the flames had consumed her mistress's clothing, threw herself into the pyre to cover her nakedness, and was likewise burnt to ashes. Having conceived a passion for Doña Maria Coronel, the king caused her husband to be executed in the Torre del Oro. The widow, far from yielding to his entreaties and threats, took the veil and destroyed her beauty by means of vitriol. Pedro at once transferred his attentions to her sister, Doña Aldonza, and met with more success. If a chronicler is to be believed, he threw his brother Enrique's young daughter naked to the lions, like some Christian virgin martyr. The generous (or possibly overfed) brutes refused the proffered prey, and the whimsical tyrant ever afterwards treated the maiden kindly. In memory of her experience, she was known as "Leonor de los Leones."

The misdeeds and eccentricities of this extraordinary monarch have been chronicled by Ayala (who was a partisan of Don Enrique), and given a wider circulation by the pen of Prosper Mérimée. I cannot very well omit the oft-told tale that gives its name to the curious little street, near the Casa de los Abades, called Calle Cabeza de Don Pedro. There the king's head may be seen in effigy high up on the wall at the corner of the street. Pedro, prowling about the town after dark, had a quarrel with a passer-by to whom, of course, he was unknown, and whom he incontinently ran through the body. Thinking there had been no witness to his crime, he stalked back to his palace. Next day he summoned the Alcalde of Seville to his presence and asked for news of the town. The magistrate told him that the body of a man had been found, murdered by whom no one knew. The king would suffer no laxity on the part of his officers. If the assassin were not discovered the alcalde must pay the penalty of the crime with his own life. Luckily for the magistrate, an old dame had beheld the encounter of the previous night, and now hastened to him with the surprising news that the man he sought after was no other than his majesty. She had recognized him beyond all possibility of doubt, not only by his features, but by the peculiar clicking of the royal knees. The alcalde hanged the king in effigy and invited him to the spectacle. "It is well," said the prince, after an ominous pause, "I am satisfied. Justice has been done."

I have told the tale rather hurriedly, as it is far from being well authenticated, and because it will doubtless be familiar in some form or another to most readers. That Pedro had a sense of humour is shown by yet another incident. A priest for murdering a shoemaker was condemned by the ecclesiastical tribune to be suspended from his sacerdotal functions for the space of twelve months. On hearing this Pedro decreed that any tradesman who murdered a priest should be punished by being restrained from the exercise of his trade for the like period.

But now let us return to the palace of which the sinister king seems the presiding genius.

Crossing the Plaza del Triunfo, which lies between the Cathedral and the old Moorish walls, we enter the Patio de las Banderas, so called either because a flag was hoisted here when the royal family was in residence, or on account of the trophy, composed of the arms of Spain with crossed flags, displayed over one of the arches. Pedro was accustomed to administer justice, tempered with ferocity, after the Oriental fashion, seated on a stone bench in a corner of this square. The surrounding private houses occupy the site of the old Palace of the Almohades, and one of the halls--the Sala de Justicia--is still visible. It is entered from the Patio de la Monteria. Contreras assigns a date to this room even earlier than the advent of the Almohades. It is square, and measures nine metres across. The stucco ceiling is adorned with stars and wreaths, and bordered by a painted frieze. The decorations consist chiefly of inscriptions in Cufic characters. The right-angled apertures in the walls were closed either by screens of translucent stucco or by tapestries, "which must," says Gestoso y Perez, "have made the hall appear a miracle of wealth and splendour." It was in this hall, often overlooked by visitors, that Don Pedro overheard four judges discussing the division of a bribe they had received. The question was abruptly solved by the division of the disputants' heads and bodies. Thanks to its isolation, the Sala de Justicia escaped the dreadful "restoration" effected in the middle of the nineteenth century by the Duc de Montpensier. The house No. 3, Patio de las Banderas, formed part, in the opinion of Gestoso y Perez, of the Palacio del Yeso, or Stucco Palace, of Don Pedro.

Passing through the colonnaded Apeadero, built by Philip III. in 1607, and once used as an armoury, we reach the Patio del Leon, where tournaments used to be held, and stand in front of the Palace of the Alcazar. The façade is gorgeous yet elegant, of a gaudiness that in this brilliant city of golden sunshine and white walls is not obtrusive. Yet, despite the Moorish character of the decoration, the Arabic capitals and pilasters, and the square entrance "in the Persian style," the front is not that of an eastern palace; and it is without surprise that we read over the portal, in quaint Gothic characters, the legend: "The most high, the most noble, the most powerful, and the most victorious Don Pedro, commanded these Palaces, these Alcazares, and these entrances to be made in the year (of Cæsar) 1402" (1364). Elsewhere on the façade are the oft-repeated Cufic inscriptions: "There is no conqueror but Allah," "Glory to our lord the Sultan" (Don Pedro), "Eternal glory to Allah," etc., etc.

This is a very different entrance from that of the Alhambra, the building on the model of which the Alcazar was undoubtedly planned. From the entrance a passage leads from your left to one extremity of the Patio de las Doncellas, the central and principal court of the palace. How this patio came to be so named I have never been able to ascertain. There is an absurd story to the effect that here were collected the girls fabled to have been sent by way of annual tribute by Mauregato to the khalifa. Had such a transaction taken place, the tribute would have been payable, of course, at Cordova, not at Seville. Moreover this court was among the works executed in the fourteenth century.

The Alcazar strikes us (if we have come from Granada) as being on a much smaller scale than the Alhambra. It is very much better preserved, as it should be, seeing that it is a century younger; and if it vaguely strikes one as being fitter for the abode of a court favourite than of a monarch, it impresses one as being fresher, more elegant--in a word, more artistic--than the older building.

The Patio de las Doncellas is an oblong, and surrounded by an arcade of pointed and dentated arches which spring from the capitals of white marble columns placed in pairs. The middle arch on each side is higher than the others, and springs from oblong imposts resting on the twin columns and flanked by the miniature pillars characteristic of the Granadine architecture. The spandrils are beautifully adorned with stucco work of the trellis pattern. On the frieze above runs a flowing scroll with Arabic inscriptions, among them being "Glory to our lord, the Sultan Don Pedro," and this very remarkable text: "There is but one God; He is eternal; He was not begotten and has never begotten, and He has no equal." This inscription, opposed to the tenets of Christianity, was evidently designed by a Moslem artificer, who relied (and safely relied) on the ignorance of his employers. The frieze is decorated also, at intervals, by the escutcheons of Don Pedro and of Ferdinand and Isabella, and by the well-known devices of Charles V., the Pillars of Hercules with the motto "Plus Oultre." The inside of the arcade is ornamented with a high dado of glazed tile mosaic (azulejo), brilliantly coloured and with the highly-prized metallic glint. The combinations and variations of the designs are very ingenious and interesting. This decoration probably dates from Don Pedro's time. Behind each central arch is a round-arched doorway, flanked by twin windows. These are framed in rich conventional ornamental work. Through little oblong windows above the doors light falls and illumines the ceilings of the apartments opening into the court. The ceiling of the arcade dates from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, but was restored in 1856. A deep cornice marks the division of the lower part of the court from the upper storey, the front of which, with its white marble arches, columns and balustrades, was the work of Don Luis de Vega, a sixteenth-century architect.

Three recesses in the wall to the left of the entrance are pointed out as the audience closets of King Pedro; but they are much more likely to be walled-up entrances to formerly existing corridors and chambers behind.

The door facing this wall gives access to the Hall of the Ambassadors (Salon de los Embajadores), the finest apartment in this fairy palace. The doors are magnificent examples of inlay work, and were, according to the inscription on them, made by Moorish carpenters from Toledo in the year 1364. The hall is about thirty-three feet square, and exhibits a splendid combination of the various styles with the Gothic and Renaissance. The ornamentation is rich and elaborate almost beyond the possibility of description. The magnificent "half-orange" ceiling of carved wood rests on a frieze decorated with the Tower and Lion. Then come Cufic inscriptions on a blue ground and ugly female heads of the sixteenth century. Then, below another band of decoration, is a row of fifty-six busts of the Kings of Spain, from Receswinto the Goth to Philip III. These date, at earliest, from the sixteenth century. The wrought-iron balconies were made by Francisco Lopez in 1592. The decoration of this splendid chamber is completed by a high dado of blue, white, and green "azulejos." It was in this hall that Abu Saïd is said to have been received by his treacherous host.

The Hall of the Ambassadors communicated on each side with the patio and adjoining halls by entrances composed of three horseshoe arches, supported by graceful pillars and enclosed in a circular arch.

Through the arch facing the entrance from the patio we pass into a long narrow apartment, known as the Comedor, where the late Comtesse de Paris was born in 1848. To the north of the salon is a small square chamber, called the "Cuarto del Techo de Felipe Segundo," with a coffered ceiling dating from the time of that king. North of this room is the exquisite little Patio de las Muñecas (Court of the Dolls), purely Granadine in treatment. The rounded arches are separated by cylindrical pillars--I call them so for want of a better word--which rest on slender columns of different colours, reminding one of the early or Cordovan style. The capitals are rich, the pillars they uphold decorated with vertical lines of Cufic inscriptions, many of which, says Contreras, are placed upside down. The walls and spandrils are tastefully adorned with stucco work of the trellis pattern, tiling and mosaic. This court, though still harmonious and beautiful, suffered rather than benefited by its restoration in 1843; but the architecture has been not unsuccessfully reproduced in the upper storey.

This charming spot is by no means suggestive of deeds of blood and violence; yet, just as they point out the Salon de los Embajadores as the scene of the arrest of the Red Sultan by Don Pedro, so here do the guides place the scene of the murder of Don Fadrique by the truculent monarch--a fratricide to be avenged by another fratricide at Montiel. The Master of Santiago, to give the Don his usual title, after a successful campaign in Murcia, had been graciously received by his brother the king, and presently went to pay his respects in another part of the palace to the royal favourite, Maria de Padilla. It is said that she warned him of his impending fate; perhaps by her manner, if not by words, she tried to arouse in him a sense of danger, but the soldier prince returned to the king's presence. With a shout, Pedro gave the fatal signal. "Kill the Master of Santiago," he cried. Guards fell upon the prince. His sword was entangled in his scarf, and he was butchered without mercy. His retainers fled in all directions, pursued by Pedro's guards. One took refuge in Maria de Padilla's own apartment, and tried to screen himself by holding her little daughter, Doña Beatriz, before him. Pedro tore the child away, and despatched the unfortunate man with his own hand. The murder took place on May 19, 1358.