Albert Frederick Calvert

“ Hushed is the voice of the muezzin: no longer can men sit entranced at the strains of the musicians, or listen to the recitals of the doctors and the poets. But the same notes of the nightingale drift on the perfumed breeze of evening, and the hawks still sail and soar above the minaret. And in the Court of Oranges, girls of erect and Moorish mien bear Oriental pitchers on their heads, as they resort to the fountain for water; while through the open door of the Mezquita one may scent the incense, and see the tangled vista of Arabic arches ”

“ Toledo reminds us that the Moors were warriors and conquerors, bent upon aggression and the extension of territory; in Cordova one thinks of the race as sages, artists, worshippers, poets, and lovers. The palm-trees planted by Abd-er-Rahman, ‘The Servant of the Merciful God,’ the tropical flowers and fruits, the mosque, and the fountains, give impress of the milder, pacific, quietly joyous life of the Moors. ”

“ The land was made to yield of its richest; fruits and flowers of the tropics flourished; the steeds of Arabia were bred in the vales around the city; workers in clay, wood, and metals plied their crafts with loving industry; and the world wondered at this spectacle of might, culture, and peace.
It was Abd-er-Rahman III. who caused the building of Medinat-Ez-Zahra, a city situated at a distance of four miles and a third from Cordova. This marvellous suburb contained markets, taverns, baths, and institutions of learning. A stupendous mosque was erected. ”

“ Much water has flowed under the sixteen arches of the bridge which spans the Guadalquivir since ‘Cordova was to Andalus what the head is to the body, or what the breast is to the loin’; the Moorish city of the thirty suburbs and three thousand mosques, whose fame once obscured the glory of ancient Damascus, is no longer the centre of European culture. ‘The brightest splendour of the world’ has been lost in centuries of neglect and decay, and the new{viii} light of a modern civilisation has not shone upon the remains of its mediæval grandeur. ”

“ He calls Cordova ‘the repository of science, the minaret of piety and devotion, the abode of magnificence, superiority, and elegance: neither Baghdad nor Damascus can compete with it. An idea of its worth can only be arrived at by comparing the city to a beautiful bride of whose dower it should form part. Cordova may be properly called the military camp of Andalus, the common rendezvous of those splendid armies which, with the help of Allah, defeated at every encounter the worshippers of the Crucified. ”

“ Seville and Toledo yielded pre-eminence to Cordova, and men spoke in veneration of its four great wonders: the immense and gorgeous mosque, the bridge over the Guadalquivir, the city of Ez-Zahra, situated{12} in the suburbs, and the sciences which were studied in the colleges.
When we read the ancient annals and grow absorbed by the story of Cordova’s past, we can scarcely realise that the town and its inmates were real things. The place and the people seem to belong to the realm of fairy romance; the city seems one of dreams, and the natives pass as in a pageant of the imagination. ”

“ Then came the legions of Rome, to expel the settlers and to found Corduba. Here stood the great temple of Janus in the days of Seneca and Lucan, the arena, the schools, and the institutions of a powerful and cultured people. But all these fell with the inrush of the Goths from the north, those intrepid warriors, fanatical as they were fearless; and Cordova saw the ruin of the Roman civilisation, and the inception of a new faith and a new social order.
The scene changes constantly; the action of the drama is vivid. Again the invading flood sweeps over Andalusia. ”

“ Most of these columns were made from the stone of Spanish quarries. They are of jasper, marble, and other stone, and number nearly nine hundred. Narrow avenues run transversely through the grand aisles. We are lost in them; these passages appear interminable, and their ribbon decorations bewilder the eyes.
We approach the sacred mih-rab, the receptacle of the Koran, the holiest of holies of the temple. The façade is exceedingly beautiful, in the later style of decoration, and the arcades of the vestibule of the sanctuary have fine triple arches and interlacing curves of exquisite design. ”

“ Cordova contains only the remnants of its pristine magnificence, but these are marvellous and precious. The city once boasted of fifty thousand resplendent palaces, and a hundred thousand inferior houses. Its mosques numbered seven hundred, and the cleanly Moors built nine hundred public baths. The city stretched for ten miles along the banks of the Guadalquivir, flanked with walls, battlements, and towers, and approached by guarded gates. The common folk spoke in phrases of poetry; there were no illiterates. Art in every branch flourished in the city ”

“ They muse of other things—the affairs of the hour—and regard the Mezquita as an excellent asset to their slumbrous and impoverished city. Every stranger within their walls is looked upon as a sightseer; and what should he come to see but the famous Mosque? ”

“ Even in the reign of Almanzor, the specific style of the Arabs was giving place to less beautiful conceptions of line and decoration. Nevertheless, it is generally admitted that the Mosque is the finest example in Europe of the Moorish religious edifice. It maintains uniformity in the plan of its construction, while the dimensions are enormous, and the adornment elegant and characteristic of the art of Islam in the flower of its might and magnificence. ”

“ In selecting his woods for the purposes of decorating the Mosque of Cordova, the Moor employed those of the most durable texture, so durable, indeed, that age has scarcely left its mark upon them. The bricks and stones are equally lasting, as may be proved by an inspection of the walls of the Mezquita. There was no hasty work in the construction of the temple of Allah. Nothing was used except material of a permanent quality. The treasure of the earth, its forests and its mountains, was employed in the great labour of duty and devotion. ”

“ The Spaniard is not a passionate enthusiast of modernity. He is conservative, and zealous and proud of his ancient towns, and it is quite probable that the bulk of the natives of Cordova prefer that the atmosphere of the place shall remain mediæval. And we who resort to Cordova to reflect upon its past grandeur, and to imbue ourselves with the spirit of the Moorish days, are assuredly satisfied that it has not been modernised and marred during the years that have intervened between the great vandalism after the expulsion of the Arabs and the present time. ”

“ With the triumph of San Fernando came the steady disintegration of the high civilisation of Cordova, and its history from the day of victory onwards is one both mournful and instructive. The expulsion of the Arab artisans was an error of policy which the more intelligent Cordovese quickly recognised, for soon after the restoration of the city into the hands of the Spanish sovereigns, many of the inhabitants proposed to request the king to permit six per cent. of the Moors to remain in Cordova. ”

“ A world of souvenirs here enthralls the mind of the traveller as he gazes with a feeling of sorrow upon these profanations,—works dictated by the intolerant yet sincere faith of our ancestors, impelled by the desire of banishing for ever from that spot consecrated to the law of Jesus, the spirit of Mohammed and the ghosts of his slaves that haunt it, and will for ever haunt it while it exists. ”

“ All historians agree that the great Mosque of Cordova owes its inception to Abd-er-Rahman I., the first sovereign to reign independently over Andalus. Directly the Sultan found himself comparatively free from his turbulent rivals, and firmly established on the throne, he began the building of his royal palace—that of the pleasure-house called Rissafah, and of the great Mosque. The circumstances which led to the erection of the Mosque are thus related:{99}—
When a city surrendered to the Moors by capitulation, it was their custom to divide with the Christians the principal temple of that city. ”

“ Buildings which had been the joy of the Moors were permitted to crumble, or were pulled down to supply material for the erection of squalid dwellings. Grim ruin descended upon fair Cordova; melancholy decay succeeded its long era of growth and prosperity. The admirable irrigation system, which had made the meadows lush and the land fecund, was left unused, and the vineyards and plots were neglected. Briars and weeds gained supremacy in the fertile valley; the earth became impoverished and barren. ”

“ Tangible evidence of a superb civilisation surrounds us in Cordova. We see examples of early Moorish architecture brought to its highest artistic manifestation in the mosque. We listen in vain for the voices of teachers, the song of the singers and poets, and the call of the muezzin to devotion; but we tread in the footsteps of the long-vanished Moor, and read his story in the noble lines, chaste embellishments, and gorgeous details which his skilful hands produced.{13}
II
THE MOORISH CAPTURE Probably a city of the Carthaginians once stood upon the ground now covered by Cordova. ”

“ Throughout Europe the mention of Cordova brought yearning to the hearts of the cultured and studious, and men suffered hardship and stress to pay pilgrimages to this source of learning. Many who journeyed hither echoed the{11} words of Ibn Sareh, the poet, which he uttered upon entering the seat of wisdom: ‘God be praised; I am in Cordova, the abode of science, the throne of the Sultans!’ Seville was ‘the gem,’ ‘the pearl’ of Andalusia; Cordova was called ‘the Bride.’ El-Makkari, the Moorish chronicler, rehearses many of the poetical tributes paid by Moslem writers to the splendid city. ”

“ The Christians established rule in the despoiled capital; the mosque was purified from its taint of the Moslem, and dedicated to the worship of God and the Virgin, and one by one the hundreds of baths fell into disuse, for cleanliness was not a canon of the victorious faith.
The coming of San Fernando only hastened the process of disruption in Cordova. War was the chief business of the Spaniard at this age, and handicraft was despised as something unworthy of a true Castilian caballero. ”

“ Complete disorder prevailed, palaces were wrecked, mosques were pillaged, treasure looted, gardens laid waste, and the largest library in the world was ransacked and plundered.
We can scarcely form a conception of all the beauteous edifices, the noble works of artist and craftsman, that perished in this last upheaval. ”

“ In the stressful days when the Moorish colonisers sought to possess the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, Cordova was stoutly fortified, and the Mosque was protected by this unscalable wall. This barrier of stone is over six feet thick, and designed to withstand the most violent battering. The defences of the sanctuary are very picturesque; there is a subject for the{56} painter at every tower and corner; but they are perhaps a little less wonderful than the grim walls of Avila, or the sombre parapets of brown Toledo. They are made of durable stone, which is marvellously preserved. ”

“ In the seventeenth century the population of the city had been reduced to about seventy thousand inhabitants, and the number of its residents steadily dwindled after the expulsion{39} of the Moors. There are now about fifty thousand people in Cordova. In the tenth century three hundred thousand persons dwelt in the city and its surroundings.
The Mezquita, the bridge, the mosque of Almanzor and the ruins of the Alcazar stand as eloquent examples of the Cordova of Almanzor: not a stone survives of the luxurious palaces, whose names suggest Oriental splendour and the joy of life. ”

“ The army of Morisco labourers was augmented by a host of Christian captives, and we read that these unfortunates were employed to carry stone upon their heads. We can imagine the files of Christians, each man bending under his burden, compelled to toil in the upraising of a mighty temple to the glory of Islam. But the pendulum swings, and time brings its changes in the fortunes of Moor and Christian. At a later period it is the Mudejar,{61} the ‘reconciled’ Moor, who supports the cumbrous loads upon his head, and does the bidding of the Catholic in the construction of the cathedral. ”

“ Everything is sharp, clear-cut in the unpolluted air, and glowing in the brilliant sunshine of the south. The thoroughfares are like a network, tangled and mazy. Carthaginian hosts crossed those sierras to conquer this coveted territory from the Iberians. ”

“ When the messengers of Constantine came to Ez-Zahra, they were awed and made speechless by the majestic grandeur of the palace. Alas! to-day not a vestige of Medinat-Ez-Zahra survives. The ruthless Berbers razed the fair city to the ground in 1010, leaving not a stone to remind the beholder of its past glory.
The last Abd-er-Rahman possessed a love of ceremony and splendour. He built palaces, mosques, and halls to appease this passion of ostentation ”

“ ILLUSTRIOUS NATIVES OF CORDOVA The ‘holy and learned’ city of Cordova has ever produced sons worthy of its renown. There were, no doubt, many philosophers, teachers, and poets during the Mohammedan dominion, whose names have not been preserved, and whose works have perished. Corduba was the birthplace of Seneca, the relative and the contemporary of Lucan, and one of the greatest men that the city produced.
The moralist and philosopher was a delicate, ailing child, and throughout his life he suffered from ill-health, which was increased by his severe studies, and possibly by his asceticism. ”

“ Phœnicians, Greeks, Trojans, and Tyrians battled in their day for the rich spoil of Spain, and the armies of Carthage ravaged the whole of the country. Rome wrought the downfall of the Carthaginian dominion in Bœtica (Andalusia) and Lusitania (Spain) . In A.D. 205 the Romans began to lay hands on the Iberian Peninsula, and after long strife they conquered all the land save the territory of the indomitable Basques of the rocky north.
At Corduba (Cordova) the Romans established a capital of Hispania Ulterior, and the city was one of importance and prosperity. ”