THE ALHAMBRA.
WHEN the followers of Berber, the Moorish chieftain, some of whom came
from the regions of Damascus and the valley of the Jordan, first entered
the plain that lies in front of Granada, they imagined, in the fervor of
their Oriental fancies, that they had struck Paradise itself. Perhaps
they had come back to Damascus, the blessed and glorious city of the
East, but that and Paradise to them were about the same thing. The wide
and fertile plain was and is watered by two streams like those that
flowed round about the Eden of sacred story, and if the earthly gardens
of man’s delight were to be an emblem and foretaste of the flowers and
fruits, the beauty and plenty of the gardens of the skies, they were
certainly now before their eyes. They gave the name of “Damascus of the
West” to the city that crowned the hill, and shone in the summer sun
like the great dome to the temple of the King of kings. This city was
called Granada, from the granates, or pomegranates, that then as now
grew in abundance, with luscious grapes, figs and citrons and olives,
and all the fruits of a southern and delicious clime. Near by, the
snow-clad Sierra Nevada reminded them of their own Mount Hermon, and
over all these was hung a canopy of blue, so deep and pure and clear
that the sea, reversed and lightened by the sun by day, and set with
stars at night, could not have been more lovely to behold.
[Illustration: OUTER WALL OF THE ALHAMBRA.]
When the empire of the Moors in Spain was broken into hostile factions,
preparatory to its final extinction, the city of Granada fell into the
hands of Zawi Ibu Zeyri, who was its first king, and established his
royal residence here. The towers or castle on the summit of the hill,
and commanding the whole city, were called _Alhambra_, which means _red
castle_, and to this color the stones turn after exposure to the air,
from the oxide of iron they contain.
Within the walls of this castle, covering an area of several acres, the
successive Moorish kings erected palaces, and embellishing them
according to their own tastes, joined walls and towers, and courts and
fountains and gardens, until in process of time the great enclosure
became filled with the edifices which this luxurious and extravagant
race of monarchs desired for themselves, their wives and concubines, and
the hosts of servants and dependants which such a style of life, in such
a country, must demand. At this moment, the palace of the Russian
emperor holds five thousand persons, all actually required to wait upon
the Czar and his household and one another. In the Seraglio of the
Sultan of Turkey 40,000 oxen were eaten yearly, and 400 sheep a day. An
army would therefore be as easily lodged as the family of a Moorish king
in the palace at Granada. What it was in the days of Abu-Abdallah, who
has the traditional honor of having built the palace itself, or of Yusef
I., who added lustre to its walls by his gorgeous decorations, we can
form but a faint conception from what we see of it now that it is
stripped of its purple and gold, and has nothing of its former splendors
but the mouldering walls and shattered stairs and broken floors.
The first prince who took up his abode in the Alhambra itself was
Alhamar, from whom it has been by many supposed that the palace itself
was named. He was a wise, gentle, and noble ruler, so widely differing
from most of his race that he actually preferred peace to war; and, to
make it possible for him to pursue without interruption his vast
beneficent plans for the improvement of the condition of his people, he
consented to pay an annual tribute to Ferdinand, King of Arragon.
Alhamar constructed roads to the distant parts of his empire, which then
reached to Gibraltar; he built colleges and hospitals; and the canals
that carried waters far into the plains for irrigation were the work of
this barbarian king. Under his reign the city rose to its zenith of
splendor. The arts and sciences flourished as the vine and fig-tree in a
genial soil. Wealth, learning, genius, taste, and chivalry lent their
aid to heighten the attractions of this fair city. Yusef, one of his
successors, added many buildings to those that he had left, and others
were crowded into the arena in after reigns, so that for two hundred and
fifty years it was growing in such magnificence and beauty, as the soft,
languid, and effeminate tastes of a luxurious, debauched, and decaying
race of irresponsible, licentious, and decaying monarchs, with a host of
wives to prompt them to indulgence in every whim of fancy, could invent
to add to the delights of their terrestrial paradise. What could be
looked for as the result of such lives but the ruin of the empire. Kings
had but short reigns, for intrigue, lust, ambition, and murder made one
after another give place to a rival who sought his bed quite as much as
his throne. The usurper soon became the enfeebled voluptuary of the
harem, and the arm that was as strong as Hercules in the battlefield
became as weak as a woman’s when love, not war, was the passion of the
hour. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. The cities of the
Moors no longer were in league, but each, jealous of the rest, was in
succession sieged and sacked.
At last Granada stood alone in its independence and its impending ruin.
Mohammed Ibu Otsman had bowed his neck to the Queen of Castile, and the
Alhambra was the only Moorish gem which remained to be transferred to
the Christian crown. Ferdinand of Arragon, by marriage with Isabella of
Castile, formed at once a union of hearts and arms that prepared the way
for the overthrow of the last remnant of Moorish power in Spain.
Columbus, repulsed from his native country, had strangely sought aid in
this distracted land. As if a higher will than his own were directing
his weary steps, he had pursued these conquerors of the Moors over the
mountains, and found them in their tents within sight of the red towers
on the heights of Granada. They had other conquests than of unknown
worlds in view. The prize they sought was gleaming, like a sun, between
them and the snows of Sierra Nevada. They turned a deaf ear, in the din
of war, to the tales of the adventurous sailor. And he went away.
He had gone a day’s journey on his solitary way to Seville and had
reached Loja, where we had fleas and cake for our lunch this morning,
when a messenger from the queen arrested his steps and brought him back
to the royal presence and favor. They gave him the blessing and the gold
he needed, and then they conquered the Moors, and Granada, with its
Alhambra, fell into their hands. And in the same year Columbus gave them
a new world in the West.
Years and years since, even in the long time ago when the sunny days of
childhood were yet in the glow of their noon, I remember wondering “what
the Alhambra is.” It had to me then, and all the way along the
lengthening years of life, a dreamy rather than a real existence, and if
at times I read its story, the “Tales of the Alhambra” rather increased
than weakened the sense of dream-life in which alone it was to be
enjoyed.
In Malaga I went into a Spanish bookstore and asked for English books on
Spain. The bibliopole sent me into the garret of his shop, where in a
corner was heaped a pile of odds and ends of English literature, such as
might have been left behind by some poor invalids who had perished in
their perusal, while seeking to get a new lease of life in this
delicious clime. But among them were several copies, in paper covers, of
Irving’s “Tales of the Alhambra,” whose uncut leaves showed them to have
been unread and kept for sale to passing pilgrims like myself. I carried
one off. It would be pleasant to read on the spot: and I have read them
with fresh delight, while every court and wall and tower, every
fountain, stream, plain, hill is linked with the stories that the old
master told while he dreamed within the ruins of the palace that his
fiction has made more famous than its history. But reading tales about
the Alhambra do not tell us what it is, and it is quite likely that my
account will give you no more intelligible an idea of it.
We have ascended the hill through a long avenue shaded with elms, and
approach a massive gate, the gate of judgment, a seat of justice in
olden times, where in the open air, as was common in Oriental climes,
the magistrates, the elders, were accustomed to administer the law.
“Then he made a porch, where he might judge, even a porch of judgment.”
I Kings, vii. 7. Many other passages of Scripture allude to the same
custom. A square tower surmounts the gate, and the pillars are inscribed
with Arabic legends. The horse-shoe arch has a mighty hand in
bas-relief, with the fingers pointing upward, and on the second arch is
a key in stone, and the tradition is that the gate was impregnable until
the stone hand should take the stone key and unlock the gate for the
enemy to enter. Without waiting for such a miracle, we pass through the
two-leaved gates, and by a winding and still ascending path we reach the
terrace on which the palaces and villas of the Moorish kings were built.
This plateau is about half a mile long, and narrow, surrounded by red
walls six feet thick and thirty feet high, and made strong by many
towers, each one of which was the residence of some of the household of
royalty. The various styles of architecture within and on these walls
are the best illustrations of the successive races and tastes and power
of the men who have ruled on this lofty eminence. Rome and Carthage has
each in its turn been master here, and left his sign-manual in
characters that time has spared. More incongruous than any thing else is
the Tuscan palace of Charles V., and a modern parish church has risen on
the ruins of a mosque. Napoleon’s soldiers were followed by the English,
and modern war is not a whit more mindful of the proprieties of art and
sentiment than the old savagery which we despise. Ruin, desolation,
decay is now the spirit of the place. It is impressive, eloquent indeed;
perhaps more so than those ruins in Egypt and Greece and Rome that have
the hoar of more centuries upon them. It is not so strange, nor so
mournful, that the columns and walls should now be in the dust that did
their duty two, three thousand years ago. It seems to be almost becoming
that the temples of old paganism should moulder in the dispensation of
faith that worships in spirit only. But it is painfully suggestive of
the transient nature of all human art and power that these massive
structures with gorgeous decorations, whose splendor is only equalled by
the fancies of romance, have had their rise, their reign, and their ruin
all within the lapse of the last ten hundred years.
Antonio Aguilo ’y Fuster, Conseije del Palacio Arabe, Alhambra, gave me
his card, as we entered a small door in the side of a plain wall, and
were informed that we were now in the palace of the Moors, the veritable
Alhambra itself! The important personage whose card was in my hand was
the guardian of this mysterious realm, and would, for the usual
consideration of a dollar to him paid, introduce us to the several
apartments. The contract was concluded, and the porter led the way.
He brought us first into the Court of Myrtles. It is a vast open oblong,
170 feet by 74, with a lake in the centre, surrounded by a marble
pavement and myrtle-trees, from which it takes its name. In this lake
the wives of the Moorish monarch bathed, of course secluded from all
eyes but his own, and the eunuchs, whose “sentry boxes” still remain.
Light and beautiful columns, with graceful arches springing from the
capitals, support a gallery on all sides. Out of this court open many
rooms, whose floors and walls and ceilings, with their inscriptions,
their delicate tracery work, not worth the name of sculpture, but
beautiful as perishable, are the types of the race that revelled here in
the beginning of the fourteenth century. Right here Mohammed III. had
his head cut off, and his body was pitched into the water where the
usurper king Nasr often enjoyed the luxury of a bath with his wives.
The governor, or more properly the janitor, made brief comments on the
architecture and uses of the various apartments, and then led us to the
_Court of Lions_. Above all other portions of the Alhambra this gives
the most correct idea of the palace as it was in its ancient and early
glory. A process of restoration has been going on for some years, under
the direction of government, and Sr. Contreras having the work in
charge, has succeeded so happily that Yusef himself, who was the first
monarch to indulge in these Oriental shawl-pattern tracery and tawdry
designs, would have been delighted to have the modern architect to help
him from the beginning. And the Emperor of Russia has heard such reports
of the wonderful restorative powers of this skilful manipulator of
plaster, that he has ordered an Alhambra for himself, a copy of this
series of ruined palaces, which he will keep for a curiosity on the
banks of the Neva. In the midst of the court is a fountain supported by
twelve marble lions, in the centre of a vast alabaster basin. Standing
on the four sides of it are 124 white marble pillars, sustaining a light
gallery and a pavilion projecting into the court, elaborately adorned
with filagree-worked walls, and a domed roof that admits the tempered
light and excludes the heat of the sun. This fountain too has been
filled with blood, for here in the midst of all this luxury of splendid
decorations the children of Abu Hazen were beheaded by the order of
their own father. One only was spared, and he lived to regret it; for he
lived to be the famous and unhappy Boabdil, the last of the Moorish
kings of Granada. The next hall into which we will enter is that of the
_Abencerrages_, an illustrious family, who fell under suspicion of
disloyalty to the throne. The wily monarch invited all the leaders of
this line to a feast, and when they had been sumptuously entertained,
they were invited, one by one, to the Court of Lions, which we have just
left, and each man’s head was cut off as he entered. The dark spots on
the marble floor are, of course, kept sacredly dark from year to year,
in memory of the treacherous punishment of imaginary treason.
The most magnificent of all the halls is that of the Ambassadors. It is
the largest of the apartments, and is seventy-five feet high. It was the
grand reception-room, where the throne of the Sultan was placed, and
around the sides of the room are niches where each one of the
ambassadors of foreign courts was seated in state, on great occasions.
The ceiling is curiously wrought in different colors,—blue, white, and
gold, inlaid wood in crowns and stars and wheels. All around are
inscriptions celebrating the praises of the kings, and couched in the
panegyric imagery of the Oriental style.
It would be tedious to read, if I had patience to describe, the many
courts and halls and baths, saloons and chambers, the galleries leading
to them, the little gardens where the sun looks kindly down upon a few
plants and flowers, and to tell you of the thousand-and-one tales with
which so many of these towers and chambers have been made historic.
Murder has followed close on the heels of jealousy, in all ages, and
under a system that makes intrigue and lust the great amusement of life,
the history of the harem has always been a story of suspicion and blood.
[Illustration: PORTION OF A DOOR.]
Bensaken is _the_ guide to the Alhambra. Others are willing to lead you
through the labyrinth, and will talk to you as they go, in a mixture of
Spanish, Italian, French, and English, with a dash of Arabic, which they
have picked up from the translations of inscriptions on the walls; but
they are all ignorant fellows, who live by the ignorance of those to
whom they tell their stories. Now Bensaken is an Englishman, born in
Gibraltar, and has lived to be seventy years old in Spain; has been
through all these years adding to his knowledge of the country, its
history and its condition, especially all that relates to the Moors,
Granada, and the Alhambra, until he has grown into a walking cyclopedia
of Spanish lore. And this learning of his he guards so cautiously that
when other guides and interpreters, with travellers so unhappy as to
have fallen into their hands, would come near to us while our learned
Bensaken was discoursing to us of the wonderful mysteries of the
Alhambra, its legends and its uses, he would suddenly pause in his
interesting narrations, and begging pardon for his silence, would wait
until they had passed beyond hearing; for, said our veracious and most
agreeable Bensaken, “I cannot afford to let them fellows know what I
have been learning all these years of my life, I have forgot enough to
set all of them up in business.”
“Did you know our countryman, Washington Irving, when he was here?” I
inquired.
“Oh yes, and a nice, worthy gentleman he was: so kind, so pleasant
always; but he did not keep very closely to the facts: to tell you the
truth, those are very beautiful stories of Mr. Irving, but the most of
them are all in your eye, sir.”
“He speaks of the good people who lived here when he lodged in the
Alhambra, and a fair maiden to whom he gave the name of Dolores, and a
noble young man, Molina, or something like that; what ever became of
them, can you tell me?”
Bensaken gave a low little laugh, and said that Dolores was a coarse and
dowdy drudge, whom the warm imagination of the author had invested with
purely rhetorical charms, and the other occupants of the palace had no
claims to distinction. One of them whom he mentioned was murdered in a
street brawl, and the whole family had passed into oblivion. Yet their
names will live in the stories of the Alhambra while the genial and
smoothly flowing pages of Irving are read as the pleasantest and most
_reliable_ account of the traditions of this wondrous pile.
We went down into the garden of the Queen’s prison, and on a little
patch of green we stood while Bensaken pointed to the gallery where she
was permitted to walk and take the air and enjoy the sunlight, but the
various chambers to which she was restricted had no exit. This was not
very close confinement, to be sure, but it becomes intolerable, even the
luxury of a palace, with a flower garden in its court, and gorgeous
hangings and gilded ceilings and marvellous sculptures, if the royal
lodger is a prisoner, and hopes for no exit but through the gate that
opens in the tomb.
And then we visited the “Hall of Two Sisters,” so fancifully named
because of two immense marble slabs, which form a part of the pavement.
The decorations of this apartment are exceedingly beautiful. The
stalactite roof is said to consist of 5,000 pieces, and though all this
plaster ornamentation is supported only by reeds, it remains almost
unbroken as it was when first put up. These were the private apartments
of the wives and slaves of the Sultan, and were furnished with couches
and divans, and the walls are covered with love poems, in the glowing
language of the East, celebrating the sensual delights of these
voluptuaries of the harem. All that architecture and upholstery, poetry
and taste could supply for the embellishment of chambers of pleasure,
were lavished with wasteful profusion here, or, to use the more familiar
terms of our Western phraseology, “they were got up regardless of
expense.”
Passing out upon a balcony we looked down upon the _Linderaka_ gardens,
which once were the delight of a princess whose name, Linda Raxa, was
the same as Pretty Rachel; she became a Christian, and her story, if put
into the hands of a skilful manufacturer, would make a beautiful
romance, with more truth than is necessary for half a dozen modern
historical novels. The dressing-room of the Queen in one of the towers
has a look-out upon the surrounding country; the Sierra Nevada, rising
11,000 feet, and so near in this clear atmosphere that it seems close at
hand, and one feels the coolness of the snow-cliffs on its sides; there
is the house, now a college, where Christians suffered martyrdom under
Domitian and Nero; those huts in the hill in front and those holes into
the hill itself are the habitations of gypsies, whose home is Spain, and
who are very numerous in these parts; the city of Granada itself lies at
our feet; once it had more than a thousand towers, and now it has more
than 500, and they are monuments of departed glory. Yet there is nothing
in the city so mournfully eloquent of human folly and frailty as the
ruin in which we are standing. Here is a wide marble slab, pierced with
twelve holes, and below the slab is the chamber where the perfume was
prepared, and as it ascended the Queen stood over these holes, and was
made suitably fragrant! In the days of Esther similar means were
evidently in use, and they were probably quite as salutary and agreeable
as the modern condensations which in a bag or bottle furnish the
necessary facilities for making lovely woman odorous to her friends.
Down below was a suite of rooms where the baths for the Sultan and the
children were arranged, with pipes for the supply of hot and cold water,
as convenient as in “a house with all the modern improvements.” Places
for couches, galleries for musicians whose melodies would make the
luxury of the bath more enjoyable; the pavement is of white marble, the
roof is pierced with holes like stars, and the whole arrangement
corresponds with the baths of Turkey and Cairo at the present day.
[Illustration: THE VERMILION TOWER.]
And the long passage through which we were now conducted led to the
dungeons of the castle; most of them are walled up, but one was left
open that we might see how short and easy was the mode of disposing of
an unhappy victim of jealousy or revenge, who could be built into a
recess and find it a dying bed and grave. It was a long subterranean
walk till we came out to the governor’s court. Here I saw what I had not
supposed to be possible,—a marble slab bent into the shape of a bow by
the weight of a wall falling and resting upon it.
On every balcony and at every window the wise Bensaken was ready with a
tale of love, or blood, or gold; and it would be hard to say in which he
most delighted to indulge. He was sure that out of this window the
beautiful Zoraya, the “Morning Star” of Abu Hazen, she that was once
Dona Isabel de Solis, a fair Christian captive who became the favorite
Sultana, and the mother of Boabdil, let him down by a basket into an
abyss from which he escaped and saved his life, to become afterwards the
last of the race of princes here. But I must tell you one of his stories
that he knows to be true, and which has never yet been entered into any
chronicles of the Alhambra.