their purpose. With the king of Leon at their back, they put forth new
efforts, and in 873 they forced Mohammed to acknowledge their
independence as a Republic in return for the payment of an annual
tribute. The treaty made with Mohammed was ratified by his successors,
Mundhir and Abdallah. Even the Great Khalif, Abd-er-Rahman, was at first
content to send from Cordova a royal proclamation, commanding Toledo to
surrender her independence to the khalifate, and acknowledge him as
liege lord, and it was not until 930, or eighteen years after he had
ascended the throne, that he went up with his army against the arrogant
and rebellious city. The siege of Toledo by Abd-er-Rahman lasted for
eight years. The Moorish king built the city, which he called “Victory,”
on a mountain commanding Toledo, and here he quartered his troops until
famine and privation should open the gates for him. The long years of
waiting culminated in a swift assault, and, at the close of a day’s
fighting, the emaciated heads of the insurgent chiefs were impaled on
spears to keep their last sightless watch from the walls of the city
they had defended with such heroic fortitude.
After the death of the Great Khalif, and, thenceforth until the
Christian conquest, Toledo maintained a partial independence, tolerating
the rule of Moslem princes, but paying no allegiance to Cordova. And in
the end she was recovered to the Christians by a piece of picturesque
treachery. Alfonso of Leon (Alfonso VI.) had fled from the monastery of
Sagahun, and sought the protection of King Almamon of Toledo, from whom
he received the most generous hospitality, including gifts of palaces,
farms, and orchards, and the government of the Christian section of the
inhabitants. The Moorish king demanded only the subscription of his
guest’s allegiance, and, in return, he gave a sincere affection, and
promises of faithful protection. Almamon, whose one vague but ever
present concern was the possibility of Toledo ever falling again into
the hands of the Christians, was discussing the subject one day with his
courtiers in the garden of Alfonso’s palace, and engrossed in the
consideration of the possible misfortune, he described minutely the only
plan by which, in his opinion, the city might be taken. Alfonso, who was
one of the company, affected to be asleep while this dissertation was in
progress, and the courtiers, who were unable to restrain the eloquence
of the king, endeavoured to obtain Almamon’s consent to the execution of
his Christian guest. But the king refused to listen to this inhospitable
proposition, and on the death of Sancho of Castile (who was murdered by
Bellido, under the walls of Zamora), his brother, Alfonso of Leon,
returned to his own kingdom, loaded with honours, and carrying with him
the secret of Toledo’s vincibility. Before he departed the two kings
swore eternal amity, and entered into an offensive and defensive
alliance against the enemies of either, and the enemies of Almamon’s
son, Yahya. But after the death of Almamon, Alfonso, forgetting his oath
to his friend, and remembering only the plan of siege he had overheard
in the garden of Toledo, adopted the principles invented by the Moorish
theorist, and, in 1085, entered the city as its conqueror.
What has Toledo to show to-day for the three and a-half centuries of the
artistic influence of Morisco culture and influence? Surprisingly
little! And yet it would be an even greater surprise if she had more to
show. The village that climbs the bosom of a mountain does not alter the
contour of its impassive resting-place; the etchings traced upon a
Toledo blade does not affect the temper of the steel. The city is still
“Moorish in appearance,” to employ the guide-book phrase, but it is
gradually divesting itself of the marks which at one time, and then only
in part, disguised its Gothic ancestry. Since Alfonso, the tyrant of the
Galicians, seized the town of Toledo, “that pearl of the necklace, that
highest tower of the empire in this Peninsula”
[Illustration: TOLEDO
ANCIENT GATE OF VISAGRA.]
[Illustration: CASTLE OF ST. SERVANDO.]
(to quote Abon I Hasan), the Moorish bridge, near Santa Leocadia, and
the other, which crossed the old Roman waterway, have disappeared, and
the legendary Palace of Galiana is let out in miserable tenements to the
lowest class of peasants.
Moratin has immortalised Galiana de Toledo, “most beautiful and
marvellous,” and Calderon has written of the palace built for her by her
father, Galafre, who ruled over Toledo for Abd-er-Rahman I. Galafre took
the old Visigoth shell, and transformed the edifice, by the witchery of
Moorish windows and arches and staircases, into a palace of delight. He
devoted his knowledge of hydraulics to the unkempt Toledan Vega, and
made of it a paradise of leaf and bloom and rill. In the fairy garden,
Charlemagne, according to tradition, found the “most beautiful and
marvellous” Galiana, and carried her away from the unwelcome addresses
of her Moorish admirer, Prince Bradamante, to reign over France as his
queen. The arms of the Guzmans, into whose possession the palace passed
under Castillian rule, may still be descried upon its dismantled front.
The wonderful clepsydras, or water clocks of Toledo, the invention of
Abou-l’-Casem, Abdo-er-Rahman, or Az-Zarcal, as he is more usually
styled, are quaintly and vaguely described in the following Moorish
document: “One of the greatest towns of Spain is Toledo, and Toledo is a
large and well-populated city. On all sides it is washed by a splendid
river, called the Tagus.... Among the rare and notable things of Toledo
is that wheat may be kept more than seventy years without rotting, which
is a great advantage, as all the land abounds in grain and seed of all
kinds. But what is still more marvellous and surprising in Toledo, and
what we believe no other inhabited town of all the world has anything to
equal, are some clepsydras, or water clocks. It is said that Az-Zarcal,
hearing of a certain talisman, which is in the city of Arin, of Eastern
India, and which, Masudi says, shows the hours by means of aspas, or
hands, from the time the sun rises till it sets, determined to fabricate
an artifice by means of which the people could know the hour of day or
night, and calculate the day of the moon. He made two great ponds in a
house on the bank of the Tagus, not far from the Gate of the Tanners,
making them so that they should be filled with water or emptied
according to the rise and fall of the moon.”
In Babylonia, India, and Egypt, the clepsydra was used from before the
dawn of history, especially in astronomical observations, and Latin and
Greek writers refer to a type which resembled the modern sand glass, and
was used in the courts of law to limit the length of the pleadings. The
general form of the clepsydra, which Pliny ascribed to Scipio Nasica,
consisted essentially of a float, which slowly rose by the tricklings of
water from above through a small hole in a plate of metal. As the float
rose it pointed to a scale of hours at the side of the water vessel; or,
in the more elaborate forms, moved a wheel by means of a ratchet, and
thus turned a hand on a dial.
The Moorish recounter of the wonders of the water clocks of Toledo tells
us that its movements were regulated by the moon. As soon as the moon
became visible by means of invisible conducts, the water began to flow
into the ponds, and, by day rise, the ponds were four-sevenths full. At
night another seventh was added, so that by day or night the ponds
continued to increase in water a seventh every twenty-four hours, and
were quite full by the time the moon was full. On the 14th of the month,
when the moon began to fall, the ponds also fell in like proportion. On
the 21st of the month they were half empty, and on the 29th
[Illustration: MOORISH SWORD.]
completely so. The exact working of those clepsydras, however, is lost,
as a bungling astronomer, who was deputed by Alfonso “the Learned” to
examine them and discover the secret, broke the delicate machinery, and
was forthwith dubbed a Jew by the indignant and exasperated Moors.
Beyond the walls of the city is a stretch of fertile land beside the
Tagus, which is called the Garden of the King; and at the further end of
it is the country palace of Galiana. This pleasure house is of a later
date than the palace of the same name within the city; but, like that
debased edifice, it is a ruin, its walls of extreme thickness, flanked
with two massive towers, only remaining to represent what was once
“A palace lifting to eternal summer
Its marble walls, from out a glossy bower
Of coolest foliage, musical with birds.”
In the War of Independence the French soldiers made a ruin of the
one-time magnificent Casa de Vargas, which was built by Juan de Herrera,
and has been described by Antonio Ponz as one of the architectural
splendours of Toledo. Ponz tells us that “the façade is perfect Doric,
of exquisite marble, with fluted columns on either side, and the
pedestals have military emblems in bas-relief. The frieze consists of
helmets, heads of bulls, and goblets. The coat of arms above the cornice
is most beautiful, and the women’s forms, seated on each side, are
life-size. Nothing could be finer than the details, as well as the whole
of this façade, and for sure it is the most serious, the most lovely,
and most finished of all I have seen in Toledo. You enter a spacious
courtyard with lofty galleries running round it above and below the
lower gallery, sustained by Doric pillars and by the upper Ionic
columns. The staircase is truly regal, and likewise the various inner
chambers. They contain different chimney pieces, ornamented with
graceful fancies executed in bas-relief; and thus, in the lower
quarters, as in the principal, are other galleries with columns like
those of the courtyard, with delicious views of the meadows and the
Tagus.”
In the most miserable quarter of the town, far up above the river, the
visitor may see some huge blocks of stone, and a few broken arches--all
that remains of the once magnificent Moorish palace of Henry of Aragon,
lord of Villena. Henry of Aragon was an enlightened prince and erudite
scholar, and the possessor of a superb collection of books, which were
publicly burnt on the plea that their owner had intercourse with the
devil. Don Enrique is said to have used the subterranean chambers and
passages of the palace as a meeting-place for witches, and here he is
supposed to have entertained his Satanic majesty. Samuel Levi, Pedro the
Cruel’s treasurer, turned the palace vault into a strong-room, but the
prince, in a needy moment, proved stronger; and the Toledans, following
the example of their king, completed the sacking of the mansion. The
Duke of Escalona, in the reign of Charles Quint, burnt the palace to the
ground, and fled the city with his family, rather than give house-room
to the treacherous Bourbon, the Constable of France, at the bidding of
his royal master.
There is in the little plaza of Santa Isabel, a half-obliterated Arabian
inscription, wishing “Lasting prosperity and perpetual glory to the
master of this edifice.” This inscription identifies the ruin as the
palace of King Pedro. The beautiful Casa de Mesa bears scarcely a trace
of the exquisite Moorish workmanship which characterised the palace of
the Dukes of Alva; it is impossible to determine from the dilapidated
Casa de las Tormerias whether it was originally built for a Moorish
palace or a mezquita; while
[Illustration: PLATE XLVIII.
Plaster Ornaments, used as Upright and Horizontal Bands enclosing Panels
on the Walls.]
some few scraps of Moorish inscription in the wood-work of a ruined wall
still testify to the origin of the Casa de Munarriz. The alcazar, which
was twice destroyed by fire, is represented by the façades, the three
towers, the patio, and the enormous staircase--perhaps the only parts of
the building that were not rebuilt by Charles Quint. The edifice
commenced by that monarch, and completed by Philip II., was for long the
most splendid and colossal palace in Spain. Staremberg’s troops
destroyed the building by fire in 1710; and, a century later, the French
troops fired the structure which Carlos III. had recomposed out of the
ashes of Charles V.’s alcazar. The Casa de Mesa, the palace of Estevan
de Illan, is reduced to a single chamber of exquisite Moorish
workmanship; the remaining Moorish part of the Taller del Moro is used
as a common workshop; the regal staircase of the alcazar, so wide that a
whole army might march up its noble steps, ends in space.
As with the palaces of Toledo, so it is with its temples--the traces of
Moorish art are nearly all defaced or obliterated. The mosque, which was
replaced by the church of San Roman, possesses the purest mudejar
steeple of Toledo, erected by Esteban de Illan, and another, if smaller,
Moorish steeple, adorns the Santa Magdalena. A monument, which ranks
among the most interesting in Spain, is the Cristo de la Luz, located
between the Puerta del Sol and the Puerta Bisagra--a little gem of
Moorish-Byzantine architecture, which is regarded as the oldest and most
perfect specimen of its kind in the Peninsula. On the walls of this
church, which remains to this day a perfect mosque, the conquering
Alfonso VI. hung up his shield in 1035 to commemorate the first mass
that was celebrated in Toledo after the defeat of the Moors. Until Tarik
came to Toledo the mosque had been a Gothic temple, before which hung a
cross, bearing an effigy of the crucified Christ. Legend declares that
two impious Jews pricked the greatly-venerated body with a dagger, and
that from the wound blood instantly gushed forth. The Jews, who
attempted to evade the penalty of their folly by hiding the crucifix,
were traced by the stains of blood to their house, and torn to pieces by
the infuriated Christians. Tradition further asserts that the Jews
planned a revenge by poisoning the feet of the restored statue, but that
when a woman knelt before it the figure withdrew its foot from her kiss.
Many other legends attach to the sacred relic, which was removed from
before the church when the city was captured by the Moors, and secreted
in a cavity in the wall, with a burning lamp placed before it. When the
Moorish dominion came to an end, 370 years later, and the cavity was
revealed, the unreplenished lamp was found to be still alight before the
crucifix in the wall of the Moorish mosque. From this legend the church
takes its name of the Christ of the Light.
This wonderful little monument, which is only twenty-two feet by
twenty-five feet, possesses six short naves, which cross each other
under nine vaults, and in the centre are four short, stout columns,
surmounted by sculptured capitals, from which spring sixteen heavy
horseshoe arches. This forest of naves and arches comprises a miniature
reproduction of the mosque of Cordova. Arcades, cusped in Moorish
fashion, and supported on shafts, pierce the walls; the inevitable “half
orange” ceiling domes the centre, and above the principal arch is the
shield of Alfonso VI., embellished with a white cross on a crimson
ground, which the victorious king handed to Archbishop Bernardo to
supply the place of a cross above the dismantled altar. This gem of
Moorish-Byzantine architecture, so small yet so perfect,
[Illustration: ARAB FRAGMENT AT TARRAGONA.]
so simple yet so fantastic, conveys an impression of amazing strength,
and presents an admirable example of early Arabian work.
The nunnery of Santa Fe, which was originally a regal Moorish palace,
has been shorn of nearly all its ancient beauty, which is now only
traceable in the arcaded brickwork of the wall, almost obliterated by
exuberant foliage. There are still the remnants of Moorish ornamentation
in the convent halls and corridors of San Juan de la Penitencia, and the
influence of Moorish art is also seen in some good azulejo and the
artesonade ceiling of Santa Isabel.
The Alcantara bridge, which was originally a Roman structure, was
repaired by the Goths in 687, and rebuilt by the Moors of 866. It was of
this Moorish bridge that Rasis el Moro wrote: “It was such a rich and
marvellous work, and so subtly wrought, that never man with truth could
believe there was any other such fine work in Spain.” Since then it has
been repaired and restored wholly, or in part, no fewer than eight
times; and while these alterations have changed its style and
appearance, it still remains one of the finest and most picturesque
monuments of Toledo. The bridge of San Martin, which compares with it in
interest and beauty, was built in 1203, and is guarded at either end
with a tower and gateway adorned with Moorish arches and battlements.
The bridge of San Martin gives entrance to the city through the gate of
the Cambron. It is no longer Moorish, as it was in the time of Alfonso
VI.; but on its half-renaissance, half-classical architecture, one may
still read the remains of some of those grandiloquent utterances of the
Moorish spirit which prompted Ponz to style Toledo the city of
magnificent inscriptions. It was a devout, if somewhat credulous, spirit
which inspired the transcription of the following article of faith:
“There is but one God on earth, and Mohammed is His messenger. All the
faithful who believe in our prophet Mohammed, and continue to kiss the
hands and feet of Murabite Muley Abda Alcadar every day, will be without
sin, will not be blind, nor deaf, nor lame, nor wounded; and receiving
his benediction, when the time of his death comes, will only be three
days ill and dying, will go with open eyes to Paradise forgiven of all
sins.” Another inscription bore the following exhortation and
compensatory promise: “Prayer and peace over our lord and prophet
Mohammed. All the faithful, when they went to lie down in their beds,
mentioning the Alfagiu Murabito Abdala, and recommending themselves to
him, will enter no battle out of which they will not come victorious;
and in whatever battle against Christians they may stain their lances
with Christian blood, dying that same day, will go alive and whole with
eyes open to Paradise, and his descendants will remain till the fourth
generation forgiven.”
The present Visagra Gate, rebuilt under Charles V., dates back to the
Moors. It is entirely Moorish in character, with the heavy simple
features, the triple horseshoe arches and upper crenellated apertures
which we associate with the first period of Morisco architecture.
Through this gate, which is now blocked up, Alfonso VI. entered Toledo.
The two graceful square towers, roofed with green and white tiles, which
compose the edifice, are joined by the high turreted walls of a square
courtyard, and the decorations include the Senate’s dedication of the
gate to Charles Quint, the sculptured arms of the emperor, a statue of
St. Eugenie, two others of Gothic kings, and a life-sized angel holding
an unsheathed sword. This cold, bare inventory of the ornaments of the
gate convey no idea of the splendid impressiveness of the structure, the
splendour and charm of
[Illustration: PLATE XLIX.
Blank Window.]
which sink into comparative insignificance beside its glorious
neighbour, the Gate of the Sun.
This magnificent gate of rough stone, with its towers of brown granite,
has been rightly described as one of the world’s masterpieces. Yet here
again the pen is powerless to do justice to its beauty; and to describe
its proportions and decoration is to complicate, rather than explain,
the impression that is conveyed by the camera. The square towers, with
their semi-circular fronts, and the great central arch resting on two
Moorish columns, and the zones of ornamental arches above the
horse-shaped openings, comprise a Moorish gem against a Spanish sky, a
miracle of loveliness upon a rough and naked rampart. But how, cries
Hannah Lynch, to write of this Puerta del Sol, that “thing of beauty
even among crowded enchantments! It is to pick one’s way through
superlatives and points of exclamation and call in vain on the goddess
of sobriety to subdue our tendency to excess and incoherence. Put this
matchless gate in the middle of the desert of Sahara; it would then be
worth while making the frightful journey alone to look at it. However
far you may have journeyed, you would still be for ever thankful to have
seen such a masterpiece--incontestably a work of supreme art, perhaps
the rarest thing of the world.” Whether the writer intends her high
eulogy to be applied generally to any “work of supreme art,” or to the
Puerta del Sol in particular, most people who have come under the
witching influence of the art of the Moors, will not deny that it is
well deserved.
[Illustration: PLATE L.
Rafters of a Roof over a Doorway, now destroyed, beneath the Tocador de
la Reyna.]
[Illustration: ANCIENT ARABIAN BATHS AT PALMA, MAJORCA.]
MOORISH ORNAMENT
A NOTE ON THE ELEMENTS OF ARAB ART
In art, precept is subservient; practice is supreme. The idea which may
be hidden in a picture is of little moment; it is the design, fully
accomplished, which is prized. Its inspiration may become a “light to
shine before men,” but it attains its paramount value only when
realised.
Refinement of manners and acuteness of intellect have, in the East,
nothing in common with what we call education. In this social state,
ignorance, which, among us, condemns a man, may be the condition of
great originality. The Arab tent-dweller was, and is, often, a very
superior man; for the tent is a kind of school, always open, where, from
contact with educated guests who have seen men and cities, was produced
an intellectual movement which led the Arab, in exchanging his nomadic
life for a settled habitation, to translate the tent to a more solid
form; to commute the tent-pole for a slender marble column; and to
transform luxurious products of the loom, which had adorned his former
dwelling, to a semblance of their golden tissues on fairy-decorated
diapery.
If the poetry and refinement of the South of Europe in modern times
cannot be traced, as many authors would have us believe--notably Father
Andres, a learned Spaniard, anxious to give to his own country the
honour of imparting to the rest of Europe the first impulse of
refinement after the fall of the Roman Empire--to the Arabs of Spain,
much must still be allowed to their influence; for their progress in
refinement was hardly less brilliant and rapid than their progress in
Empire. At the period of the glory of Cordova, which began about A.D.
750, and continued to the time of its conquest by the Christians in
1236, the scholars of Spain were in a higher state of cultivation than
could be found elsewhere; and if the Kingdom of Granada--the last
stronghold of the Moslem--which ended in 1492, was less refined, it was
perhaps more splendid and luxurious. The public schools and libraries of
the Spanish Arabs were resorted to, not only by those of their own faith
at home and in the East, but by Christians from different parts of
Europe; and Pope Sylvester the Second (Gerbet, a Frenchman, Pope
999-1003), one of the most remarkable men of his age, is believed to
have owed his elevation to the culture he absorbed in Seville and
Cordova.
Arab art takes its place with the arts of Greece and Japan as one of the
three great schools into which all styles of ornament naturally fall.
Beauty and simplicity--the restrained rhythm and order which form the
essential foundation of Greek art--is as distinct from the vivacious
realism and unsymmetrical, haphazard decoration of the Japanese, as from
that elegance and complexity produced by geometrical involutions
symmetrically constructed, which constitute the basis of Moorish art.
These three styles have been compared by Monsieur J. Bourgoin, in his
_Elements of Arab Art_, to the three kingdoms of Nature. Greek art he
likens to the animal kingdom, the Japanese art to the vegetable kingdom,
and Arabian art, from the symmetry which recalls the crystallisation of
minerals in its uniformity of configuration, and its elementary
structure, he compares with the mineral kingdom.
[Illustration: PLATE LI.
Band at Springing of Arch at the Entrance to one of the Halls.]