Moorish Remains in Spain: Being a Brief Record of the Arabian Conquest of the Peninsula With a Particular Account of the Mohammedan Architecture and ... Cordova, Seville and Toledo (Classic Reprint) - Tapa dura

Excerpt from Moorish Remains in Spain: Being a Brief Record of the Arabian Conquest of the Peninsula With a Particular Account of the Mohammedan Architecture and Decoration in Cordova, Seville and Toledo

Red Palace of Granada, that glorious sanctuary of Spain, was in existence. It was written at a time when I shared the very common delusion that the Alhambra was the only word in a vocabulary of relics which includes such Arabian superlatives as the Mosque at Cordova, the Gates and the Cristo de la Luz of Toledo, and the Alcazar at Seville. I had then to learn that while the Alhambra has rightly been accepted as the last word on Moorish Art in Spain, it must not be regarded as the solitary monument of the splendour and beauty with which the Arabs stamped their virile and artistic personality upon Andalus.

In the course of frequent and protracted visits to Spain I came to realise that the Moors were not a one-city nation; they did not exhaust themselves in a single, isolated effort to achieve the sublimely beautiful. Before the Alhambra was conceived in the mind of Mohammed the First of Granada, Toledo had been adorned and lost Cordova, which for centuries had commanded the admira tion of Europe, had paled and waned beside the increasing splendour of Seville; and the gem of Andalusia itself had been wrested from the Moor by the victorious Ferdinand III. But each in turn had been redeemed from Gothic tyranny by the art-adoring influence of the Moslem. Their dominion, their politics, and their influence is a tale of a day that is dead, but it survives in the monuments of their Art, which exist to the glory of Spain and the wonder of the world. The Arabian sense of the beautiful sealed itself upon Cordova.

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