Moorish Seville
Seville was not among the spoils of Tarik, conqueror at the Guadalete. That general having directed his march upon Toledo, it was reserved to his superior officer, Musa Ben Nosseyr, to subdue the proudest city of Bætica. The citizens held out for a month and then retired upon Beja in Alemtejo. The Arabian commander left a garrison in the city, henceforward to be known for five hundred and thirty-six years as Ishbiliyah, and pushed forward to Merida. The Sevillians took advantage of his absence to shake off his yoke, assisted by the people of Beja and Niebla. Their triumph was short lived. Abdelasis, son of Musa, fell upon them like a thunderbolt, extinguished the rising in blood, and made the city the seat of government of the newly acquired provinces.
The interesting personality and tragic fate of Seville’s first Viceroy have made the site of his residence a question of some importance. It was formerly believed that he occupied the Acropolis or Citadel, supposed then to be covered by the Alcazar. The researches of Señores Gayangos and Madrazo have made it plain, however, that he established his headquarters in a church which had been dedicated by the sister of St Isidore to the martyrs Rufina and Justa, now amalgamated with the convent of La Trinidad. Adjacent to this building Abdelasis erected a mosque; and it was within its walls, while reciting the first surah of the Koran, that he was assassinated by the emissaries of the Khalif of Damascus—death being a not uncommon reward in the Middle Ages for too brilliant military services rendered to one’s sovereign.
The seat of government was transferred, soon after the murder of the son of Musa, to Cordova, and Seville sank for a time to a subsidiary rank. The various cities of Andalusia were allotted by the governor Abdelmelic among the different Syrian peoples who had flocked over on the news of the conquest; and Ishbiliyah, according to Señor de Madrazo, was assigned to the citizens of Horns, the classic Emesa. Owing to intermarriage between the conquerors and the natives, the distinction between the Moslems according to the places of origin of these early settlers was soon lost in that drawn between the pure-blooded Arabs and the Muwallads or half-breeds. In the meantime the germs of Arabian culture had fallen upon a kindly soil, and a new school of art and letters was in process of formation in Spain. The imposing monuments of Roman, Greek, and Byzantine civilisation, which the victorious hosts of Islam found ever in their path, were not without influence upon their conceptions of the beautiful in form. The fusion of the Hispano-Goths and Arabs likewise tended to produce a commingling of spirit, and ultimately to give birth to an art and a culture racy of the soil. “According to all contemporary writers,” says Señor Rafael Contreras, “it is beyond all doubt that the style which the artists of the Renaissance called Moorish (in the sense of originating in Northern Africa) was never anything of the sort. The details so much admired on account of their richness, the vaultings and the arched hollows practised in the walls, the festoons of the arches, the commarajias and alicates, were Spanish works finer and more delicate than those of the East. The root was originally in Arabia, but it was happily transplanted to Spain, where blossomed that beautiful flower which diffuses its perfume after a lapse of seven centuries.”
Under the Western Khalifate, Seville flourished in spite of the assaults and internecine warfare of which it was frequently the theatre. When in 888 Andalusia became temporarily split up into several nominally independent states, the city acknowledged the sway of Ibrahim Ibn Hajjaj. The chronicler Ben Hayán, often quoted by Señor de Madrazo, describes this prince as keeping up imperial state and riding forth attended by five hundred horsemen. He ventured to assume the tiraz, the official garb of the Amirs of Cordova. To his court flocked the poets, the singers, and the wise men of Islam. Of him it was written, “In all the West I find no right noble man save Ibrahim, but he is nobility itself. When one has known the delight of living with him, to dwell in any other land is misery.” Flattery did not blind the sagacious Ibn Hajjaj to the insecurity of his position, and he bowed before the rising star of the new Khalifa, Abd-er-Rahman III. In 913 Ishbiliyah opened her gates to that powerful ruler and again became subject to Cordova. The city lost nothing by its timely submission. The generous and beneficent Khalifa narrowed and deepened the channel of the Guadalquivir, thus rendering it navigable. He introduced the palm tree from Africa, planted gardens, and adorned the city with splendid edifices. Much of the splendour of the Court of Cordova was reflected on Seville, which certainly rivalled the capital as a seat of learning. Among its citizens was Abu Omar Ahmed Ben Abdallah, surnamed El Begi or “the Sage,” the author of an encyclopædia of sciences, which was long esteemed as a work of marvellous erudition. According to Condé, Abdallah was frequently consulted by the magistrates, even in his early youth, in affairs of the gravest import.
The public edifices of the Pearl of Andalusia were no doubt worthy of its fame as a home of wisdom and culture. In addition to the mosque built by Abdelasis, near or on the spot where the convent of La Trinidad now stands, a notable ornament of the city was the mosque raised on the site of the basilica of St Vincent—immortalised by several memorable Councils. “But who,” asks Señor de Madrazo, “would be capable to-day of describing this edifice? Nothing of it remains except the memory of the place where it stood. Other structures, ampler and more majestic, replaced it when, under the Almoravides and Almohades, Seville recovered its rank as an independent kingdom. Let us content ourselves with recording that the principal mosque, built at the same time as and on the model of that of Cordova, although on a smaller and less sumptuous scale, was situated on the site of the existing Cathedral, and that in the ninth century it was burnt by the Normans. In consequence it is impossible to say if the great horseshoe arches which occur in the cloister of the Cathedral are works earlier or later than that event. It does not appear probable that in the time of the Khalifs the mosque of Seville could have had the considerable dimensions suggested by the northern boundary of the patio de los naranjos. That line is 330 Castilian feet, which would give the mosque, extending from north to south, a length about double, the breadth of the atrium included—unlikely dimensions for a temple which, compared with the Jama of Cordova, was unquestionably of the second class. No one knows who ordered the construction of the primitive mosque of Seville.”
The irruption of the Normans, one of the results of which was the demolition of this edifice, took place in 859. The pirates were afterwards defeated off the coast of Murcia by the Moorish squadron, and made sail for Catalonia. A serious descent had taken place in 844. Lisbon was the first city to fall a victim to the Northmen, whom we next hear of at Cadiz and at Sidonia, where they defeated the Khalifa’s troops in a pitched battle. Fierce fighting took place before the walls of Ishbiliyah, the invaders being uniformly victorious. Laden with the richest booty, they at length retired overland to Lisbon, where they took to their ships. They not only destroyed the mosque of Seville, but threw down the city walls, which dated from Roman times. These were repaired by Abd-er-Rahman II., to be partially demolished again by Abd-er-Rahman III. on his triumphal entry into the amirate of Ibrahim Ibn Hajjaj.
The subjection of Seville to the yoke of the Khalifs of Cordova was, unhappily for the city and for Islam generally, not of long duration. The mighty Wizir, Al Mansûr, restored the waning power of the Crescent and drove back the Christians into the mountain fastnesses of the North. But the collapse of the Western Khalifate had been postponed, not averted. This Al Mansûr well knew. On his deathbed he reproached his son for yielding to unmanly tears, saying, “This is to me a signal of the approaching decay of this empire.” His prediction did not long await fulfilment. In 1009, seven years after his death, his second son, Abd-er-Rahman Sanjul, had the audacity to proclaim himself the Khalif Hisham’s heir. The empire became at once resolved into its component parts. On all sides the kadis and governors revolted. Independent amirates were set up in all the considerable towns. At Ishbiliyah the shrewd and powerful kadi, Mohammed Ben Abbad, perceived his opportunity, but contrived to excuse his ambition by a specious pretence of legality. An impostor, impersonating the legitimate Khalifa, Hisham, appeared on the troubled scene. Ben Abbad espoused his cause and pretended to govern the city in his name. His power firmly established, the kadi announced that the Khalifa was dead and had designated him as his lawful successor. For the second time, Seville rose to the dignity of an independent state.
The Abbadites were a splendour-loving race. Their Court was extolled by Arabian writers as rivalling that of the Abbasside sultans. Under their rule the city waxed every year more beautiful, more prosperous. Patrons of art and letters, the amirs were vigorous and capable sovereigns, and in all Musulman Spain no state was more powerful than theirs, except Toledo. The second monarch of the dynasty, Abu Amru Abbad, better known as Mo’temid, was a mighty warrior. He reduced Algarve and took Cordova. When not engaged in martial exploits he took delight in composing verses, in the society of talented men, and in the contemplation of the garden of his enemies’ heads, which he had laid out at the door of his palace. He was succeeded in 1069 by his son Abul-Kasim Mohammed, a native of Beja.
The Crescent was waning. All Al Mansûr’s conquests had been recovered by the Christians. Toledo fell before the arms of Alfonso III. The Castilians overran Portugal and penetrated into Andalusia. The Amir of Ishbiliyah took the only course open to him at the moment, and cultivated the friendship of the Castilian king. He consented to the removal of the body of St Isidore from Italica to Leon, and gave his daughter Zayda in a sort of left-handed marriage to Alfonso III. As the Christian king was already the husband of Queen Constancia, and Zayda’s dowry consisted of the most valuable conquests of the Amir Mut’adid, this transaction did not reflect much credit on either party. But it purchased for Seville a period of peace and security, during which its inhabitants became hopelessly enervated by luxury and ease.
The Abbadite sovereigns have left but few traces on the city which they did so much to embellish and improve. To them, however, may be ascribed the foundation of the Alcazar. Such at least is the opinion of Señor de Madrazo. In the horseshoe arches of the Salón de los Embajadores with their rich Corinthian capitals—on which the names of different Khalifas are inscribed—we detect a resemblance to the mosque of Cordova, and recognise the early Saracenic style, unaffected by African, or properly Moorish, influence. To the same period and school of architecture, Señor de Madrazo attributes the ornate arcading of the narrow staircase leading from the entrance court to near the balcony of the chapel; and the three arches with capitals in the abandoned apartment adjoining the Salón de los Principes. The ultra-semicircular curve of the arch occurs very rarely in later or true Moorish architecture.
The Moslem conquerors had, in the majority of cases, converted to their use the Christian churches in the cities they occupied. Many of the mosques that adorned Ishbiliyah during the reign of the race of Abbad had been adapted in this way, the lines of pillars being readjusted in most cases to give the structure that south-easterly direction that the law of Islam required. Traces of these Abbadite mosques remain in the churches of San Juan Bautista and San Salvador. On the wall of the former was found an inscription which has been thus translated by Don Pascual de Gayangos: “In the name of the clement and merciful Allah. May the blessing of Allah be on Mohammed, the seal of the Prophets. The Princess and august mother of Er-Rashid Abu-l-hosaya Obayd’ allah, son of Mut’amid Abu-l-Kasim Mohammed Ben Abbad (may Allah make his empire and power lasting, as well as the glory of both!), ordered this minaret to be raised in her mosque (which may Allah preserve!), awaiting the abundance of His rewards; and the work was finished, with the help of Allah, by the hand of the Wizir and Katib, the Amir Abu-l-Kasim Ben Battah (may Allah be propitious to me!), in the moon of Shaaban, in the year 478.”
The site of the present collegiate church of San Salvador was occupied by a mosque, which was used by the Moors for a considerable time after the Christian conquest, and preserved its form down to the year 1669. An inscription on white marble relates that a minaret was constructed in the year 1080, by Mut’amid Ben Abbad, that “the calling to prayer might not be interrupted.”
The reign of the Abbadites was brought to a close by the advent of the Almoravides (a word allied to Marabut), who, at the invitation of the Andalusian amirs, invaded Spain in the last quarter of the eleventh century. It was a story common enough in history. The Africans came at first as the friends and allies of the Spanish Arabs, and effectually stemmed the tide of Christian successes; but in 1091, Yusuf, the Almoravide leader, annexed Ishbiliyah and all Andalusia to his vast empire. The city became a mere provincial centre, the appanage of the Berber monarch. Mo’temid, loaded with chains, was transported to Africa, where he died in 1095, having reigned as amir twenty-seven years.
The Almoravides lived by the sword and perished by the sword. Perpetually engaged in warfare, among themselves or with the Christians, they left no deep impress on the character of Seville or of Andalusia generally. With them the student of the arts in Spain has little concern. They burst like a tornado over the land, destroying much, creating nothing. Little more than half-a-century had passed since the downfall of the Abbadites, when the star of the Almoravides paled before the rising crescent of the Almohades or Al Muwahedun. The new sectaries, as fierce as their predecessors, but more indomitable and austere, wrested all Barbary from the descendants of Tashrin and annexed Ishbiliyah to their empire in 1146.
The reign of the Almohades is the most interesting period in the history of the city. It was marked by the foundation of Seville’s most important existing edifices, and by the introduction of a new style of architecture. Hitherto, what is loosely called Moorish art, had been native Andalusian art, following Saracenic or Syrian ideals. Of this first period, the Mezquita at Cordova is the finest monument. Seville is peculiarly the city of the second, or true, Moorish period. Byzantine and Oriental influences disappeared and were supplanted by the African or, more properly, Berber, character. The new conquerors of Andalusia were a rude, hardy race, and we find something virile and coarse in their architecture. “Beside the Giralda of Seville,” remarks Herr Karl Eugen Schmidt, “the columns of the mosque of Cordova seem small; the pretty halls of the Alhambra have something weak and feminine.” The weakness of the Almohade builders, as is usually the case with imperfectly civilised peoples, lay in an excessive fondness for ornamentation. Señor de Madrazo’s criticism, though severe, is, on the whole, just. While admitting the beauty of certain of their innovations, such as the stalactited dome (afterwards carried out with so much effect at Granada) and the pointed arch, he goes on to say, “The Almohade architecture displays that debased taste which is imitative rather than instinctive, and which creates only by exaggerating forms to a degree inconsistent with the design—differing from the Mudejar work of the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, which reveals an instinctive feeling for the beautiful in ornament, which never loses sight of the graceful, the elegant, and the bold, and which consequently never betrays any aberration. The Almohade style, in short, at once manifests the vigour of the barbarian civilised by conquest; the Mudejar style has the enduring character of the works of a man of taste, wise in good and evil fortune; both are the faithful expression of the culture of peoples of different origins and aptitudes.” Elsewhere the same authority observes, “It is certain that the innovation characteristic of Musulman architecture in Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, cannot be explained as a natural mutation from the Arabic art of the Khalifate, or as a prelude to the art of Granada, because there is very little similarity between the style called secondary or Moorish 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 Giralda, now adjacent to the magnificent Christian cathedral which was reared in later days on the foundations of the great mosque. Señor de Madrazo has reconstructed for us the general form and aspect of the finest monument of Almohade piety. The mosque replaced that which had been destroyed by the Normans, and appears to have embodied some part of the original structure, to judge from the horseshoe arches still to be seen in the Claustro de la Granada. The work was begun by order of Yusuf, the son of Abd-er-Rahman, the founder of the dynasty. The mosque formed a rectangle, extending from north to south, and surrounded by cloisters and courtyards. The interior was divided into longitudinal naves by a series of marble columns, which supported an adorned ceiling of carved and painted wood. The mihrab, or sanctuary, would have been at the southern extremity, after the Syrian custom, it taking the Spanish Muslims some time to realise that Mecca lay east rather than south of Andalusia. The mosque would also have contained a maksurrah, or vestibule, for the imam and his officials, the nimbar, or pulpit, for the sovereign, and the tribune for the preacher. In the northern court was the existing fountain for ablutions, surmounted by a cupola, and surrounded by orange and palm-trees. The eastern court was known as the Court of the Elms. In all probability, attached to the sacred edifice, was the turbeh, or tomb of the founder.
The Giralda is not only the most important and famous of minarets, but is among the three or four most remarkable towers in the world. It is more to Seville than Giotto’s campanile to Florence; it rivals in fame the now vanished campanile of St Mark’s. Unlike similar edifices in Egypt and Syria, minarets among the western Moslems were built strong and massive, rather than slender and elegant. The Giralda,” says Herr Schmidt, “is one of the strongest buildings in the world, and few of our Christian church towers could have withstood so successfully the lightning and the earthquake.”
The Giralda is quadrangular in section, and covers a space of 13.60 square metres. The architect—whose name is variously spelt Gever, Hever, and Djabir—is said to have used quantities of Roman remains and statuary as a base for the foundations. The thickness of the wall at the base is nine feet, but it increases with the height, the interior space narrowing accordingly. The lower part of the tower is of stone, the upper part of brick. At a height of about 15 metres above the ground begin those decorations in stone which lend such elegance and beauty to this stout structure. They consist in vertical series of windows—mostly ajimeces or twin-windows—some with the horseshoe, others the pointed arch, flanked on either side by broad vertical bands of beautiful stone tracery, resembling trellis-work. The windows are enclosed in arches which exhibit considerable diversity of design. The decoration as a whole is harmonious and beautiful.
The Moorish tower only reaches to a height of 70 metres. The remaining portion, reaching upwards for another 25 metres, is of Christian workmanship. Before this was added, the tower appears to have been crowned, like most West African minarets, by a small pinnacle or turret. This supported four balls or apples of gilded copper, one of which was so large that the gates of Seville had to be widened that it might be brought into the city. The iron bar which supported the balls weighed about ten hundredweights, and the whole was cast by a Sicilian Arab named Abu Leyth, at a cost of £50,000 sterling. We owe these particulars to a Mohammedan writer of the period, and his accuracy was confirmed in 1395, when the balls, having been thrown to the ground by an earthquake, were carefully weighed and examined.
The upper or newer part of the Giralda was built by Fernando Ruiz in 1568. Despite its Doric and Ionic columns and Renaissance style, it does not mar the beauty and harmony of the whole building, and is itself a remarkably graceful work. The entablature of the second stage or storey bears the words Turris fortissima Nomen Domini. The whole fabric is surmounted by the bronze statue of Faith, executed by Bartolomé Morel in 1568. It stands fourteen feet high, and weighs twenty-five hundredweights, yet so wonderful is the workmanship that it turns with every breath of the wind. Hence the name applied to the whole tower—Giralda—from que gira, “which turns.” The figure wears a Roman helmet. The right hand clasps the labarum of Constantine, and the left a palm branch symbolical of victory.
The Giralda is ascended by means of thirty-five inclined planes, up which a horse might be ridden with ease to the very top. The various cuerpos or stages of the ascent are all named. The Cuerpo de Campanas is named after its fine peal of bells. The bell named Santa Maria was hung in 1588 by order of the Archbishop Gonzalo de Mena. It cost ten thousand ducats, and weighs eighteen tons. The Cuerpo de Azucenas (or of the lilies) is so named after its urns with floral decorations in ironwork. El Cuerpo del Reloj (clock tower) contains a clock partly constructed in 1765 by the monk José Cordero, with pieces of another placed here in 1400 in the presence of Don Enrique III.—the first tower-clock set up in Spain. The Cuerpos de Estrellas (stars) and de las Corambolas (billiard-balls) are named after the predominant devices in their schemes of decoration.
The highest platform of the Giralda affords, as might be expected, a very extensive view. On the whole, the prospect is disappointing. The neighbourhood of Seville is not beautiful, nor are there any very notable sites or natural features included within the panorama. Standing below Morel’s great statue, however, and gazing down upon the city, interesting considerations naturally present themselves. That the figure of Christian faith should thus be reared on the summit of a building specially intended to stimulate the zeal and to excite the devotion of the followers of Islam is a reflection calculated to give profound satisfaction to the devout Spaniard. The whimsical philosopher may also find an appropriateness in the handiwork of the men of the simpler, cruder faith conducting one upwards to the more refined and complicated creed. I do not know if Mohammedans ever visit Seville. If so, they doubtless console themselves for the desecration of their sacred edifices by thoughts of Hagia Sophia and the onetime Christian churches of the East. And the Giralda has fared better at the hands of the Christians than many a church of their own has done. I may instance the chapel at Mayence, which with practically no alteration in its architecture and internal arrangements now serves the purpose of a beer-shop.
As the Giralda attests the size and beauty of the great mosque, so several smaller towers exist in Seville to mark the sites of the lesser Mohammedan temples. The most important of these is the tower or minaret of San Marcos. It is seventy-five feet high and ten feet broad—the highest edifice in the city except the Giralda. It is built according to the pure Almohade style, “without any admixture,” points out Señor de Madrazo, “of the features taken from the Christian architecture of the West.” According to Mr Walter M. Gallichan there is a tradition that Cervantes used to ascend this tower to scan the vicinity in search of a Sevillian beauty of whom he was enamoured. The church is Gothic, and dates from 1478, but the beautiful portal exhibits Mudejar workmanship, and may be ascribed to the days of St Ferdinand or of his immediate successors.
The parish churches of San Juan Bautista, Santa Marina, San Esteban, Santiago, Santa Catalina, San Julián, San Ildefonso, San Andrés, San Vicente, San Lorenzo, San Bartolomé, Santa Cruz, and Santa Maria de las Nieves (some of which no longer exist), were all mosques during the Almohade era. A few continue to preserve their minarets and mihrabs, generally restored and modified almost beyond recognition.
While attending by the construction of these numerous places of worship to the spiritual needs of their subjects, the Almohade rulers neglected no means of strengthening Ishbiliyah and of promoting its general prosperity. The city became the most important seat of Mohammedan power in the West. Trade rapidly increased, and the town became the principal resort of the weavers, metal-workers, and other prominent Moorish craftsmen. Abu Yakub Yusuf was the first to throw a bridge of boats across the Guadalquivir, over which troops first passed on October 11th, 1171. This bridge immensely added to the strength of the city as a fortified place, as it established permanent communication between it and its principal source of supplies, the fertile district called the Ajarafa on the right bank of the river. The charms of this expanse, otherwise known as the Orchard of Hercules, are rapturously described by Arab historians. These are the words of the poet Ibn Saffar: “The Ajarafa surpasseth in beauty and fertility all the lands of the world. The oil of its olives goeth even to far Alexandria; its farms and orchards exceed those of other countries in size and convenience; so white and clean are they, that they appear like so many stars in a sky of olive gardens.” The Ajarafa is an Arabia Felix without wild beasts, the Guadalquivir a Nile without crocodiles. El Makkari says it measured about forty miles in each direction and contained a numerous population. Those who know the rather dreary country extending westward of the modern city will realise the melancholy change brought about by time.
The city then, as now, was girdled by strong walls. The gates were twelve in number. Those not turned towards the river were strongly fortified with towers and bastions. The farther bank of the Guadalquivir was defended by castles and redoubts. Upwards of a hundred keeps and watch-towers studded the adjacent country.
One of the most vital points in the defensive works was the poetically-named Torre del Oro (tower of gold), which still exists, and is familiar to every visitor to the city. The tower is a twelve-sided polygon of three storeys. It is surmounted by a smaller tower, also of twelve sides, which in turn supports a small round cupola. This superstructure was added in the eighteenth century, whereas the main building was erected by the Almohade governor Abu-l-Ala in the year 1220. The tower was in those days connected with the walls of the city by what is called in military parlance a curtain, which was pulled down as late as in 1821. The outwork faced another watch-tower on the opposite bank of the river, and a great iron chain was drawn from the one to the other, effectually closing the harbour against hostile vessels. The assaults of the foeman and the deadlier ravages of time have stripped this strong and graceful monument of the beautiful tiles or azulejos with which it was once adorned, and which seemed to have earned for it its present name. No Danaë, alas! waits in this tower of gold to-day for tyrant or deliverer. The place is occupied by clerks, whose pens are ever busy recording the shipments of coal brought by incoming steamers; and the immediate vicinity is infested by “tramp” sailors of all nationalities, mostly British, for whose benefit, presumably, rum, “Old Tom,” and other stimulating but unromantic beverages are dispensed at kiosks and bars.
The spot appears to have been the scene of a picturesque episode recounted by Contreras. It is worth repeating as revealing the polished character of the dusky amirs who ruled in Ishbiliyah three hundred years before Charles of Orleans devoted his declining years, in his palace by the Loire, to the making of ballads, triolets, and rondeaux.
The Abbadite amir, Mut’adid-billah, was walking one day in the field of Marchab Afida, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, and observed the breeze ruffling the surface of the water. He improvised the line—
“The breeze makes of the water a cuirass”—
and turning to the poet Aben Amr, called upon him to complete the verse. While the laureate was still in the throes of poetical parturition, a young girl of the people who happened to be standing by, anticipated him, and gave utterance to these original lines—
“A cuirass strong, magnificent for combat,
As if the water had been frozen truly.”
The prince was astonished at this display of the lyrical gift by a woman of her condition, and ordered one of his eunuchs to conduct her to the palace. On being questioned, she informed him that she was called Romikiwa, because she was the slave of Romiya, and was a driver of mules.
“Are you married?” asked the prince.
“No, sire.”
“It is well, for I shall buy you and marry you.”
It is to be hoped that Romikiwa’s merits as a wife exceeded her abilities as a poetess.
The Alcazar, the palace inhabited by this dilettante amir and his successors of the race of Abbad, continued to be the principal residence of the subsequent rulers of Ishbiliyah, both Almoravides and Almohades. There can be no doubt that the latter restored and reconstructed the building to an extent that almost effaced the work of the founders. But the impress of the Berber architects was in its turn almost entirely lost when the fabric came into the possession of the Christians. Thus the Alcazar cannot be rightly classed among the monuments of the Almohade period. It is certain that its extent at this time was greater than it is now. Its enclosure was bounded by the city wall, which ran down to the river, and occupied the whole angle formed by the two. The Alcazar was then primarily a fortress, and its walls were flanked on every side by watch-towers such as those with which its front is still furnished. The principal entrance seems to have been at the Torre de la Plata (silver tower), which was standing as late as 1821. Finally, among the works of the last Musulman rulers of Seville, we must not omit to mention the great aqueduct of four hundred and ten arches, called the Caños de Carmona, constructed in 1172, which ensured the city an abundant supply of water from the reservoir of Alcalá de Guadaira. The Almohades had other palaces in the city. The old residence of Abdelasis yet remained, and we hear of the palaces of St Hermenegildo and of the Bib Ragel (or northern gate).
The Almohades kinged it nobly in Andalusia; but these successive revivals of fervour and activity in Western Islam may be compared to the last strong spasms of a dying man. Despite these furious inrushes of Almoravides and Al-Muwahedun, the Christians were slowly but surely gaining ground. The lieutenants of Abd-ul-Mumin subjugated Granada and Almeria in the east, Badajoz and Evora in the west. The Moorish amir of Valencia did homage to Yusuf, Abd-ul-Mumin’s son and successor, at Ishbiliyah. The third sovereign of the dynasty, Yakub Al Mansûr, dealt what seemed a crushing blow to the allied Spaniards at Alarcos in 1195. Had that victory been properly followed up, perhaps to this day a Mohammedan power might have been seated firmly in the south of Spain, and the Strait of Gibraltar might have been a western Dardanelles.
But the Christians rallied. In 1212 was fought the decisive battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, between the Moorish Khalif An-Nasr and the Castilian King, Alfonso VIII. The Musulmans were totally defeated. “Six hundred thousand combatants,” says El Makkari, with perhaps a trace of Oriental hyperbole, “were led by An-Nasr to the field of battle; all perished, except a few that did not amount to a thousand. This battle was a malediction, not only on Andalus but on all the West.”
Yet the downfall of the Islamite power did not immediately follow. An-Nasr survived his defeat seven years, and his son, Abu Yusuf Yakub Al-Mustanser, reigned four more inglorious years. His dying (1223) without children was the signal for dissensions and disturbances throughout his still vast empire. While Abd-ul-Wahed was proclaimed Khalifa in Morocco, Al Adil took up the reins of sovereignty in Murcia. Both pretenders soon disappeared from the troubled scene, Abd-ul-Wahed being assassinated, and his rival, after having been defeated in Spain by the Christians, being forced to take refuge in Morocco, there to abdicate in favour of An-Nasr’s son, Yahya. Abu-l-Ala, Al Adil’s brother, who had been left as governor in Ishbiliyah, declared himself Khalifa on learning the accession of Yahya. He was the last of the race of Abd-ul-Mumin to rule in the city. He was driven from Spain—to found a wider empire in Africa—by Mohammed Ben Yusuf, variously styled Ben Hud and Al Jodhami.
The storm-clouds were gathering fast over the beautiful city by the Guadalquivir. Spain’s great national hero, St Ferdinand, now wore the crown of Castile. He routed the Moors at Jerez, and in 1235 wrested from them their most ancient and glorious metropolis, Cordova. The discord and sedition which history shows are the usual prelude to the extinction of a state, were not wanting at Seville. Ben Hud died in 1238, and his subjects turned once more in their despair to the African Almohades. But no new army of Ghazis crossed the strait to do battle with the Unbeliever. Despite their protestations of allegiance to the Khalifa of Barbary, the Moors of Seville were left to fight their last fight unassisted. When the Castilian army appeared before the walls, the defence was directed, strangely enough for a Mohammedan community, by a junta of six persons. Their names are worthy of being recorded: Abu Faris, called by the Spaniards Axataf, Sakkáf, Shoayb, Ben Khaldûn, Ben Khiyar, and Abu Bekr Ben Sharih.
The siege of Ishbiliyah lasted fifteen months. Material assistance was lent to the Spaniards by Musulman auxiliaries, among them the Amirs of Jaën and Granada. The Castilian fleet under Admiral Ramon Bonifaz dispersed the Moorish ships, while the Sevillian land forces were driven to take refuge within the walls. The Admiral succeeded in breaking the chain stretched across the river, and thus cut off the garrison from their principal magazines in the suburb of Triana. Only when in the clutches of famine did the defenders ask for terms. They offered to give up the city, on the condition that they should be allowed to demolish the mosque. The Infante Alfonso replied that if a single brick were displaced, the whole population would be put to the sword. The garrison finally surrendered on the promise that all inhabitants who desired to do so should be free to leave the city with their families and property, and that those who elected to remain should pay the Castilian king the same tribute they had hitherto paid to the native ruler. The brave Abu Faris was invited to accept an honourable post under the conqueror, but he magnanimously declined and retired to Africa. Thither thousands of his countrymen followed him. Indeed, probably only a few thousand Moors remained behind in Seville.
Ferdinand took possession on December 22nd, 1248. He took up his residence in the Alcazar and allotted houses and territory to his officers. It is worthy of remark that the first Christian soldier to ascend the Giralda was a Scotsman named Lawrence Poore. Among the first duties of the saintly king was the purification of the mosque and its conversion into a Christian church.
Seville, after having remained in the hands of the Musulmans five hundred and thirty-six years, had passed from them for ever.