CORDOVA.
WE wandered along the low banks of the Guadalquivir one lovely evening when the Morena Mountains appeared as shadow against the translucent sky, and the small Moorish mill on the river an opal reflection of the fading light. We had crossed the old Roman Bridge that itself seemed a bar of gold to where, on the opposite bank, the houses so few and far between suggest a mere fishing village. There, owing to the floods in winter, we were told no one lives who can afford better things. But there, at least, the true elegiac spirit of evening was manifest. For, on all sides, toilers were returning to their homes. Down the white road from Seville came the donkeys, single file, and in slow progression ; their perfectly poised panniers unloaded save for armfuls of green fodder for the night. From another direction a mule cart, its driver lost to view within the mysteries of a barrel-shaped hood, was slowly proceeding towards the city. Already dust-stained and tired-looking men returned from work had gathered in front of the little road-side .inn, and family parties ranging from wrinkled old age to brown-faced youth were seated on their low doorsteps that had become silted about with sand from the river bank.
The evening gave the country that extends down either side of one of the chief rivers in Spain the persuasiveness of a Corot landscape. In the middle distance at a sharp bend of the Guadal- quivir the outline of another Moorish mill was strangely visible in the soft light. Below the bridge the water tumbled in silver foam over the broad dam, and then glided past the lozenge- shaped island that appeared as a dull green oasis in mid- stream.
Those were indeed wonderful last moments in which we paused to gaze once again at the city spread out as a piece of fretwork against the evening sky. In the centre fraught with significance rose the Cathedral as it might have been an acropolis eut of the battlemented walls of the mosque. Below, the old town with its crowd of Moorish houses and its narrow streets shelved down to the river. Away to the left the fragment of Roman wall, erect and noble, seemed a• broken barrier between Cordova and the outer world. And as we gazed we became strangely conscious of the catastrophic past buried in that wealth of architecture, of the flight of time and of the unceasing march of events of which those Roman and Moorish buildings were but the monu- mental remains. But, the short twilight ended, we retraced our footsteps to the city where the shadows had gathered and were as deep wells against the fitful electric light of the ill-paved and narrow streets.
Of all the arts that of architecture is the most intimate, the most inwoven with the colour and contour of human needs. The religions of the world, their history, and their violent differ- ences are inscribed in atone no less clearly than they are written in the hearts and lives of men. They were inscribed in the great outer wall of the mosque at Cordova till it seemed as though the mystic connexion between faith and the sword, religion and warfare, had become transfixed within that massive masonry.
And in the interior of that amazing building a long tradition of enchantment had surely been depicted. What Gautier paralleled with a roofed-in forest is a vast extent of marble pillars as though trunks of trees were arranged at regular intervals apart, each pillar wrought with an art perfect in variation as the forma of Nature. This wonderful structure is unrivalled in its simplicity, its predominance of scenic rather than architec- tural effect ; yet it is unique in the artistic originality of its depressed, though richly timbered, roof, and in the bizarre relief of its red and white striped arches.
In place of those uplifted spirals, those vanishing roofs, that exist as architectural emblems in the worship of the Nazarene the Moor in his intricate science has substituted vistas. His sweet vistas are of earth rather than of heaven, studied peeps of distance arranged with camera-like effect which take us unawares. One remembers them at the Alhambra; especially a lovely inlet view on the garden of Lindaraja. And in the mosque at Cordova they yielded alluring perspectives when now and then down an avenue of pillars an unlooked-for opening let in a patch of dancing sunlight.
No knight-errantry of spirit compelled us on our first visit to the mosque to search for the Christian Cathedral, where, as a magnificent piece of Gothic effrontery or as a castle in the heart of an enchanted forest, it is to be found hidden from view in a maze of pillars. Instead, we were held spell-bound by a griat adventure, the Mirabe—the Holy of Holies—the sanctuary where reposed in olden times the Koran made by Othman him- self and stained with his blood. In all beauty there exists, of course, this sacrificial element, the constant appeal of the sacrifice and forgetfulness of self. And in the Mirabe the deep sincerity of the Moor is immortalized. For in the embellishment of this place he reached his crowning effort and devoted his wide resources. Here came artists from Constantinople in answer to a petition from Hakem II., bringing as offerings large measures of enamelled mosaics. These lined the Mirabe with gold and peacock-coloured surfaces, beautiful as a Byzantine dream and luminous as cut emerald. Or the walls reminded one of a grotto in which the roof
• of white marble carved in the shape of a shell suggests the wonderful modelling of the ocean wave. The surrounding arches differ from those in the other parts of the mosque by reason of their deeper beauty, their iris-shaped lobes, their flower-like delicacy of interlacement. A deep recess in the south wall, pointed towards Mecca, presented the reproachful emptiness of a forsaken shrine. Around its entrance, as elsewhere in the mosque, one saw inscribed in letters of gold Arabic inscriptions, texts from the Koran arranged with a consummate art that bore testimony to the passionate literalness of Islamic worship.
Throughout this wonderful place there seemed an air of magnificent intention, as though the glory of the mosque to- day turned upon the original purpose of its founder• to make it the Mecca of the West. One remembered that for over six hundred years it was the resort of pilgrims. Barefooted they must have come to the Mirabe for purification, as under other circumstances they would have visited the tomb of the Prophet. As it was, one almost expected- to catch sight of dusky forms winding their way through a labyrinth of pillars, and to hear strange incantations in an unknown tongue to the glory of Allah. But instead there was an invasion of-scaffolding. Work- men engaged in restoring the roof moved to and fro whilst the sound of their tools reverberated through the empty places, and broke the silence of the past. Er INOR BETHELL. •
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