While thus extending his own power the Khalif was extinguishing every spark of rebellion in the south and driving the rebellious Christians back in the north, and at the same time he was clothing Cordova with a splendor which amazed and dazzled even the Eastern Princes who came to pay court to the great Khalif. His emissaries were everywhere collecting books for his library and treasure for his palaces. Cordova became the abode of learning, and the nursery for science, philosophy, and art, transplanted from Asia. The imagination and the pen of an arab poet could not have overdrawn this wonderful city on the Guadalquivir,--with its palaces, its gardens, and fountains,--its 50,000 houses of the aristocracy,--its 700 mosques,--and 900 public baths,--all adorned with color and carvings and tracery beautiful as a dream of Paradise. One hears with amazement of the great mosque, with its 19 arcades, its pavings of silver and rich mosaics, its 1293 clustered columns, inlaid with gold and lapis-lazuli, the clusters reaching up to the slender arches which supported the roof; the whole of this marvelous scene lighted by countless brazen lamps made from Christian bells, while hundreds of attendants swung censers, filling the air with perfume. After the ravages of a thousand years travelers stand amazed to-day before the forest of columns which open out in endless vistas in the splendid ruin, calling up visions of the vanished glories of Cordova and the Great Khalif. There is not time to tell of the city this Spanish Khalif built for his favorite wife, "The Fairest," and which he called "Hill of the Bride," upon which for fifteen years ten thousand men worked daily; nor of the four thousand columns which adorned its palaces, presents from emperors and potentates in Constantinople, Rome, and far-off Eastern states; nor of the ivory and ebony doors, studded with jewels, through which shone the sun, the light then falling on the lake of quick-silver, which sent back blinding, quivering flashes into dazzled eyes. And we are told of the thirteen thousand male servants who ministered in this palace of delight. All this, too, at a time when our Saxon ancestors were living in dwellings without chimneys, and casting the bones from the table at which they feasted into the foul straw which covered their floors; when a Gothic night had settled upon Europe, and blotted out civilization so completely that only in a part of Italy, and around Constantinople, did there remain a vestige of refinement! It is said that when the embassy from Constantinople came bearing a letter to the Khalif, the courtier whose duty it was to read it was so awed by all this splendor that he fainted! And yet the owner and creator of this fabulous luxury,--Sultan and Khalif of a dominion the greatest of his time, and with "The Fairest" for his adored wife,--when he came to die, left a paper upon which he had written that he could only recall fourteen days in which he had been happy.