It had endured seven hundred and eighty-one years--a period only sixty years short of that which has elapsed since the Norman Conquest of England. More remarkable still, the Sultanate of Granada had survived the virtual break-up of the Saracen empire by over two centuries. When we consider its limited area, its isolated position, the might and the inveterate hostility of the neighbouring states, and the attacks to which it was unceasingly subjected, we cannot but feel the liveliest admiration for the valour and sagacity of its rulers and the stout-heartedness of its people. Had not the Court been too often the theatre of contending factions, had not those factions turned their swords against each other, the Sultanate of Granada might have outworn Spain’s military and national vigour, and have endured to our own day as a western Turkey. For the spirit of Tarik, of Abdurrahman, and of Almansûr was not altogether dead, even in the brave but ill-starred sovereign to whom alone historians ascribe the downfall of the kingdom, and whom they, strangely enough, accuse of effeminacy and weakness. The Moors of Granada knew how to fight a losing fight; in gambler’s parlance, when they had lost the tricks, they struggled to win the honours. They proved themselves worthy of their ancestors; and the finest, as it was also the latest, monument of the Mohammedan dominion in Spain is Granada the noble and the memorable. THE ALHAMBRA The Alhambra, or Red Palace, the Acropolis of Granada, is the finest secular monument with which the Muslims have endowed Europe. It belongs to the last period of Spanish-Arabic art, when the seed of Mohammedan ideas and culture had long since taken deep root in the soil and produced a style which might more properly be called Andalusian than Moorish. If the Muslims left a deep impression upon Spanish thought and art, it must not be supposed that they altogether escaped the influence of their Christian neighbours. During the last two centuries of their occupation the rigid puritanism of their creed was greatly relaxed, especially as regarded art--always the reflection of the customs and spirit of a people. The wave of the Renaissance did not leave untouched the shrunken Moorish empire, and if Castilian kings did not hesitate to employ Muslim artisans in the construction of their cathedrals, the Sultans of Granada did not disdain the advice of Christian artists in the embellishment of their palaces. The Alhambra remains a thoroughly Mohammedan monument, but one which symbolises a phase of Mohammedan culture and institutions almost peculiar to one country and epoch. Nowhere else and never since has Islam reached such a pitch of refinement. The Alhambra stands as the high-water mark of its art and civilisation.