These tiles, together with shaped pieces of the same Indian ware, are very interesting, being without doubt the modern representatives of a remote manufacture and having the closest affinity with the ancient Egyptian glazed pottery. Whence they were derived or which the parent stock is a question the answer to which we are not at present in a position to do more than guess at. In France and England reproductions have appeared, many of which are excellent from the talent of their painters or from the technical qualities of their manufacture: those produced by the Messrs. Minton, copied or derived from oriental originals, are particularly beautiful. CHAPTER IX. HISPANO-MORESQUE POTTERY. This numerous and now well-defined class of wares was a few years since indiscriminately grouped with the lustred Maiolica of Italy, in which country the larger number of specimens now in our collections had been preserved, and whence they have been procured. Many hesitated to believe in their Spanish origin, thinking it more probable that they were the work of Moorish potters established in the sister peninsula. The correspondence, however, of technical character with the “azulejos,” the well-known tiles which adorn the palace of the Alhambra at Seville, and with the celebrated “jarra” or Alhambra vase, as also a marked difference between these and any wares of known Italian manufacture, led to the conviction that they must be of Spanish origin, and the work of the Moorish potters and their descendants who had been established in that country. Under this belief they were classed together as Hispano-arabian enamelled and lustred wares, but this appellation would connect them with the so-called Saracens who conquered that country in A.D. 712. The first Arab invaders were themselves expelled in 756 by Abd-el-Rhama, who caused himself to be proclaimed caliph at Cordova. This city thus became the great centre of his power, and here was erected the mosque of which the decoration attests the exquisite oriental taste of its founders. The ornamental wall tiles on this building are of truly Hispano-arabian manufacture. The rule of the successors of Abd-el-Rhama ended and the line became extinct in 1038, soon after which time the Moorish conquest was completed. In 1235 Granada became the chief seat of the Moorish rulers, and there they erected the fortress-palace of the Alhambra about 1273. After an occupation of the country for four centuries the Moors were conquered in 1492. The Christian element would then predominate in the decoration of the pottery; and in 1566 the last blow was struck at Moorish art by the promulgation of a decree prohibiting the speaking or writing of their language, and forbidding the use to men and women of their national dress and veil, and the execution of decorative works in the Moresque style.