Not only at Cordoba, but at Seville, and later at Granada, colleges and schools were endowed, and libraries founded in which the higher sciences were taught, which drew the erudite of the Moslem world from all parts of the globe, and became the resort of Christian students anxious to instruct themselves in superior knowledge. And Christian knights came also to perfect themselves in chivalric fashions and martial exercises, as well as to master the graceful evolutions of the “tilt of reeds” in the tourneys of the Moors. From the court of the first Abdurraman came _la gaya ciencia_, poetic discussions of love and chivalry transplanted later to the Court of Provence. In architecture no building that ever was erected can compare to the elegance of his Mesquita (come down to us almost entire) as a monument of the taste and culture of the age. The most mystic and astounding of temples, with innumerable aisles of double horseshoe arches, suspended like ribbons in mid-air, resting on pillars of jasper, _pavonazzo_, porphyry, and verd antique crossing and re-crossing each other in a giddy maze of immeasurable distances, red, yellow, green, and white dazzling the eye in a very rainbow of colour! No windows are visible, and the light, weird and grim, comes as from a cave peopled by demons; no central space at all, but vistas of endless arcades, which for a time the eye follows assiduously, then turns confused, and the brain reels. Deep hidden in the heart of the temple is the throne or _macsurah_, a marvel of embroidered stone, where the Sultan takes his seat. Here the Koran is read in the pale light of scented tapers and torches, and those ecstatic visions evoked by the Faithful of a sensual paradise of dark-haired houris. Opposite is the Zeca, or holiest of holies, turned towards Mecca, where the gorgeous decorations of the East blend with Byzantine mosaics of vivid colours on a gold ground; a most lovely shrine, a great marble conch-shell for the roof, the sides dazzling with burnished gold, and round and round, deep in the pavement, the footprints of centuries of pilgrims. Such is the Mesquita of Cordoba in our day, the desecrated shelter of an old faith, a sanctuary rifled, a mystery revealed! * * * * *