THE ALHAMBRA HE WHO SEVILLA HAS NOT SEEN HAS NOT SEEN A MARVEL GREAT; WHO TO GRANADA HAS NOT BEEN CAN HAVE NOTHING TO RELATE. _Spanish Popular Rhyme._ [Illustration: Signature: _Albert F. Calvert_] [Illustration: THE ALHAMBRA BEING A BRIEF RECORD OF THE ARABIAN CONQUEST OF THE PENINSULA WITH A PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF THE MOHAMMEDAN ARCHITECTURE AND DECORATION BY ALBERT F. CALVERT LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY, MCMVII ] E. Goodman and Son, The Phœnix Press, Taunton. TO HIS MAJESTY KING ALFONSO XIII. SIRE, The great interest your Majesty has evinced in the Moorish Monuments which adorn your Majesty’s loyal and noble country, and the gracious appreciation with which you were pleased to regard my first work on The Alhambra, inspired me with the presumption to solicit the honour of your Majesty’s August Patronage for this volume, which is humbly dedicated to your Majesty agreeably to your gracious permission, by Your Majesty’s humble Servant, ALBERT F. CALVERT. PREFACE Although the admission may be construed by the censorious as betraying a lack of becoming diffidence, I am tempted to believe that no apology will be demanded for the publication of this volume by that section of the reading public for which it has been chiefly compiled. My temerity goes even further, and I anticipate with some confidence that visitors to the Alhambra, and pilgrims to that glorious Mecca of Moorish workmanship will recognise in this book an earnest attempt to supply a long-felt want. When I paid my first visit to Granada some years ago, I was surprised and disappointed to find that no such thing as an even fairly adequate illustrated souvenir of this “city of the dawn” was to be obtained. Many tomes, costly and valuable (not necessarily the same thing), have been written to place on record the wonders of “the glorious sanctuary of Spain,” but these are beyond the reach of the general public. Many beautiful pictures have caught odd ecstasies of this superb and perfectly harmonised palace of art, but these impressions are not available to the ordinary tourist. What is wanted, as I imagine, is a concise history and description of the Alhambra, illustrated with a series of pictures constituting a tangible remembrancer of the delights of this Granadian paradise “Where glory rests ’tween laurels, A torch to give thee light!”