Verhalen over het gebouwencomplex in Granada, dat eigendom was van de laatste islamitische vorsten in Spanje.
The balcony of the window where this royal exclamation was made, has of
late become one of my favorite resorts. I have just been seated there,
enjoying the close of a long brilliant day. The sun, as he sank behind
the purple mountains of Alhama, sent a stream of effulgence up the
valley of the Darro, that spread a melancholy pomp over the ruddy towers
of the Alhambra; while the Vega, covered with a slight sultry vapor that
caught the setting ray, seemed spread out in the distance like a golden
sea. Not a breath of air disturbed the stillness of the hour, and though
the faint sound of music and merriment now and then rose from the
gardens of the Darro, it but rendered more impressive the monumental
silence of the pile which overshadowed me. It was one of those hours and
scenes in which memory asserts an almost magical power, and, like the
evening sun beaming on these mouldering towers, sends back her
retrospective rays to light up the glories of the past.
As I sat watching the effect of the declining daylight upon this Moorish
pile, I was led into a consideration of the light, elegant, and
voluptuous character prevalent throughout its internal architecture, and
to contrast it with the grand but gloomy solemnity of the Gothic
edifices reared by the Spanish conquerors. The very architecture thus
bespeaks the opposite and irreconcilable natures of the two warlike
people who so long battled here for the mastery of the Peninsula. By
degrees I fell into a course of musing upon the singular fortunes of the
Arabian or Morisco-Spaniards, whose whole existence is as a tale that is
told, and certainly forms one of the most anomalous yet splendid
episodes in history. Potent and durable as was their dominion, we
scarcely know how to call them. They were a nation without a legitimate
country or name. A remote wave of the great Arabian inundation, cast
upon the shores of Europe, they seem to have all the impetus of the
first rush of the torrent. Their career of conquest, from the rock of
Gibraltar to the cliffs of the Pyrenees, was as rapid and brilliant as
the Moslem victories of Syria and Egypt. Nay, had they not been checked
on the plains of Tours, all France, all Europe, might have been overrun
with the same facility as the empires of the East, and the Crescent at
this day have glittered on the fanes of Paris and London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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