[Illustration: IV _ARCA_ OF CARDINAL CISNEROS] These Spanish Moors, obedient to the custom of their fellow-Mussulmans throughout the world, employed but little furniture. They loved, indeed, bright colours and ingenious craftsmanship, but rather in the adjuncts to their furniture than in the furniture itself; in costly carpets, or worked and coloured leather hung upon the wall,[13] or spread upon their _alhamies_ and _alhanías_; in fountains bubbling in the middle of their courts and halls; in doors, and ceilings, and _celosías_ exquisitely carved, and joined with matchless cunning; in flower-vases placed in niches; in bronze or silver perfume-burners rolling at their feet; but not (within the ordinary limit of the term) in furniture. Upon this theme the Reverend Lancelot Addison discourses very quaintly. "The host here," he wrote of "West Barbary" in 1663, "is one Cidi Caffian Shat, a grandee, reported to be an Andalusian, one of the race of the Moors bansht (_sic_) Spain.... We were called to a little upper Room, which we could not enter till we had put off our shoes at the threshold: not for Religion, but Cleanliness, and not to prevent our unhallowing the floor, but defiling the carpets wherewith it was curiously spread. At the upper end of the Room was laid a Velvit Cushion, as large as those we use in our Pulpits, and it denoted the most Honourable part of the Room. After we had reposed about an hour, there was brought in a little oval Table, about twenty Inches high, which was covered with a long piece of narrow linnen; and this served for Diaper.[14] For the Moors, by their law, are forbidden such superfluous Utensils as napkins, knives, spoons, etc. Their Religion laying down the general maxim, that meer necessaries are to be provided for; which caused a precise Moor to refuse to drink out of my dish when he could sup water enough out of the hollow of his hand." [13] The wood-carving and decorative leather-work of older Spain will be described a little later on. As to the use of decorated leather by the Moors, in the small chamber of the Alhambra opening into the Mirador of Daraxa, and known as the Sala de los Ajimeces, is a bare space about nine feet in height, which runs the whole way round beneath the copious ornament of the remainder of the wall. Contreras says that the Moorish sultans used to hang these spaces with decorated leathers, tapestry, and armour. Sometimes the tapestry or leather would be worked or painted with hunting-scenes (_tardwahsh_--the chase of the lion, panther, or wild boar), or even with portraits of the sultans. Among these latter is the celebrated painting on the ceiling of the Hall of Justice, executed, as are its companions at each side of it, upon a leather groundwork with a plaster coating.