The palace near Cordova, erected by this sovereign, was called Azarah (the Flower) after the name of his favourite mistress. Its materials consisted entirely of marble and cedar wood; and it contained four thousand three hundred columns. It was sufficiently spacious to lodge the whole court, besides a guard of cavalry. The gardens, as was usual with the Arabs, formed the part of the residence on which were lavished the greatest treasures of wealth, and the choicest inventions of taste. The fountains were endless in number and variety. On one of the most picturesque spots was situated an edifice called the Caliph's Pavilion. It consisted of a circular gallery of white marble columns with gilded capitals; in the centre rose a fountain of quicksilver, imitating all the movements of water, and glittering in the sun with a brightness too dazzling for the eye to support. Several of the saloons of this palace were ornamented with fountains. In one, which bore the name of the Caliph's Saloon, a fountain of jasper contained in the centre a golden swan of beautiful workmanship--and over it hung from the ceiling a pearl, which had been sent from Constantinople as a present from the Greek Emperor to Abderahman. The mosque of this palace surpassed in riches, although not in size, the Aljama of Cordova. These were monuments worthy to have kings and caliphs for architects, for such they had. There is no doubt that the palace of Azahrah was planned and designed by the Caliph himself; and the founder of that dynasty, Abderahman the First, not only designed the magnificent mosque of Cordova, but presided daily over the progress of its erection. Possessed, as these sovereigns were, as well as all the well-born portion of their nation, of a highly cultivated education, the intervals of leisure, left them by war, were rarely thrown away in idleness. Abderahman the First was a poet, besides being a mathematician, an architect, and the first soldier of his time. Some of his writings have been preserved, and are among the Arab works collected and translated by Condé into Spanish. The following stanzas, addressed to a palm-tree, must be, as is always the case, still more beautiful in the original, although charming in the Spanish. The monarch of the Western Empire, after having vanquished his enemies, and pacified his dominions,--beloved by his subjects and by all who approached him, and possessed of the resources of science to occupy his mind, was nevertheless unhappy. He preferred his home in Asia to the splendours of an imperial throne in such a land as Andalucia. He caused a young palm-tree to be brought from Syria, and planted in a garden formed by him in the environs of Cordova; and it was his delight to sit in a tower constructed in the garden, and gaze at his tree. It was to this tree he addressed the lines thus translated:--