The Alhambra 55
Rushing with his men between the king and his pursuers, they checked the
latter in their career, and gave time for their monarch to escape; but
they fell victims to their loyalty. They all fought to the last gasp.
Don Munio was singled out by a powerful Moorish knight, but having been
wounded in the right arm, he fought to disadvantage, and was slain. The
battle being over, the Moor paused to possess himself of the spoils of
this redoubtable Christian warrior. When he unlaced the helmet, however,
and beheld the countenance of Don Munio, he gave a great cry and smote
his breast. “Woe is me!” cried he, “I have slain my benefactor! The
flower of knightly virtue! the most magnanimous of cavaliers!”
* * * * *
While the battle had been raging on the plain of Salmanara, Doña Maria
Palacin remained in her castle, a prey to the keenest anxiety. Her eyes
were ever fixed on the road that led from the country of the Moors, and
often she asked the watchman of the tower, “What seest thou?”
One evening, at the shadowy hour of twilight, the warden sounded his
horn. “I see,” cried he, “a numerous train winding up the valley. There
are mingled Moors and Christians. The banner of my lord is in the
advance. Joyful tidings!” exclaimed the old seneschal; “my lord returns
in triumph, and brings captives!” Then the castle courts rang with
shouts of joy; and the standard was displayed, and the trumpets were
sounded, and the drawbridge was lowered, and Doña Maria went forth with
her ladies, and her knights, and her pages, and her minstrels, to
welcome her lord from the wars. But as the train drew nigh, she beheld a
sumptuous bier, covered with black velvet, and on it lay a warrior, as
if taking his repose: he lay in his armor, with his helmet on his head,
and his sword in his hand, as one who had never been conquered, and
around the bier were the escutcheons of the house of Hinojosa.
A number of Moorish cavaliers attended the bier, with emblems of
mourning, and with dejected countenances; and their leader cast himself
at the feet of Doña Maria, and hid his face in his hands. She beheld in
him the gallant Abadil, whom she had once welcomed with his bride to her
castle; but who now came with the body of her lord, whom he had
unknowingly slain in battle!
* * * * *
The sepulchre erected in the cloisters of the convent of San Domingo,
was achieved at the expense of the Moor Abadil, as a feeble testimony of
his grief for the death of the good knight Don Munio, and his reverence
for his memory. The tender and faithful Doña Maria soon followed her
lord to the tomb. On one of the stones of a small arch, beside his
sepulchre, is the following simple inscription: “_Hic jacet Maria
Palacin, uxor Munonis Sancij De Finojosa_”;--Here lies Maria Palacin,
wife of Munio Sancho de Hinojosa.
The legend of Don Munio Sancho does not conclude with his death. On the
same day on which the battle took place on the plain of Salmanara, a
chaplain of the Holy Temple at Jerusalem, while standing at the outer
gate, beheld a train of Christian cavaliers advancing, as if in
pilgrimage. The chaplain was a native of Spain, and as the pilgrims
approached, he knew the foremost to be Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa,
with whom he had been well acquainted in former times. Hastening to the
patriarch, he told him of the honorable rank of the pilgrims at the
gate. The patriarch, therefore, went forth with a grand procession of
priests and monks, and received the pilgrims with all due honor. There
were seventy cavaliers, beside their leader,--all stark and lofty
warriors. They carried their helmets in their hands, and their faces
were deadly pale. They greeted no one, nor looked either to the right or
to the left, but entered the chapel, and kneeling before the sepulchre
of our Saviour, performed their orisons in silence. When they had
concluded, they rose as if to depart, and the patriarch and his
attendants advanced to speak to them, but they were no more to be seen.
Every one marvelled what could be the meaning of this prodigy. The
patriarch carefully noted down the day, and sent to Castile to learn
tidings of Don Munio Sancho de Hinojosa. He received for reply, that on
the very day specified, that worthy knight, with seventy of his
followers, had been slain in battle. These, therefore, must have been
the blessed spirits of those Christian warriors, come to fulfil their
vow of pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Such was Castilian
faith in the olden time, which kept its word, even beyond the grave.
* * * * *
If any one should doubt of the miraculous apparition of these phantom
knights, let him consult the History of the Kings of Castile and Leon,
by the learned and pious Fray Prudencio de Sandoval, bishop of Pamplona,
where he will find it recorded in the History of King Don Alonzo VI., on
the hundred and second page. It is too precious a legend to be lightly
abandoned to the doubter.
POETS AND POETRY OF MOSLEM ANDALUS
During the latter part of my sojourn in the Alhambra I was more than
once visited by the Moor of Tetuan, with whom I took great pleasure in
rambling through the halls and courts, and getting him to explain to me
the Arabic inscriptions. He endeavored to do so faithfully; but, though
he succeeded in giving me the thought, he despaired of imparting an idea
of the grace and beauty of the language. The aroma of the poetry, said
he, is all lost in translation. Enough was imparted, however, to
increase the stock of my delightful associations with this extraordinary
pile. Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age
and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous
palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing
throughout the fairy architecture of its halls. One is irresistibly
transported in imagination to those times when Moslem Spain was a region
of light amid Christian, yet benighted Europe; externally a warrior
power fighting for existence; internally a realm devoted to literature,
science, and the arts; where philosophy was cultivated with passion,
though wrought up into subtleties and refinements; and where the
luxuries of sense were transcended by those of thought and imagination.
Arab poetry, we are told, arrived at its highest splendor under the
Ommiades of Spain, who for a long time centred the power and splendor of
the western Caliphat at Cordova. Most of the sovereigns of that
brilliant line were themselves poets. One of the last of them was
Mahomed ben Abderahman. He led the life of a sybarite in the famous
palace and gardens of Azahara, surrounding himself with all that could
excite the imagination and delight the senses. His palace was the resort
of poets. His vizier, Ibn Zeydun, was called the Horace of Moslem Spain,
from his exquisite verses, which were recited with enthusiasm even in
the saloons of the Eastern Caliphs. The vizier became passionately
enamored of the princess Walada, daughter of Mahomed. She was the idol
of her father’s court, a poetess of the highest order, and renowned for
beauty as well as talent. If Ibn Zeydun was the Horace of Moslem Spain,
she was its Sappho. The princess became the subject of the vizier’s most
impassioned verses; especially of a famous risáleh or epistle addressed
to her which the historian Ash-Shakandi declares has never been equalled
for tenderness and melancholy. Whether the poet was happy in his love,
the authors I have consulted do not say; but one intimates that the
princess was discreet as she was beautiful, and caused many a lover to
sigh in vain. In fact, the reign of love and poetry in the delicious
abode of Zahara, was soon brought to a close by a popular insurrection.
Mahomed with his family took refuge in the fortress of Ucles, near
Toledo, where he was treacherously poisoned by the Alcayde; and thus
perished one of the last of the Ommiades.
The downfall of that brilliant dynasty, which had concentrated
everything at Cordova, was favorable to the general literature of
Morisco Spain.
“After the breaking of the necklace and the scattering of its pearls,”
says Ash-Shakandi, “the kings of small states divided among themselves
the patrimony of the Beni Ommiah.”
They vied with each other in filling their capitals with poets and
learned men, and rewarded them with boundless prodigality. Such were the
Moorish kings of Seville of the illustrious line of the Beni Abbad,
“with whom,” says the same writer, “resided fruit and palm-trees and
pomegranates; who became the centre of eloquence in prose and verse;
every day of whose reign was a solemn festivity; whose history abounds
in generous actions and heroic deeds, that will last through surrounding
ages and live forever in the memory of man!”
No place, however, profited more in point of civilization and refinement
by the downfall of the Western Caliphat than Granada. It succeeded to
Cordova in splendor, while it surpassed it in romantic beauty of
situation. The amenity of its climate, where the ardent heats of a
southern summer were tempered by breezes from snow-clad mountains; the
voluptuous repose of its valleys and the bosky luxuriance of its groves
and gardens all awakened sensations of delight, and disposed the mind to
love and poetry. Hence the great number of amatory poets that flourished
in Granada. Hence those amorous canticles breathing of love and war, and
wreathing chivalrous grace round the stern exercise of arms. Those
ballads which still form the pride and delight of Spanish literature are
but the echoes of amatory and chivalric lays, which once delighted the
Moslem courts of Andalus; and in which a modern historian of Granada
pretends to find the origin of the _rima Castellana_ and the type of the
“gay science” of the troubadours.[20]
Poetry was cultivated in Granada by both sexes. “Had Allah,” says
Ash-Shakandi, “bestowed no other boon on Granada than that of making it
the birthplace of so many poetesses, that alone would be sufficient for
its glory.”
Among the most famous of these was Hafsah; renowned, says the old
chronicler, for beauty, talents, nobility, and wealth. We have a mere
relic of her poetry in some verses, addressed to her lover, Ahmed,
recalling an evening passed together in the garden of Maumal.
“Allah has given us a happy night, such as he never vouchsafes to the
wicked and the ignoble. We have beheld the cypresses of Maumal gently
bowing their heads before the mountain breeze,--the sweet perfumed
breeze that smelt of gillyflowers; the dove murmured her love among the
trees; the sweet basil inclined its boughs to the limpid brook.”
The garden of Maumal was famous among the Moors for its rivulets, its
fountains, its flowers, and above all, its cypresses. It had its name
from a vizier of Abdallah, grandson of Aben Habuz, and Sultan of
Granada. Under the administration of this vizier many of the noblest
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