Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/548

532 532 SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. Part III. would be a most interesting example of the Mahomedan style, were it not that it has been much dilapidated in subsequent ages, and its character destroyed by alterations and so-called im])rovements after it fell into the hands of the Christians. It is more than probable that the best parts of it belong to the same age as the Giralda — the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century — and that it continued to receive additions till the city was taken by the Christians in 1248. A careful examination of the buikling by some one intimate with all the peculiarities of the style might distinguish the ancient ])arts from the later Christian additions, esi^ecially those perpetrated by Don Pedro the Cruel (135.3-1364), who, in an inscri])tion on the walls, claims the merit of having rebuilt it. The history of this palace is not consequently of much importance, since it is not so much older than the Alhambra as to mark another style, nor so complete as to enable lis to judge of the effect of the art as perfectly as we can in that celebrated palace. The Alhambra. It was after his expulsion from Seville (1248) that Mohammed ben Alhamar commenced the jiresent citadel of the Alhambra, at which both he and his successors worked continually till the end of the 13th centuiy. It does not, however, appear that any of the more im- portant buildings now found there were erected by these monarch s. From the accession of Abou-el-Walid (1309) to the death of Yousouf (1354) the works of the present palace seem to have been carried on uninterruptedly, and it is to this half century that we must refer all the essential pai'ts of the palace now found in the citadel. As will be seen from the annexed i)lan, it consists principally of two oblong courts ; the richest and most beautiful, that of the Lions (a a), running east and west, was built by Abou Abdallah (1325- 1333). The other, tlie Court of the Alberca (b b), at right angles to the former, is plainer and probably earlier. Restorers generally add a third court, corresponding with that of the Lions, which they say was romoved to allow of the erection of the palace of Charles V. (x x), which now protrudes its formal mass most unpleasingly among the light and airy constructions of the Moors. My own impression is that, if anything did stand here, it Avas the mosque, which we miss, although Ave know that it existed, and tradition points to this side as its locality, though it certainly was not the apartment at that angle which now goes by that name. It must, like all Spanish mosques, have faced the south, and was most probably destroyed by the first Christian conquerors of Granada. Indeed, it is not unlikely that the Christian palace above mentioned, which stands strangely unsym- metrically with the other buildings, follows the lines of the old mosque. This could be in great measui-e determined if we could rely