Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/439

295 THE SPANISH ARABS. 296 Other circumstances, especially the frescoes still chapter extant on the walls of the Alhambra, may be cited — as corroborative of the conclusions afforded by the romances, implying a latitude in the privileges ac- corded to the sex, similar to that in Christian coun- tries, and altogether alien from the genius of Ma- hometanism.'^ The chivalrous character ascribed chivairy. other than a very slippery founda- tion for history. The most beau- tiful portion perhaps of the Moor- ish ballads, for example, is taken up with the feuds of the Abencer- rages in the latter days of Granada. Yet this family, whose romantic story is still repeated to the travel- ler amid the ruins of the Alhambra, is scarcely noticed, as far as I am aware, by contemporary writers, foreign or domestic, and would seem to owe its chief celebrity to the apocryphal version of Gines Perez de Hyta, whose " Milesian tales," according to the severe sentence of Nic. Antonio, " are fit only to amuse the lazy and the listless." (Bibliotheca Nova, torn. i. p. 536.) But, although the Spanish bal- lads are not entitled to the credit of strict historical documents, they may yet perhaps be received in evidence of the prevailing charac- ter of the social relations of the age ; a remark indeed predicable of most works of fiction, written by authors contemporary with the events they describe, and more especially so of that popular min- strelsy, which, emanating from a simple, uncorrupted class, is less likely to swerve from truth, than more ostentatious works of art. The long cohabitation of the Sar- acens with the Christians, (full evidence of which is afforded by Capmany, (Mem. de Barcelona, lom. iv. Apend. no. 11,) who quotes a document from the pub- lic archives of Catalonia, show- ing the great number of Saracens residing in Aragon even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the most flourishing period of the Granadian empire,) had enabled many of them confessedly to speak and write the Spanish language with purity and elegance. Some of the graceful little songs, which are still chanted, by the peasantry of Spain in their dances, to the accompaniment of the castanet, are referred by a competent critic (Conde, De la Poesia Oriental, MS.) to an Arabian origin. There can be little hazard, therefore, in imputing much of this peculiar minstrelsy to the Arabians them- selves, the contemporaries, and perhaps the eyewitnesses of the events they celebrate. 3t Casiri (Bibliotheca Escuria- lensis, torn. ii. p. 259,) has tran- scribed a passage from an Arabian author of the fourteenth century, inveighing bitterly against the lux- ury of the Moorish ladies, their gorgeous apparel and habits of expense, " amounting almost to insanity," in a tone which may re- mind one of the similar philippic by his contemporary Dante, against his fair countrywomen of Florence. — Two ordinances of a king of Granada, cited by Conde in his History, prescribe the separation of the women from the men in the mosques ; and prohibit their at- tendance on certain festivals, with- out the protection of their husbands or some near relative. — Their femmes savantes, as we have seen.