The Moors in Spain

Excerpt: ...or came from Rome, Carthage, Sfax, and other places, besides the home marbles quarried at Tarragona and Almeria. There were fifteen thousand doors, coated with iron or polished brass. The Hall of the Khalifs at the new city had a roof and walls of marble and gold, and in it was a wonderful sculptured fountain, a present from the Greek Emperor, who also sent the Khalif a unique pearl. In the midst of the hall was a basin of quicksilver; at either side were eight doors set in ivory and ebony, and adorned with precious stones. When the sun shone through these doors, and the quicksilver lake was set quivering, the whole room was filled with flashes like lightning, and the courtiers would cover their dazzled eyes. The Arabian authors delight in telling of the wonders of this "City of the Fairest," Medinat-Ez-Zahra, as it was called, after the Khalif's mistress. "We might go to a great length were we only to enumerate all the beauties, natural as well as artificial, contained within the precincts of Ez-Zahra," writes one: "the running streams, the limpid waters, the luxuriant gardens, the stately buildings for the household guards, the magnificent palaces for the high functionaries of State; the throng of soldiers, pages, and slaves, of all nations and religions, sumptuously attired in robes of silk and brocade, moving to and fro through its broad streets; or the crowd of judges, theologians, and poets, walking with becoming gravity through the magnificent halls and ample courts of the palace. The number of male servants in the palace has been estimated at thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty, to whom the daily allowance of flesh meat, exclusive of fowls and fish, was thirteen thousand pounds; the number of women of various kinds and classes, comprising the harim of the Khalif, or waiting upon them, is said to have amounted to six thousand three hundred and fourteen. The Slav pages and eunuchs were three thousand three hundred and fifty, to whom...