Читать книгу The Alhambra. The Arabian conquest of the Peninsula with a particular account of the Mohammedan architecture and decoration онлайн

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The inscriptions are of three sorts—“ayát,” i.e., verses from the Korán; “asjá,” pious or devout sentences not taken from the Korán; and, thirdly, “ash’ár,” poems in praise of the builders or owners of the Palace. Those belonging to either of the first two classes are generally written in the Cufic character, and the letters are often so shaped as to present a uniform appearance from both sides, and make the inscription readable from the right to the left, and vice versa, or upwards and downwards.

The innumerable sentences abounding everywhere in the Alhambra are so harmonious and interweaving—producing such cross-lights of poetry and praise, merging naturally and gracefully when the mind is torpid or indifferent to them, into mere surface ornament—that they are never out of place, but present always an unsatiating charm. Once, at least, an inscription in the Palace has settled a dull controversy respecting the use of the many small, highly-decorated recesses which are seen in the apartments. On each side of the ante-room of the Hall of the Ambassadors is one of these recesses resembling the piscinæ of our cathedrals. Blundering wise men insistently averred that these niches were used by suppliants as receptacles for their slippers before entering to an audience, until an Arabic scholar pointed to an inscription round the aperture, which reads: “If anyone approach me complaining of thirst, he will receive cool and limpid water, sweet and pure.” Any Spaniard ought to have known that here were the places of the Alcarraza, or porous earthen bottles common to all comers, even as they may now be found in the halls of some Andalusian gentlemen.