Identifier: landofdons00willuoft (find matches)
Title: The land of the Dons
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Williams, Leonard, b. 1871
Subjects: Civilization, Spanish Spain -- Social life and customs
Publisher: London, Cassell
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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m castle after castle poised on beetlingprecipice and craggy height, up to and over theSierra Morena into Andalusia, whereto he clungprecariously for centuries, till the fall of Granada,no earlier than the end of the fifteenth century,exterminated him—in Spain—for ever. For ever ? No. Much of him still survives—in the cool courts of Granada, the mighty mosqueof Cordoba, the Giralda of Seville; in many analcazar, and bridge, and pinnacle, and wall, andgateway; and even where such material evidence isnot, his proud, and chivalrous, and generous, andjealous nature, his passion for the arts, and love, andmusic, the angry rattle of his scimitar, or the dulcetecho of his Arabic, seem still to haunt what was hishome long years ago. If war has any glory, hergrandest annals are the Christians and the Moorsin Spain—Las Navas de Tolosa and the RioSalado; eight hundred years of obstinate crusade,of doughty combat on both sides, and mutualesteem—in so voluminous a roll few deeds, if any,
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1»» (To fiu-c II. 2.1 (From, a iikoioijruph liii Ilavtcr y Mcmt, Madrid.)THE MOSQUE OF CORDOBA. RETROSPECTIVE AND ETHNOLOGICAL. 3 foully done, or flags of truce dishonoured: thebattle-shock of two heroic foes, the dusk-com-plexioned and the fair, of North and South, ofEurope and the East, the false God and theTrue. Nevertheless, the nobleness these champions ofthe Faith displayed towards the Islamite, theyquashed complacently in merely interchristian deal-ing. The petty kings who made a common causeagainst the Mohammedans, in the intervals of theircrusade turned promptly to, and tricked as well asbattered one another. The intrigues of such localsovereigns and their constables and officers—thesein their own opinion as good as their masters, andoften with a trustier vassalage—their bickerings forthis dowry or that, or that or this inheritance,would fill a library and be dry literature to boot.Yet from this effervescent fount, tinged with thevirtues and the vices of the Moor, sprin

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