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But on this particular morning the effect seemed singularly bright and clear. Between the open square and the sunlit leaves and the statue and the Saracenic outlines of the Alhambra, it looked the replica of some French or even Spanish public place.
It retains several marks of having been the site of some more ancient and considerable town, presenting large blocks of stone with mouldings and sculpture wrought into the modern buildings. In the neighbourhood are seen the walls of an edifice apparently Roman, as also the ruins of two small towers which may with equal certainty be traced to the age of Saracenic domination.
It is only beneath an intensely blue sky that one can realize the full and exquisite effect of pure white marble. Nothing finer or more lovely in architecture exists than this faultless monument, this ideal of Saracenic art, in all its rich harmony, erected by an Indian emperor to the memory of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, which signifies the "Chosen of the Palace."
A subsidy, not very dissimilar, which Justinian had allowed the Saracenic Arabs under Persian rule, he had already discontinued; and hostilities had, in consequence, already commenced between the Persian and the Roman Saracens.
Alamandarus, sheikh of the Saracenic Arabs, had long been a bitter enemy of the Romans, and from his safe retreat in the desert had been accustomed for fifty years to ravage, almost at his will, the eastern provinces of the empire.
Does this justify us in inferring that the course which England has to run will extend still over three centuries and that then England too will pass away, as Rome, as the Saracenic empire, have passed away?
An inscription over the main archway gives the date of the completion of the mosque as A.D. 1571. The chapels are connected with each other by noble colonnades of a decidedly Hindu or Jain character. The Saracenic arches combine most happily with the Hindu construction, and the view down the "long-drawn aisles" is singularly impressive.
Tyre was not reduced to insignificance until the Saracenic conquest towards the close of the thirteenth century of our era, when its trade collapsed, and it became "a rock for fishermen to spread their nets upon." The other respect in which the vitality of the old national spirit displayed itself was in the continuance of the ancient religion.
Standards of dogmatic orthodoxy were established, Motazelites were persecuted and put to death, and by the twelfth century A.D. the last vestiges of Saracenic liberalism were extirpated. The canons of Moslem thought were fixed. All creative activity ceased. The very memory of the great Motazelite doctors faded away. The Moslem mind was closed, not to be re-opened until our own day.
The courtyards of these houses are architecturally interesting: the Saracenic arch, the rosettes of open-work stucco, the squares of the same material with intricate patterns great boons in a hot land to let in the air without the sun.
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