Cordova

More than 2000 years ago Cordova was a Roman city. It furnished troops to Hannibal in the second Punic war (218-202 B. C.). It took sides with Pompey against Caesar, and after the battle of Munda, near Cordova (45 B. C.), Caesar left dead upon the plain of Cordova 28,000 of its inhabitants. Under the Goths, Cordova was a royal residence, but it reached the acme of its greatness under the Moors. Once it was the "Pearl of the West," the "City of Cities." It still nestles on the banks of the gentle Guadalquivir, in the midst of an extensive plain surrounded by mountains filled with water-springs, which have for centuries irrigated fields of flowers in which may be found fifteen hundred varieties; almost endless groves of orange and lemon trees, with their glistening leaves and golden fruit, and of olive trees, which always suggest the Mount of Olives; and above them all tower the graceful palm trees, reminders that Abd-er-Rahman, the Great, planted the first palm tree in Spain, and dedicated it with a touching poem as being, like himself, "a stranger in a strange land." The city walls as described by Julius Caesar have been strengthened by towers, square and octagonal; the numerous gates are historic, but have lost their former beauty. The drive of ten miles around the city walls and a visit to the Mosque are all that remain to show that, from the ninth to the twelfth century, Cordova was the largest and most splendid city in the world. Its clean, narrow, well-paved streets were paved two hundred years before such a thing was thought of in Paris; and seven hundred years before a street-lamp was lighted in London, miles of streets in Cordova were illumined at night by public lamps placed close together.

In the tenth century, when the rest of Europe was sunk in the darkness of ignorance and superstition, Cordova had eight hundred schools, and a library of 600,000 volumes, whereas four hundred years later the Library of France had only 900 volumes. Students from all parts of the world came to Cordova to study science and law. Its Alcazar, or Royal Palace, was a bewilderment of Moorish architecture and ornament; all that remains of it now is used as a prison. The plain, square, two-storied, unshadowed, whitewashed houses of to-day are not relics of the marble palaces that lined its streets, nor even of the plainer but elegant 263,000 houses that gave homes to its 1,000,000 inhabitants. Philip II. ordered the destruction of its 900 Public Baths, calling them "relics of infidelity."

Cordova, which was once to Spain what the head is to the body, has dwindled away until we find it what Gautier said of it fifty years ago, "a mere skeleton of its former self." Its wealth, its art, its literature, its trade, its prestige are gone. Still, there is in Cordova an air--perhaps a reflex one--of refinement that recalls the ancient Caliphate; for Cordova is still aristocratic, and there is still some wealth in the city. It has a lovely climate, and perhaps the lingering air of its past greatness comes from the fact that it was never the home of bigotry nor its twin sister, ignorance. It has its bullring, its parks, and its quaint, historic, picturesque bridge over the river, a copy of which forms the arms of the city; and it has, above all, a happy and contented population of about forty thousand, and its ancient, magnificent Mosque.