THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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the Arabesque, which differed from that of the Egyptians and others in entirely excluding the figures of animals (the representation of which was forbidden by the Mohammedan religion), and confining itself entirely to foliage, flowers, fruits and tendrils of plants and trees, curiously and elaborately intertwined, which Schlegel de- scibes as “the oldest and most original form of fancy.”
The mosque at Cordova, with its thousand columns of vari-colored marble, jasper and porphyry, forming a perfect grove, is the finest type of a Moslem temple in Europe. The royal residence at Seville, the Al-Kasa (house of Caesar), enchants the beholder with its colonnades, courts, halls and porches, whose delicate ornamentation has been said “ to have the effect of old point lace, and whose walls, tilings and ceilings show the harmonious mingling of ivory, amber, turquoise-blue or violet-purple, and look like the inside of sea-shells.”
The most conspicuous, the most romantic, as well as the most venerated pile of Arabian architecture is the Alhambra of Granada. That name calls up such pictures of beauty and such scenes of historic interest, as only the pen of Washington Irving could depict. To him we are indebted for a faithful representation of this Oriental palace in a Christian land—an elegant memento of a brave, intelligent, graceful people, whose Paradise was an earthly one, and that Paradise beautiful Granada, with its mountain crest rising gravely and grandly above the lovely plain below, where gilded palaces, fountains, rivers and gardens, pillared avenues and arcades, galleries and balconies, blossoms and perfume, music, moonlight and charming women, did indeed form an Elysium! But Moslem ambition awoke from this seductive thralldom. At Constantinople, which they had vainly besieged for six years, the Saracens had been sternly repulsed by the terrible liquid fire, called “Greek Fire,” used by the inhabitants for defense. Foiled at this point, the Moors boldly scaled the Pyrenees and cast their rapacious eyes on the fair land of France, which now promised the only pathway to the Euxine—the object of their dreams and hopes, as the last step toward universal empire. Can we think of it without a shudder! We, who are here today as grateful disciples of Him who gave His presence and benediction to the marriage feast; who rebuked the peculiar form of idolatry practiced by the Jewish kings, that had provoked God’s wrath and precipitated their ruin; who made the religion of Mohammed a mockery and a crime, by His awful condemnation, and who has lifted our sex from the degradation of the harem to the exalted position we occupy here today!
On the plain between Tours and Poitiers the contending armies met, the Moors led by Abd-el-Rahman, the Franks and the German tribes by Charles Martel, the illustrious mayor of the palace of the Frankish king. After six days’ skirmishing, the enemies engaged in that fearful battle that was to decide the fate of Christendom. In the light skirmishing, the Moorish archers maintained the advantage, but in the close onset of deadly strife, the German auxiliaries of Charles, grasping their ponderous swords with “stout hearts and iron hands”—for they fought for faith and home— stood the shock like walls of stone, and beat down the light-armed Moors with terrific slaughter.
Was this the battle-ground of the man of flesh and the man of Spirit? Amid the clash of the contending armies do we not hear, resounding through the ages, the echo of Sarah’s imperious cry: “Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son! ” Were the thirteen years of Ishmael’s ascendency in the house of his father Abraham a prototype of the thirteen centuries of Moslem supremacy?
The Arabs “ folded their tents and silently stole away” in the night, fugitives before the wrath of Christian knights, leaving their camp rich with the plunder of Southern Europe to reward the victorious Franks, and 375,000 of their slain on the battle-field. The spell of Islam was broken, and “ the most brilliant life of the most brilliant of civilizations went down to its setting! ” Long mercifully deferred, the doom of Ishmael had sounded!
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