26 GRANADA 



medan monument, but one which symbolises 

 a phase of Mohammedan culture and institutions 

 almost peculiar to one country and epoch. No- 

 where else and never since has Islam reached 

 such a pitch of refinement. The Alhambra 

 stands as the high-water mark of its art and 

 civilisation. 



There will never be produced a new Alhambra, 

 any more than a new Parthenon or new Pyra- 

 mids ; for these great buildings were the expres- 

 sions of ideas and aspirations peculiar to societies 

 which have long ago perished. Thus, the Red 

 Palace of Granada is not interesting merely as 

 a Mohammedan edifice left isolated in the far 

 west of Europe, but as the monument of a people 

 and a civilisation long dead and gone. A sadness, 

 too, attaches to it, proceeding from the memory 

 of the violent extinction of that people with a 

 mission unfulfilled fraught, as it seems to have 

 been, with so much of light and beauty to the 

 Christian and the Muslim worlds. 



The Sierra Nevada thrusts forward a spur 

 which overlooks Granada on the south-east, 

 and is divided by two clefts or barrancos into three 

 eminences. The easternmost of these is crowned 

 by the Generalife, the westernmost by the ancient 

 fortifications known as the Torres Bermejas or 

 Vermilion Towers. The hill between the two 

 in shape aptly compared by Ford to a grand 



