46 GRANADA 



the marble flooring is pointed out as the victims' 

 indelible bloodstains. The story has only the 

 slenderest historical foundation, and was first 

 circulated by a writer of the name of Gines Perez 

 de Hita, who lived in the sixteenth century. 

 According to some, the usurper Aben Osmin 

 (1446) was beheaded here by order of the prince 

 Muley Hassan ; but others, writing of that con- 

 fused period of Granadine history, say the tyrant 

 fled to the mountains. This chamber, perhaps 

 the most elegant in the Alhambra, does not seem 

 a likely place for deeds of blood. It is entered 

 through a wonderfully graceful arch, growing 

 out of, rather than springing from, marble shafts. 

 The chamber is a square, prolonged on the east 

 and west by two alhamis or alcoves, which are 

 entered through exquisitely-curved arches. But 

 the glory of the Sala de los Abencerrages is its 

 roof its plan like that of a star, with pendants 

 or stalactites, and sixteen windows in its vaultings. 

 " Its thousand stalactites," writes Don Fran- 

 cisco Pi Margall, " its colours, its innumerable 

 archings, its cro\vns of stars, its complicated 

 depressions and projections, its cones,its polygons, 

 its accidents of light, the effects of chiaroscuro, 

 present it at first sight as something confused, 

 indefinable, indecipherable, resplendent, and 

 vague, like that broad band, the Milky Way, 

 which crosses the pavilion of the heavens. Yet 



