The Gate of Pardon is so called because, under the Roman Catholic dispensation, indulgences were granted to those who entered by it into the temple. There is one gate of the same name in each of the cathedrals that I have visited in this country. The bronze ornaments upon the doors are very curious, the royal arms are displayed, and while the Christian inscription, in Gothic letters, of the word DEUS, proclaims the true God, the Arabic letters also testify that the Mahometans worshipped him, for they write, “The empire belongs to God.”
Within the temple there is at first a sense of gloom, almost of oppression, arising from the vastness of the area and the want of height. The roof cannot be more than 40 or 50 feet high, while the floor stretches away 640 feet in length and 460 feet in breadth. A thousand columns in long lines, like trees planted in the garden of the Lord, are each of one single stone,—the spoils of temples in the East and the West, and some of them imperial gifts, and hence a variety of colors and size, showing all sorts of marbles, the green and red jasper, black, white and rose, emerald and porphyry. Crossing each other, at right angles, these rows of pillars form nineteen naves one way and twenty-nine the other; long-drawn aisles, over which the horse-shoe-shaped arches, standing one upon the other and supporting the roof, produce a marvellous effect.
[Illustration: THE GREAT MOSQUE, CORDOVA.]
The Holy of Holies in the mosque was the Mihrab, and it has been preserved in the converted temple, with religious care, as at once a curiosity and a memorial that the Mahometan has ceased to defile these courts. It is a recess in the wall of the temple, in which the Koran was kept, and where the Kalif came to say his prayers, looking out of a little window toward Mecca. It is a small six-sided room, about twelve feet across, the floor one piece of marble, and the roof, in the shape of a shell, is also, we were assured, of a single block, and up the six sides rise marble pilasters, the whole adorned with strange Arabic art and mysterious inscriptions. When Hakem was Caliph of Cordova, he sent messengers into the East to ask for skilful artificers in painting glass and giving this strange effect to tracery in metals and stone; for there is in mosaic work, when well done, something superior to the softest painting, and quite incomprehensible. The workers in mosaic came, and their skill now shines in this miracle of Oriental art, which has been here since 965, and is as fresh and beautiful as when it shone at the feast of the Rhamadhan, in the light of a thousand lamps. In the marble floor is worn a deep groove, by the knees of devout Mussulmans, who have thus gone around it while at their devotions.