It is strange--or rather, would be strange in any country that had been less constantly afflicted both with civil and external warfare--that hardly anything remains of all the bronze artistic objects manufactured by the Spanish Moors. Poets of this race have sung of gold and silver fountains, door-knockers, and statues that adorned the buildings of Cordova. In many of these instances the hyperbolic gold and silver of the writers would undoubtedly be bronze. Al-Makkari quotes an Arab poet who extols in passionate terms Almanzor's dazzling mansion of Az-zahyra. "Lions of metal," sang this poet, "bite the knockers of thy doors, and as those doors resound appear to be exclaiming _Allahu akbar_" ("God is great"). Another bard describes the fountains of the same enchanted palace. "The lions who repose majestically in this home of princes, instead of roaring, allow the waters to fall in murmuring music from their mouths. _Their bodies seem to be covered with gold_, and in their mouths crystal is made liquid.
"Though in reality these lions are at rest, they seem to move and, when provoked, to grow enraged. One would imagine that they remembered their carnage of past days, and bellowing turned once more to the attack.
"When the sun is reflected from their _bronze_ surface, they seem to be of fire, with tongues of flame that issue from their mouths.
"Nevertheless, when we observe them to be vomiting water, one would think this water to be swords which melt without the help of fire, and are confounded with the crystal of the fountain."
[Illustration: XXX BRONZE LION (_Found in the Province of Palencia_)]
Figures in bronze, of eagles, peacocks, swans, stags, dragons, lions, and many other creatures were set about in garden and in hall, to decorate these splendid palaces of ancient Cordova.
A specimen of this class of objects is a bronze lion of small dimensions (Plate xxx.) found not many years ago in the province of Palencia, and believed to date from the reign of Al-Hakem the Second of Cordova. It belonged for some time to the painter Fortuny--a diligent and lucky hunter of antiquities,--and was subsequently purchased in 1875 by M. Piot. The modelling and decoration of this beast, especially the mannered and symmetrical curls which are supposed to form its mane, are quite conventional and strongly reminiscent of Assyrian art, such as pervades the various lions rudely wrought in stone and still existing at Granada; whether the celebrated dozen that support and guard the fountain in the courtyard of the Moorish palace,[90] or else the greater pair of grinning brutes proceeding from the ruins of the palace of Azaque (miscalled the Moorish Mint), which may be noticed squatting with their rumps towards the road, beside the garden entrance to the Carmen de la Mezquita.