The
Moorish king who built it was a great magician, or, as some
believed, had sold himself to the devil, and had laid the whole
fortress under a magic spell. By this means it had remained standing
for several hundred years, in defiance of storms and earthquakes,
while almost all other buildings of the Moors had fallen to ruin,
and disappeared. This spell, the tradition went on to say, would
last until the hand on the outer arch should reach down and grasp
the key, when the whole pile would tumble to pieces, and all the
treasures buried beneath it by the Moors would be revealed.
Notwithstanding this ominous prediction, we ventured to pass through
the spell-bound gateway, feeling some little assurance against magic
art in the protection of the Virgin, a statue of whom we observed
above the portal.
After passing through the barbican, we ascended a narrow lane,
winding between walls, and came on an open esplanade within the
fortress, called the Plaza de los Algibes, or Place of the Cisterns,
from great reservoirs which undermine it, cut in the living rock by
the Moors to receive the water brought by conduits from the Darro, for
the supply of the fortress. Here, also, is a well of immense depth,
furnishing the purest and coldest of water; another monument of the
delicate taste of the Moors, who were indefatigable in their exertions
to obtain that element in its crystal purity.
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