A
little research gave me the few particulars known about her. She was a
Moorish beauty who flourished in the court of Muhamed the Left-handed,
and was the daughter of his loyal adherent, the alcayde of Malaga, who
sheltered him in his city when driven from the throne. On regaining
his crown, the alcayde was rewarded for his fidelity. His daughter had
her apartment in the Alhambra, and was given by the king in marriage
to Nasar, a young Cetimerien prince descended from Aben Hud the
Just. Their espousals were doubtless celebrated in the royal palace,
and their honeymoon may have passed among these very bowers.*
* Una de las cosas en que tienen precisa intervencion los Reyes
Moros es en el matrimonio de sus grandes: de aqui nace que todos los
senores llegadas a la persona real si casan en palacio, y siempre huvo
su quarto destinado para esta ceremonia.
One of the things in which the Moorish kings interfered was in the
marriage of their nobles: hence it came that all the senores
attached to the royal person were married in the palace; and there was
always a chamber destined for the ceremony.- Paseos por Granada.
Four centuries had elapsed since the fair Lindaraxa passed away, yet
how much of the fragile beauty of the scenes she inhabited remained!
The garden still bloomed in which she delighted; the fountain still
presented the crystal mirror in which her charms may once have been
reflected; the alabaster, it is true, had lost its whiteness; the
basin beneath, overrun with weeds, had become the lurking-place of the
lizard, but there was something in the very decay that enhanced the
interest of the scene, speaking as it did of that mutability, the
irrevocable lot of man and all his works.
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