Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/434

J90 THE SPANISH ARABS. I. and Coni- lART sparkling with hyacinths and emeralds." ^^ Such — - are the florid strains in which the Arabic writers fondly descant on the glories of Granada. jr,iciiiture At the foot of this fabric of the genii lay the .11.1 C.ini. O J cultivated '€ega^ or plain, so celebrated as the arena, for more than two centuries, of Moorish and Christian chivalry, every inch of whose soil may be said to have been fertilized with human blood. The Arabs exhausted on it all their pow- ers of elaborate cultivation. They distributed the waters of the Xenil, which flowed through it, into a thousand channels for its more perfect irrigation. A constant succession of fruits and crops was ob- tained throughout the year. The products of the most opposite latitudes were transplanted there with success ; and the hemp of the north grew luxuriant under the shadow of the vine and the olive. Silk furnished the principal staple of a traffic that was carried on through the ports of Almeria and Malaga. The Italian cities, then rising into opulence, derived their principal skill in this elegant manufacture from the Spanish Arabs. Florence, in particular, imported large quantities of the raw material from them as late 25 Conde, Dominacion de los to the large quantity of grain in Arabes, torn. ii. p. 147. — Casiri, which its vega abounded; others Bibliotheca Escurialensis, torn. ii. again to the resemblance ■which pp. 248 et seq. — Pedraza, Anti- the city, divided into two hills guedad y Excelencias de Granada, thickly sprinkled with houses, (Madrid, 1608,) lib. 1. — Pedraza bore to a half-opened pomegran- has collected the various ctymolo- ate. (Lib. 2, cap. 17.) The arms gies of the term Granada, which of the city, which were in part some writers have traced to the composed of a pomegranate, would fact of the city having been the seem to favor the derivation of its spot where the fomcgranate was name from that of the fruit, first introduced from Africa ; others