by Alphonso XI. of
Castile in 1328, and long used as the offices of the Holy Inquisition,
has only one wing in good repair, which serves as a prison.

But the glory of Cordova, surpassing all its other Moorish or Christian
buildings, is the _mezquita_, or mosque, now a cathedral, but originally
founded on the site of a Roman temple and a Visigothic church by
Abd-ar-Rahman I. (756-788), who wished to confirm the power of his
caliphate by making its capital a great religious centre. Immigration
from all the lands of Islam soon rendered a larger mosque necessary,
owing to the greatly increased multitude of worshippers, and, by orders
of Abd-ar-Rahman II. (822-852) and Al-Hakim II. (961-976), the original
size was doubled. After various minor additions, Al-Mansur, the vizier
of the caliph Hisham II. (976-1009), again enlarged the _Zeca_, or House
of Purification, as the mosque was named, to twice its former size,
rendering it the largest sacred building of Islam, after the Kaaba at
Mecca. The ground plan of the completed mosque forms a rectangle,
measuring 570 ft. in length and 425 in breadth, or little less than St
Peter's in Rome. About one-third of this area is occupied by the
courtyard, and the cloisters which surround it on the north, west and
east. The exterior, with the straight lines of its square buttress
towers, has a heavy and somewhat ungainly appearance; but the interior
is one of the most beautiful specimens of Moorish architecture. Passing
through a grand courtyard about 500 ft. in length, shady with palm and
cypress and orange trees and watered by five fountains, the visitor
enters on the south a magnificent and bewildering labyrinth of pillars
in which porphyry, jasper and many-coloured marbles are boldly combined.
Part came from the spoils of Nimes or Narbonne, part from Seville or
Tarragona, some from the older ruins of Carthage, and others as a
present to Abd-ar-Rahman I. from the East Roman emperor Leo IV., who
sent also from Constantinople his own skilled workmen, with 16 tons of
tesserae for the mosaics. Originally of different heights, the pillars
have been adjusted to their present standard of 12 ft. either by being
sunk into the soil or by the addition of Corinthian capitals. Twelve
hundred was the number of the columns in the original building, but many
have been destroyed. The pillars divide the area of the building from
north to south, longitudinally into nineteen and transversely into
twenty-n