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A MORNING’S JOURNEY 201
of the city in their homeland at the foot of the Anti-
Lebanon, with the large and beautiful level plain of
El Ghuta. In fact, the name “the Earthly Paradise”
had originally been used for Damascus and El Ghuta,
but was now transferred to the new home. And to-
gether with the name went all the solicitude, all the
pride and all the affectionate care which the inhabitants
of large cities felt for their home in antiquity and in
the Middle Ages. Just as the Barada in their old home
had irrigated the plain of El Ghuta, so the Genil and
the Darro had to be conducted over the Vega; for
water is the blood of the earth, and as the blood
washes every cell in the body, so the water must trickle
about each plant.
Seville was the city of commerce, Cordoba the city
of science. But Granada, which did not lie on the
great arteries of traffic, attracted all persons of deli-
cacy and nobility, by reason of its beauty and its be-
witching climate, as well as its great idle riches. Sixty
thousand knights were in the service of Granada in its
most flourishing period, one braver than the other.
By day they wore the colors of their lady before men’s
eyes in the lofty plumes of their helmets, which flut-
tered with ribbons, and they engaged in tournaments
to win a smile from her. On the spacious Vivarrambla,
where the Inquisition later kindled its pyres, they
fought the bull, mounted on horseback and armed only
with a lance. All the chivalry of Europe may be traced
from them; and here also was laid the corner-stone for
Don Quixote.
These were the days when the Alhambra came into
being. Everywhere in the city splendid buildings rose
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