Arabic Spain : sidelights on her history and art . ere converted intobeautiful vases adorned with gold, jacinths, emeralds, andrubies. Another says that a large enclosure before thepalace doors was filled with them. A third says the skullswere kept in cupboards, in carefully sealed jars. And yetanother attributes this singular taste for a garden of skullson sticks to the usurper of the Cordovan throne, MohammedAl-Muhdi, who died in 1010, before Motadid of Seville wasborn. No doubt the Abbadites, like all their predecessors,contemporaries, and followers, received occasional trophiesof victory c
Arabic Spain : sidelights on her history and art . ere converted intobeautiful vases adorned with gold, jacinths, emeralds, andrubies. Another says that a large enclosure before thepalace doors was filled with them. A third says the skullswere kept in cupboards, in carefully sealed jars. And yetanother attributes this singular taste for a garden of skullson sticks to the usurper of the Cordovan throne, MohammedAl-Muhdi, who died in 1010, before Motadid of Seville wasborn. No doubt the Abbadites, like all their predecessors,contemporaries, and followers, received occasional trophiesof victory consisting of their enemies skulls preserved incamphor. Such offerings were continually made to victoriousprinces. Thus the camphorated head of Abdalaziz waspresented, in the presence of his father Musa, to the KhahfSuleiman, early in the eighth century, and the camphoratedhead of the usurper known as the Red King was offered to therightful monarch of Granada by his friend Pedro of Castilein the second half of the fourteenth, these two gifts being. Fig. 9.—Fragment of the funeral robe of Fernando III. (d. 1252) pre-served in the AichaeoJogical Museum of Madrid, with lions andnasties similar to the Shields in the Alcazar of Seville. A robe ofthis design is depicted as worn by Alfonso X. in his Booh of Chess. I THE ABBADITES AT HOME 207 connected by many other such during the intervening 650odd years. So that if Motadid, King of Seville from 1042 to1069, did accept preserved skulls from his friends, he must notbe written down a savage because he acquiesced in thecustom of his age. Apart from this tale, we have found nothing to suggestthat any of the Abbadites who, whether as Walis, Hajibs, orkings, ruled Seville for nearly three quarters of a century,differed from the rest of their race and rehgion in their humaneand kindly treatment of those under their sway. We have already referred to the Law or Instructionsupon which was based the character and conduct of theShiites (see p.
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