Leo Africanus Read Free Page B

towards the ground and could not suppress a cry of horror. “May God take pity upon us, it is Noah’s flood!” murmured my protectress behind me.’
    My mother would never efface from her memory the terrified child’s vision which lay before her, nor would any of those who had been in Granada on that accursed day of the Parade ever forget it. A raging torrent cascaded through the valley through which the bubbling but placid Darro normally flowed, sweeping away everything in its path, devastating gardens and orchards, uprooting thousands of trees, majestic elms, walnuts a century old, ash trees,almond trees and mountain ashes, before penetrating to the heart of the city, carrying all its trophies before it like a Tartar conqueror, swallowing up the central area, demolishing hundreds of houses, shops and warehouses, destroying the houses on the bridges, until, at the end of the day, because of the mass of debris which filled the river bed, an immense pool formed which covered the courtyard of the Great Mosque, the merchants’
qaisariyya
, and the suqs of the goldsmiths and the blacksmiths. No one ever knew how many were drowned, crushed under the debris or carried off by the waves. In the evening, when Heaven finally permitted the nightmare to fade, the flood carried the wreckage out of the city, while the water ebbed away more rapidly than it had flooded. At sunrise the agent of death was far away, although its victims were still strewn over the surface of the shining earth.
    â€˜It was a just punishment for the crimes of Granada,’ said my mother, repeating a well-worn maxim. ‘God desired to show that His power has no equal, and wanted to punish the arrogance of the rulers, their corruption, injustice and depravity. He wanted to warn us about the destiny which awaited us if we continued to walk in our impious ways, but our eyes and hearts remained closed.’
    The day after the drama, all the inhabitants of the city were convinced that the man primarily responsible for their misfortune, the man who had brought down divine wrath upon them, was none other than the arrogant, corrupt, unjust, depraved Abu’l-Hasan ‘Ali, the son of Sa‘d the Nasrid, twenty-first and penultimate sultan of Granada, may the Most High erase his name from memory!
    To obtain the throne, he had removed and imprisoned his own father. To consolidate himself in power, he had cut off the heads of the sons of the most noble families of the kingdom, including the valiant Abencerages. However, in my mother’s eyes the sultan’s most heinous crime was to have abandoned his freeborn wife, his cousin Fatima, daughter of Muhammad the Left-handed, for a Christian slave girl called Isabel de Solis whom he had named Soraya.
    â€˜It was said,’ she told me, ‘that one morning the sultan called the members of his court together in the Myrtle courtyard so that they could attend the Rumiyya’s bath.’ My mother was shocked to have to recount this ungodly act; ‘May God forgive me!’ she stammered, her eyes turned towards the heavens. ‘May God forgive me!’ she repeated (as she evidently intended to continue with her story).‘When the bath was over, the sultan invited all those present to drink a small bowl of the water which Soraya had left behind, and everyone rhapsodized, in prose or in verse, about the wonderful taste which the water had absorbed. Everyone, that is, except the vizir Abu’l-Qasim Venegas, who, far from leaning towards the bath remained proudly in his seat. This did not escape the notice of the sultan, who asked him why he did so. “Your Majesty,” replied Abu’l-Qasim, “I fear that if I tasted the sauce I should immediately develop an appetite for the partridge.” May God forgive me!’ repeated my mother, unable to repress her laughter.
    I have heard this story told about many of the notables of al-Andalus, and I do not know to