186 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE for three miles from east to west and for one mile from the Bridge Gate to Jews' Gate. It was famed for its scholars and merchants, and for the piety, intelligence, social ele- gance, and discriminating taste in matters of dress, food, and drink, of its inhabitants in general. Its crowning feature was the great mosque with its sixty attendants, its thousand columns, its one hundred and thirty candelabras, its beautiful ceilings, arcades, enamels, its mosaics pre- sented by the Byzantine emperor, its pulpit of ebony, box, and scented woods, on whose carvings and paintings six master workmen and their assistants had labored seven! years, and its tower near by, whose minaret was reached by two winding staircases which never met until the very top. Other towns of Moslem Spain were smaller than Cordova, yet noted for their commerce or manufactures. Almeria oni the southern Mediterranean coast had eight hundred silk looms, nine hundred and seventy caravansaries licensed to sell wine, and manufactures of copper and iron utensils. Its inhabitants were reputed to have more ready cash and greater stores of capital than those of any other Spanish city. Chincilla produced woolen carpets that could not be imi- tated elsewhere. Tortosa was a center of shipbuilding ow- ing to the impermeability of its pines to insects. Seville, located on the Guadalquivir below Cordova, exported its cotton — a plant introduced into Europe by the Mohamme- dans — and olive oils to East and West by land and sea. Other places were noted for their figs and raisins, their drugs and colored earths, their iron industries and their draperies. Mohammedan Spain, in short, seems to have been very prosperous, and we hear of the emir or caliph ing millions of gold pieces in his treasury at a time when money was very scarce in Western Christendom. The Moslem conquerors usually left the Spaniards their own laws and gave them native counts to collect the taxes Moham- and Judge disputes. Unbelievers paid a grad- SStSn Ule Uated mcome tax accor ding to their wealth, and all landed proprietors, whether converts or not, were subjected to an impost upon their crops averaging one
