ABSTRACT
Watered by the Shenil 1 other rivers issuing from the neighbouring mountains of the Jabal Shulair (Sierra Nevada), and studded in every direction with orchards, gardens, groves, palaces, mansions, villas, and vineyards, the Meadow presented a rare spectacle of luxuriance and beauty. Around the gardens lay fields clothed with perpetual verdure. The Arabs exhausted on the Vega all their elaborate powers of cultivation. They distributed the waters of the Xenil and Darro into numberless channels, and obtained by their skill and labour a succession of fruit and cereals throughout the year. They successfully cultivated products of the most opposite latitudes. Large quantities of silk and flax were exported from the ports of Almeria and Malaga to the Italian cities then rising into opulence. Their manufactures were varied and numerous, and each city was noted for a special industry. The ports of the Ahmarite kingdom swarmed with the shipping of Europe, Levant, and Africa, and its capital, as the chief centre of a remarkable commercial activity, had "become the common city of all nations." 3 The citizens of Granada were universally reputed and honoured for their probity and trustworthiness, and their mere word was considered surer than the Christian Spaniard's document. Besides textile fabrics and precious metals they exported large quantities of raw produce, especially flax and silk. Florence derived her principal supply of this article from the ports of Almeria and Malaga.
