Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/326

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the Moorish kings of that town, "There is no conqueror but God," so that it is probably a royal weapon. In the Royal Armoury of Madrid is a sword of the same type, but simpler in its enrichment (Fig. 663), which, formerly attributed to Don Juan of Austria, seems actually to have belonged to Cardinal Don Fernando, brother of Philip IV, King of Spain; for at his death it was sent from Milan to Madrid with other armour and weapons that were his property. The mounting of the hilt bears a variation of the text quoted above, "There is no other divinity but God"; the blade, however, is engraved with the arms of John, Duke of Brabant and Limburg, who died in 1427. It is quite possible that the blade may be the original blade made for the hilt, its section and form being quite in keeping with it; but if that is so, the engraved and gilt arms must have been added commemoratively at Brabant late in the XVth century. Another of these swords is now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, having been acquired as part of the Dino Collection (Fig. 664). It used to belong to the Marquis de las Dos Aguas of Valencia, in Spain, and attached to it was the tradition that originally it was the property of Aben-Achmet, the last of the Abencérrages, a family or faction which is said to have held a prominent position in the Moorish kingdom of Granada during the XVth century, and which gave its name to the celebrated hall in the Palace of the Alhambra, this hall being the actual scene of the massacre of the last of the race by their feudal rivals the Zegris. The decoration of the sword is admirable, the whole scheme, though subdued in colour, being rich in effect. There is a sword of the same type in the collection of the Marquis de Pallavicino in Granada; another belonged until recently to Baron de Sangarren; another, which is now in Germany, used to be in the collection of M. Sanchez Toscano, to whom it is supposed to have descended as a heritage from Ferdinand the Catholic. The Archaeological Museum of Madrid owns an example which formerly belonged to the Moor, Aliatar, Alcade of Loja, and which used to be preserved in the church of that town. A similar sword was formerly exhibited in the Museum, Cassel, but now only its mounts are to be seen in the National Bavarian Museum of Munich. There is yet another sword of the same type in the Madrid Armoury, but showing the primitive elephant-head quillons (Fig. 665). This at one time was attributed to Boabdil; but it has been pronounced to be a forgery, made probably in the first half of the XIXth century to replace the genuine sword which it must be supposed was stolen from the royal collection. An unusual little back-edged sword, which we illustrate (Fig. 666), is interesting; inasmuch as it