slem infidels began to build
their huge monument. More probably it was started about the year 1185,
as the prayer tower or minaret of the mosque which was then rapidly
progressing. The Spanish historian Gayangos says that it was completed
by Jabar or Gever in 1196, during the reign of the illustrious Almohad
ruler, Abu Jakub Jusef, the same monarch who erected the Mesquita at
Cordova. Other authorities insist that its original purpose was as an
observatory,--but although it may have been used for astronomical
purposes, it was certainly erected as a tower from which the muezzin
could call the faithful to prayer in the Mosque of Seville. While
building it, Gever claims to have invented algebra.

The original tower has undergone skillful but of course detrimental
changes from the hands of later generations. We have descriptions and
representations of it prior to the changes made in 1500. The main Arab
structure was, like almost all Mohammedan prayer-towers, surmounted by a
smaller tower and capped by a spire. It was about 250 feet high, and on
its summit an iron standard supported, before the earthquake of 1395,
four enormous balls of brass. King Alfonso the Wise, in his "Cronica de
Espana," describing Seville in the thirteenth century, says that "when
the sun shone upon these balls, they emitted so fierce a light that they
might be seen a day's journey away from the city." When Seville was
taken by Saint Ferdinand in 1248, the tower was standing in the full
glory of its original conception. The thought that it might fall into
the hands of the conquerors so horrified its builders that they were
only prevented from destroying it by Saint Ferdinand's threat that, if a
single brick were removed, not an infidel in Seville should keep his
head.

The Giralda had already lost the Byzantine crown which it had worn
proudly for five hundred years when, in 1595, it came near total
destruction, and was only saved during the terrible earthquake and storm
which almost destroyed the city by the interposition of its special
protectresses, the potter girls of Triana, Santa Justa and Santa Rufina.
There are pictures which show us these blessed Virgins supporting the
tower while the wind devils with distended cheeks are blowing on its
sides with all their might and main. We are not only grateful to them
for this timely intervention, but very glad it cost them so little
exertion, for we find them shortly afterwards holding the tower in their