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ptoduccd in the city possessed a uniquc charactcr rcsulting fiom a combi nation of indigcnous and imported skills. It has bccn suggcstcd chat it was the Arabs who intro* duced alum into Europę via Spain in the eighth ccntury A.D. This, howevcr, sccrrn most unlikdy: alum must havc been known in western Europę long beforc the Moorish invasion of Spain. At least six cenmrics bcforc the Moors came to Spain, Córdoba was in the hands of the Romans who, as we have scen, wcre wdl acquainced wirh the alum procesu

The use of alum far making leathcr probably came originally fion the Far EasL On the othcr band, a fcw scraps of evidcncc suggest that alumed leathcr was noc unknown in western Europę in prehistorie times. For cxamplc, Cacsar commcntcd on the use of «1mCs for sads by the Vened,' a tribc setded around the mouch of the Loirc, and the hidc sheath of a Neolithic flint celt from Wicpenkathcn, Scade, near Hamburg,* is pudy lined with what is bdieeed to be alumed leathcr. Córdoba was in Roman dmes a great mining cenne and akhough no icfcrcnce to the mining of alum at that dmc has been discovered, Gerard of Cremona, in his twdflh-eentury transladon³ of the work of a Spanish-Arab of aboot iioo, writes, 'There are mines of alum. Thus ibn Joljol the Cordoban says thcrc is a minę of it towards the north of Córdoba in a place called Nctcim... The said ibn Joljol died in 976 A.D. and akhough the 260 years sińce the Moorish occupadon was timc enough for alum to be discovered and mined, k seans likely that these mines may have caiited and bccn worked in Roman times, if noc belbre.

¹ Dr BrUkt GśUk*,m, u.

* ntuanied (Pt 90) in Wara. John W.. Le*br CnftmsrJćp, 196S.

»Dr unii nr nMw.c. 1170. EdmJ by Stetłc, Ł. 'Pnaical Chanńuy in ihe rath Cmmrf, lat, Brages. 1929, XXI. pi.

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