February 23, 2022
“On such heavenly nights I could sit for hours at my window inhaling the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the checkered fortunes of those whose history was dimly shadowed out in the elegant memorials around”
- Washington Irving ‘The Alhambra by Moonlight’
“it’s good to be King”
- Mel Brooks
It is too massive a place. The site is so big that it is impossible to try to tell the entire tale in so confining a space.
Yesterday we visited the Alhambra, or ‘The Red One’ that sits atop Sabika Hill; an outcropping of the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Palace / Fortress dominates the city of Granada running East to West through the city like a great sword. It is the largest intact Moorish monument in Europe and a glittering example of Islamic architecture.
Here are some aerial views -
Ok what is a Moor exactly? Shakespeare famously wrote, “I hate the Moor” in the classic Othello.
A Moor is a term used by European Christians to call the Muslim inhabitants of the Mahreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta in the Middle Ages. Moors originally were the indigenous Maghrebine Berbers of Northwest Africa. It was a broad term to mean persons of Arabic descent that was generally meant in a derogatory manner by Europeans. Nothing about the term denotes a specific people group. It was simply a brand label used by Christian Europeans.
In 711 AD the Moors entered the Iberian peninsula and proceeded to establish an empire. An Army of 7,000 defeated the Visgoths and made their home in what is now Southern Spain. Charlemagne was ruling in what is now Germany. The Chinese invented gunpowder. The Europe we know today did not exist. Rome had fallen only 300 years earlier.
To have a sense of perspective, the United States has a history of around 300 years long. Time is measured differently here.
The Moorish empire thrived and in 1238 work began on the rocky outcropping overlooking the Valley below on Alcazaba the massive medieval castle.
By the 1300’s the Moorish Empire and reached its apogee under the Nasrid regime. . The Alhambra was expanded accordingly. At its height some 1,000 people lived and worked on the hill.
Though out these years for a period of almost 700 years, the various Christian feudal states fought with the Muslims (and each other)for land and control. This long period of conflict in Spanish history is referred to the Reconquista. Slowly, over many years, the Christians advanced into the Moorish controlled state.
Granada was the last stronghold of the Moors and its symbol was the Alhambra Fort. Queen Isabel married King Ferdinand joining together the two mightiest nation states on the peninsula. By the late. 1400’s, their forces were strong enough to force a surrender of the Alhambra.
Boabdil, the last Sheik, surrendered the keys to the fort without a fight to Ferdinand. According to legend, as he rode away he looked back to see the Cross and flags of the King and Queen raised over Alcazaba. He began to cry.
“You weep like a woman over what you could not defend as a man”, his mother chastised him.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Jews were later expelled, killed, or forced to convert to Christianity.
“Nobody EXPECTS the Spanish inquisition!” - Monty Python
Here are some scenes from the amazing day here. Again, it is easy to think that all of this was finished when Boabdil left. The Christians spent may years razing parts of it to erect churches over demolished Mosques and buildings.
We enter just East of the Alcazaba. This is the oldest section of the Fort and still has the cold medieval feel to it. It was a fort designed for war. Napoleon, when he conquered this area centuries later would destroy parts of it. Thankfully, much of it remains.
You notice how big and spacious the area is when you walk in. The large renaissance building dominating the area east of the Alcazaba was a palace built by Charles V, the son of Queen Isabella.
The highlight of the visit is the Palacios Nazaries . This is a mostly intact palace of the Sheik which offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the people who lived here. It is important to remember that the math required to build such structure was not even known in Europe. The contributions of Islam to the knowledge of science, engineering and math to the world cannot be understated.
Here you find gardens and fountains, all fed by gravity, that symbolize the Quran’s view of heaven.
The walls are decorated by calligraphy and geometric patterns that are both exquisite and amazingly complex. As a general rule, Muslims avoid depictions of any animals or people in their art. “That is for God alone”, the Quran intones.
This perfect cube of a room is the Grand Hall of the Ambassadors and functioned as a throne room. The pieces on the wall are made up of 8,017 individual parts that fit together like a perfect jigsaw puzzle.
In 1492 two exceptional things happened in this room. The first was the formal surrender of Boabdil to the Christian forces. He left to spend the remainder of his years in Morocco.
And a short time later, in this same room, Christopher Columbus came and met with Isabel and her advisors to formally ask for the financing for his historic journey. He was laughed at by the advisors not because they thought the world was flat, this is a common myth. No, they thought he did his math wrong and the world was bigger than he thought.
The advisers were right. However, history records that Isabel overruled them.
“Si señor”, she replied.
Columbus fell to his knees here in this room and wept with gratitude.
We left the Palacios Nazaries back out onto the grounds. As we walked East through the complex you begin to appreciate how immense this place must have been in its time. It would take hundreds to maintain the property.
Gardens, both floral and vegetable were everywhere. Orange groves abounded. To the East was a beautiful white building that served as the Sultan’s summer palace.
We left marveling at the beauty and grandeur of the site.
One story stuck out.
In this exquisite courtyard was a fountain surrounded by carved lions. When the Christian invaders discovered it they took it apart trying to figure out how it worked.
They never did.
It was not restored until 2012.
Postscript - I have had some internet challenges in the last two days. It may be due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Another trip to Spain. Another global catastrophe. Good times.
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