Introduction

IN THE SUMMER of 1832, the youngest son of Ferdinand VII of Spain (r. 1808 and 1813–33), the infante Francisco de Paula, and his wife Luisa Carlota, made a visit to Granada, and, following hasty efforts to rehabilitate some of the dilapidated precincts, they were lavishly celebrated in the palaces of the Alhambra on the Sabīka hill over-looking the city (...

Integrating Aesthetic and Politics: The Mawlid Celebration in the Alhambra

The book closes with a study of the only extant Nasrid account of the Alhambra, Ibn al-Khaṭïb's text on the mawlid, the commemoration of the birth of the Prophet. The chapter begins with a comparative analysis of mawlid celebrations in other medieval Muslim courts focusing on the role of processions and threshold spaces, such as discussed in chapter 2. Ibn al-Khaṭïb also describes a royal tent, now lost, but refrained here, in light of chapter 4, as a case of textile architecture. The key to the analysis of the text, then, is the inter-medial relationship between the temporary tent and the permanent buildings as a ceremonial setting. This temporal dimension was thematized in the "poems of the hours" recited to measure the time of the event, elucidated here in connection with the poetic figures studied in chapter 3; as an instance of the relationship between static and kinetic elements introduced in chapter 1 ; and, further, with respect to the political and ideological dimensions of the ceremonial. Ibn al-Khaṭïb's account thus testifies to the inter-medial conception of space: an integrated aesthetic experience of architecture, poetry and textiles in the court ceremonial of the Alhambra.

‘Textile Architecture’ in the Cuarto Dorado

The integrated aesthetic articulated in chapter 3 grounds a new approach to the Patio of Comares and its enigmatic façade. The chapter begins with a historical overview of poetic inscriptions on Islamic luxury textiles, which points to an intersection between a specific type of Nasrid textiles and an ingenious Andalusian poetic genre, both designated by the term muwashshaḥāt. Shared constitutive features allow those textiles to inform the understanding of the poetry and the reverse, and, moreover, their interrelationship further serves to illuminate architecture. The theoretical argument, reinforced by Ibn al-Haytham's optics discussed in chapter 1, leads to a historical hypothesis: the use of textiles to design inter-medial spaces in the Alhambra, belied by the absence of furnishings in situ today. Supporting evidence from other Islamic sites is adduced. A comparative analysis of the Façade of Comares and the Nasrid textiles known as "Alhambra silks" exemplifies the concept of visual harmony as a design principle. The conclusion proposes a further dimension of the inter-medial relationship through the concept of "textile architecture," that is the temporary deployment of large-scale textiles with architectural functions, in order to reframe the ceremonial use of the Patio of Comares.

Qalahurra of Yūsuf I: A Case Study of a Tower-palace

This discussion of the tower-palace Qalahurra al-jadïda (known as the "Tower of the Captive"), among the least studied buildings in the Alhambra, begins with a history of the restoration of the precinct, as well as the typology of the tower-palace as found elsewhere in the Alhambra and other Nasrid sites. The overall architectural analysis leads to the main hall, the chief site of inscriptions. After commenting on the Qurʾānic and formulaic epigraphy, attention focuses on the inscriptions of four interrelated poems composed by Ibn al-Jayyāb. The preceding chapter grounds a move beyond the prevailing mimetic presuppositions of previous scholarship to an examination of his references to medieval Arabic badīc poetics and his own figurative language. The chapter argues that the poetic inscriptions serve to articulate the aesthetic principles embodied in the hybrid architecture of the tower-palace and also to explain the interrelationships between the geometric, vegetal and epigraphic motifs in its architectural decoration. Most broadly, in speaking for the analogy between poetic figures and the forms of architectural decoration, the poetry inscribed in the Qalahurra al-jadïda gives explicit expression to the role of inter-medial relations in the aesthetic of the Alhambra.

Addressing the Beholder: The Work of Poetic Inscriptions

Inscriptions appear on the walls throughout the Alhambra, including verses from the Qurʾān, formulaic phrases and poetry, yet there has been little effort to understand the epigraphy in relation to the architecture and the decorative programs. This chapter argues on both historical and theoretical grounds that the epigraphy in the Alhambra, and above all, the poetic inscriptions, served a vital role as a guide to the aesthetic experience of the Nasrid beholder. Discussion begins with an overview of the functions of the various epigraphic modes, especially the use of poetic inscriptions in the history of Islamic architecture and luxury objects within a comparative Mediterranean context. The analysis then draws on contemporary literary theory to explain one of the characteristic poetic tropes in the Alhambra, namely prosopopeia, the figure that creates the fiction that an otherwise inanimate object, such as a building, is speaking in the first person. The discussion focuses on the Sala de la Barca, in which the prosopopeia in the poetic inscriptions allows the architecture to address the beholders directly, arresting their movement in this threshold space, and leading them— in the terms of the optical theory examined in chapter one—from perception to cognition.

Colour, Design and Medieval Optics

Today the Alhambra appears mostly devoid of colour, but the recent work of conservators demonstrates that the interior spaces were vibrantly coloured in Nasrid times. This chapter takes up the much-neglected use of colour in stucco, wood, marble, glass and, above all, ceramic tiles, seeking to establish a new balance with geometry, heretofore the leading element in scholarship on design principles in the Alhambra. The first step is to distinguish between the colours in the Nasrid Alhambra and the work of nineteenth-century restoration, focusing on the baths in the Palace of Comares, often dismissed as an Orientalist fantasy. The second step is to consider medieval optics, exemplified by the eleventh-century scientific treatises of Ibn al-Haytham, as a source of design principles circulating within Nasrid culture. Ibn al-Haytham's account of the mental processes leading from perception to cognition, supported by the findings of contemporary neuroscience, illuminates the way that colour introduces a kinetic dimension into static geometric designs in such features as the muqarnas vaults in the Palace of the Lions and the dadoes of ceramic tile mosaics in the Palace of Comares.