The urban structure of the Alhambra

The current set of the Alhambra is the culmination of a type of palace-city that emerged in the Eastern world, found its best manifestation in the Andalusian world in the mythical Madinat-al-Zahra  created during the Caliphate of Cordoba by Abderahman III. It was a perfectly defended citadel and was completely isolated from other structures in the city of Granada.

The Alhambra possessed three distinct nuclei: the citadel, palaces and residential and artisan medina; all within a walled compound with several defensive-residential towers and four major entrances: the Gate of the Justice and Weapons door, which communicated with the Alhambra through the lower city, respectively, the Albaicín and Realejo; and the Gate of Arrabal and the Seven Floors, allowing arrival at the Alhambra without going before Madinat Gharnatah.

The Alcazaba Yidida or New is different from other Andalusian citadels, in the sense that its interior space weapons, rather than enabled with removable tents, dealt with 17 military housing and two elite guard barracks. Those houses were modeled on Roman style houses with simplified impluvium. Ample space was used for communication between the citadel and the area of the palaces, much changed in the early sixteenth century when it was built in large reservoirs and the current Plaza de Armas.

The Nasrid palaces occupied the central part of the whole. Today is a pale reflection of its former glory, especially if you consider that it was a comprehensive set of separate buildings, of which only now kept in good condition the quarter of Comares, Lions, Generalife and part of Partal. The medina, finally, with its mosque and craft and residential parts occupy the most elevated area, being a nucleus that soon became congested by population growth, which contrasted greatly with amplitude of courtly buildings. This area is accessed directly by Gate Seven Floors.

Of the 6 royal palaces which owned the grounds of the Alhambra (they should add the extrawalls Generalife palace) now only have survived in relatively good condition two: the quarter of  Comares and Lions.

And finally, located at the back of this magnificent palace of the Lions, were two important areas: The Rauda or cemetery of the Nasrid dynasty (rauda is a synonym for garden, to allude to the paradise of repose for the deads, mourned symbolically with morning dew) and the Alhambra royal mosque, occupied now by the parish church of Santa Maria.

The Alhambra was among the few Hispanic precincts of Muslims who escaped the burning and destruction of the troops of the Catholic Monarchs. They received it intact thanks to the surrender of the last Nasrid king, Boabdil. Soon began the Catholic modifications, changing minarets by bell towers and the downfall of some rooms. In 1495, by order of Isabella the Catholic, was built the Convent of Saint Francis, for the Franciscan Order, the first Christian transformation of the Alhambra. The Castilian monarch decided to use for this first Christian building, in the heart of the Nasrid citadel, an Arabic palace built in the time of Muhammad II.

The Nasrid grounds suffered during the imperial time of Charles V the greater transformation, which involved numerous damages in its original configuration. The Emperor Charles V was determined to conditioning the palatial rooms for their use and enjoyment. He began with the Mexuar, who suffered his first reform, to continue with the transformation of the Peinador de la Reina in 1537, which became an intimate chamber for his wife. Previously, in 1526 he opened way through the Nasrid buildings to create the Courtyard of Lindaraja and made reforms in the royal bath of Comares. These interventions in the Nasrid palace area culminated with the construction of the great Renaissance palace, between the years 1528 and 1537, designed by the architect Machuca. The Great Mosque (which had already been 'blessed' a Christian church in times of Isabella the Catholic) was demolished in 1576 and the church of Santa Maria de la Alhambra was built on its site, during the rule of King Philip III.  

 The Alhambra before Catholic kings interventions

Ground plan of the Alhambra with Catholic kings interventions to nowadays

The Disappeared Alhambra

The Alhambra, a palatine fortress perched on a mountainous outcrop above the city of Granada, has held a unique place in the historiography of Islamic architectural monuments, owing both to its European location in modern-day Spain and to the character of its ‘rediscovery’ by European travellers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Originally constructed under a succession of Nasrid rulers between 1232 and 1492, the exceptionally well-preserved palace complex later became archetypal to Western scholarship of ‘Moorish’ architecture and ornament, despite its many subsequent alterations under the Catholic monarchs (1). Like all residential monuments with long histories of continuous use, the Nasrid fortress had been occupied and altered numerous times following its capture in 1492; after the conquest by monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I (who ruled as joint sovereigns of Aragon and Castile from 1479 until Isabella’s death in 1504), the site was occupied by their grandson, Emperor Charles V (r. 1516-56), and later by a motley crew of Napoleonic troops, Spanish Romany residents, prisoners of war, and travelling artists and writers (2). During each of these stages, alterations to the monument’s structure and surface decoration, as well as the gradual decay occasioned by extended periods of disuse in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have reflected changing attitudes towards Spain and its history from both within and beyond its borders. Framed as the final chapter of Muslim rule in the region, and geographically removed from larger historical developments in North Africa and the Middle East, the art of the Nasrid sultanate became ‘a stepchild of history, receiving unsteady attention from both the Islamic world and the European land it had once inhabited’. The symbolic weight of the Alhambra, imagined both a relic of the lost golden age of al-Andalus and a war trophy of the Reconquista, has further ensured it a liminal position within the history of Islamic art.

By Lara Eggleton*

 1 The term ‘Moor’, or the Spanish equivalent ‘Moro’, derives from the Latin Maurus and was first used in Roman times to denote the inhabitants of the province of Mauretania, which included large portions of modern-day Algeria and Morocco. Since the Middle Ages the term has been used by Europeans to refer generally to Muslim populations of Morocco and former inhabitants of al-Andalus, absenting any clear ethnic or regional distinctions. The term ‘Moorish’ continues to be used widely in contemporary descriptions of the historic art and architecture of these areas. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. ‘Moor’.

 2 Among the many changes made to the palaces was the conversion of the Mexuar to a royal chapel and the area surrounding the Cuarto Dorado or Golden Room into residences under Ferdinand and Isabella. Charles V continued this conversion programme through an extension of the Comares Palace into royal apartments, and the construction of a large Renaissance-style palace alongside the Lions complex. Victorian traveller and Hispanist Richard Ford gives a valuable record of what he calls the Alhambra's ‘history of degradation’ after the sixteenth century in Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home: Describing the Country and Cities, the Natives and Their Manners, the Antiquities, Religion, Legends, Fine Arts, Literature, Sports, and Gastronomy: With Notices on Spanish History, vol. 1, London: John Murray, 1845, 364-7.   

*Lara Eggleton completed her PhD at the University of Leeds in 2011 on the subject of the Alhambra and its nineteenth-century British interpretations. She currently holds the position of Visiting Research Fellow at Leeds, and is funded by the Harold Hynam Wingate Foundation to undertake research on the Owen Jones print collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

  Recreation view of the original Alhambra (circa 1480 AC)

Contemporary overview of the Alhambra

(Click on images to enlarge).