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.
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Recreation view of the original Alhambra (circa 1480 AC)
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