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Alhambra (Granada)
Antonio Fernández-Puertas and D. Fairchild Ruggles
https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T2287679
Published online: 22 September 2015
Granada, plan of the Alhambra: (i) Alcazaba; (ii) Puerta de las Armas; (iii) Generalife; (iv) Puerta de Hierro; (v) Puerta del Vino; (vi) Palacio del Partal; (vii) S Francisco; (viii) Torre del Peinador; (ix) Rawda (royal pantheon); (x) Bāb al-Shar‛ia (esplanade gate); (xi) Bāb al-Ghudur (Puerta de las Albercas); (xii) Qalahurra of Yusuf I (Torre de la Cautiva); (xiii) Torre Cadí; (xiv) Salón de Comares; (xv) Sala del Mexuar; (xvi) Cuarto Dorado; (xvii) Patio de Comares; (xviii) Sala de la Barca; (xix) Patio de los Leones; (xx) Sala de los Mocárabes; (xxi) Sala de los Abencerrajes; (xxii) Sala de los Reyes; (xxiii) Qubba Mayor (Sala de las Dos Hermanas); (xxiv) Sala de los Ajimeces; (xxv) Mirador de Lindaraja (or de Daraxa); (xxvi) Qalahurra of Muhammad VII (Torre de las Infantas); (xxvii) palace of Charles V; (xxviii) Puerta de las Granádas; (xxix) chapel of the palace of Charles V; (xxx) Patio del Cuarto Dorado; (xxxi) Patio de Lindaraja; (xxxii) Patio de Machuca; (xxxiii) Torre de las Damas
The palaces of the Alhambra and Generalife in Granada, Spain, form the most important architectural ensemble to survive from the Nasrid period (1232–1492). Art created under the Nasrid dynasty in the Iberian Peninsula (see Islamic art, §II, 6(iv)(e) ) provided the spark of originality for art in the neighbouring Christian kingdoms and for Marinid and Abd al-Wādid art in Morocco and Algeria. By the 9th century the citadel on the Sabīka spur of the Sierra Nevada overlooking Granada was called al- ḥamrā’ (Arab.: ‘the red’) because its ageing white stuccoed walls, probably belonging to a Visigothic fortress, were already stained red with ferruginous dust. In the 11th century the Zirids built defensive walls that linked this fortress with Albaycín Hill to the north and Torres Bermejas to the south. In 1238 the first Nasrid sultan, Muhammad I, organized the supply of water by canal, which allowed the
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building of a royal city on the Sabīka from the 13th to the 15th century. Enlarged and embellished by his descendants, the walled Alhambra city comprised the Alcazaba (alqaṣaba: ‘fortress’), palaces, mansions, two mosques, baths (ḥammāms), an industrial zone with tanneries, a mint, kilns, workshops, and some adjacent royal estates such as the Generalife (see fig.).
After Granada was reconquered by the Christians in 1492, Charles V (reg 1516–56) attached a large Renaissance palace to the Nasrid palace of Comares. In the 19th century, Romantic travellers rediscovered the Alhambra, largely through the texts and illustrations of Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, David Roberts, and Owen Jones. Some names by which the parts of the Alhambra are known today are tags from this Romantic period. Later in the 19th century the Contreras family began restoring the palaces, and this work continued in the 20th century under Manuel Gómez Moreno and his pupils with meticulous historical accuracy. Results of this research are available in the annual journal Cuardernos de la Alhambra (1965–).
1. Architecture.
Antonio Fernández-Puertas
(i) Foundations in the 13th century: Alcazaba, Generalife, and Partal.
In the first period of Nasrid art, covering the sultanates of Muhammad I, Muhammad II, Muhammad III, and Nasr (1232–1314), earlier Almohad traditions were continued and adapted. The Alcazaba (i) has an 11th-century trapezoidal Zirid core with small solid towers. The Nasrids added a 13th-century outer enclosure and vaulted towers (Vela, Armas, Homenaje, and Adarguero) under Muhammad I. The Alcazaba contains military quarters, a cistern, ḥammām, houses, storerooms, and dungeons. A third northern enclosure was initiated with the great Puerta de las Armas (ii), which controlled access from Granada. The Quebrada Tower on the east side of the fortress was probably rebuilt in the 14th century under Yusuf I.
The early Upper Partal and Abencerrajes palaces, which survive only in plan, belong to the time of Muhammad II as does the Generalife (iii), built on ascending terraces. The sovereign reached the Generalife’s royal mansion, the Dār al-Mamlaka al-Sa‛īda (‘royal house of felicity’), from the Alhambra’s Puerta de Hierro (iv), also built by Muhammad II. He ascended through orchards, crossed a first courtyard, and entered the second through a guarded south portico, to ascend to a vestibule with a structural bench and up a steep staircase to the Patio de la Acequia. The mansion’s south-east wing has storerooms and dwellings for servants. Its large upper-storey room has alcoves and a belvedere (restored and enlarged in the 1920s) overlooking the patio. In Nasrid times the patio’s south- west flank was enclosed by a high wall (later pierced by Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella the Catholic to form an open gallery), with a central belvedere kiosk given plaster decorations by Muhammad II, which were covered over in 1319 by his grandson Isma‛il I with a later pattern. The north-east wing contains two dwellings and two staircases that probably led to the ḥammām and to the upper gardens, where a water staircase, alternating sections of stair with rounded landings, has channelled water coursing down steps and hand-rails; it probably ascended to an oratory. The mansion’s north-west wing has a five-arched gallery, with its wider central arch framing optically the
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tripartite entrance portico to the palace’s main, transverse room. Isma‛il I remodelled this room and added the north-west tower, with stairs in it. The upper storey was reconstructed under Ferdinand and Isabella; the top gallery is entirely Christian work.
Muhammad III built the Alhambra mosque (its foundations lie partially under the church of S Maria). Only foundations survive of buildings on the spacious esplanade now occupied by the palace of Charles V extended to the Puerta del Vino (v); the stone west façade also dates from the time of Muhammad III. The Palacio del Partal (vi), with its exceptionally wide pool, was Muhammad III’s crowning achievement. Its open gallery originally rested on pillars, mistakenly replaced in 1964 by modern columns. The palace’s delicate decoration includes plaster arches with foliate patterns, a frieze of kufic cartouches, an upper geometric band below the flat wooden roof, and ceramic dados in cold colours made by the masterly school of artists who had built the earlier Dār al-Manjara (Cuarto Real de S Domingo) in Granada. A staircase and dwelling were added to the Partal palace under Muhammad III. The Partal pattern of six-pointed stars also appears in another early Alhambra royal mansion, which became the convent of S Francisco (the first burial place of Ferdinand and Isabella; vii) and is now a hotel; its central garden and canal are an earlier version of the Generalife’s Dār al-Mamlaka al-Sa‛īda.
Nasr introduced the lantern-room (previously used in ḥammāms) into palatine architecture, whereby a central square structure with overhead lighting is supported on pillars or columns and surrounded by outer rectangular areas, sometimes with lower windows. Nasr built the lantern-tower of the Peinador (3(viii)), although its inscription was altered by Yusuf I; Muhammad V replaced its pillars by columns and added the entrance; and its floor and decoration belong to Muhammad VII.
(ii) Monumentalization in the early 14th century: the Salón de Comares, the Qalahurra of Yusuf I, and the great gates.
The second stylistic period of Nasrid architecture is monumental. Isma‛il I built the huge Puerta de las Armas and Rawḍa (royal pantheon; ix) and initiated the official palace called the sultan’s palace, now known as Comares. In 1348 his son, Yusuf I, built the monumental Bāb al-Shar‛īa (esplanade gate; mistakenly called Justice Gate; (x)) that gives access from the south through a four-bend entrance. Its arched marble façade is set between large cubic projections and has a foundational inscription and decorative ceramic panel. Yusuf also built the Bāb al-Ghudur (Puerta de las Albercas; (xi)) and the palatial, military Qalahurra (Torre de la Cautiva; (xii)) which has a bent entrance, staircase, and small central patio with a gallery supported on pillars. This leads to the main square room which has large window areas on three sides, and a geometric ceramic dado with unique purple pieces of lustre, bearing the Nasrid coat of arms. The plaster walls have decorative sebka (rhomboid patterns). In the four corners of the room above the dados, four poems by Ibn al-Jayyāb frame a kufic frieze that resembles a textile band. Yusuf I also built the oratory next to the Partal; it has open windows on either side, as does his Madraza oratory in Granada itself. The decoration of the Torre Cadí (xiii), and the dwelling in the Partal with wall paintings, probably belong to the period of Yusuf I.
In his last years, Yusuf I enlarged his father’s Palacio de Comares and built its huge tower containing a magnificent throne room (Salón de Comares), with original ceramic paving and patterned dados that crowned the masterly school of Dār al-Manjara in Granada. The throne room (xiv) has three alcoves in each of its east, north, and west walls, overlooking the city; the uniquely decorated central north alcove contains a poem (perhaps by the vizier Ibn al-Khaṭīb) stating it to be the throne alcove. The plaster decorations round the huge room are arranged in wide horizontal bands resembling subtly
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coloured fabrics. The great wooden ceiling symbolizes the seven heavens of the Islamic paradise and the throne of God, and when fully coloured would have appeared golden. The hall is the culmination of Nasrid official architecture. The Comares ḥammām (built by Isma‛il I, completed by Yusuf I) has a high and low apodyterium (lantern-room), and vaults cover the small frigidarium, tepidarium, caldarium, wood store, and furnaces.
(iii) Apogee in the late 14th century: Sala de la Barca, patio and façade of the Palacio de Comares, and the Riyāḍ Palace (Palacio de los Leones).
Muhammad V initiated the third, highly complex stylistic period of Nasrid art. First he completed the Palacio de Comares. Its west area, mostly in ruins, was the Mexuar, or administrative area. The main west entrance from the square facing the Alcazaba led to a first courtyard that has the foundations of a small mosque and minaret. The second courtyard has a rectangular pool with semicircles in its sides and retains its Nasrid north gallery and an older pavilion (built by Yusuf I) overlooking the city. A double-bend stairway ascended from the south-east corner of this courtyard to the Private Council Room and thence to a tiny courtyard in front of the Mexuar façade. The Sala del Mexuar (see fig., xv), with its lost central lantern supported on four marble columns, was reconstructed and decorated by Muhammad V with rich decorative panels that rise from the capitals. To the north of this room, a small Nasrid court communicated through a narrow arch on its eastern side with the triple-arched portico of the Cuarto Dorado (xvi), which served as a waiting chamber when the sultan gave audience on the far (southern) side of the courtyard in front of the inner façade of his palace. This great façade is carefully proportioned to the width of the courtyard, and protected by large overhanging eaves like an awning. The plaster decoration resembles a huge hanging tapestry, with small lateral columns and corbels simulating gathered side curtains. From its upper windows women could watch public ceremonies unobserved. The façade has two identical entrances: the right-hand door was the private and service entrance; the left-hand door gave official access, through a guarded vestibule and ascending bent passage, to the Patio de Comares (xvii) at the centre of the palace. The patio has a long central pool bordered by low hedges with two fountains and a seven-arched portico at each end, with a wider central arch. Friezes with floral decorative arches and verses adorn the end walls. The central mocárabes arch of the north portico has spandrels decorated with trees, and leads into the Sala de la Barca (xviii), the sultan’s bedroom and sitting room; at each end are alcoves crowned by magnificent muqarnas arches. The transverse passageway between this room and the throne room has a small oratory, and a staircase ascends to the upper winter quarters and roof.
The longitudinal naves of the Patio de Comares contain four dwellings, the official and service entrances, and access to the ḥammām. The south portico has a mezzanine floor and upper gallery with a wide central lintelled aperture. The beauty of this patio so impressed Pedro Machuca, architect of Charles V’s palace, that he interrupted the Renaissance façade to preserve the Nasrid south gallery, each floor of which originally was thought to give on to a transverse room.
After completing the Palacio de Comares, Muhammad V built the Riyāḍ Palace (known since the Reconquest as the Palacio de los Leones (Palace of the Lions)). Constructed on sloping land in the palace garden (riyāḍ means ‘garden’), the site was first made level on the north side by the construction of basement vaults. The entrance from the street at the south-west corner of the palace led to two guard rooms arranged in elbow bend (one survives) and thence to the cruciform Patio de los
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Leones (Court of the Lions) at the heart of the palace, which has a central fountain with twelve contemporary stylized standing lions, carved in white marble to fit exactly the proportions of the patio; the lions support a polygonal basin inscribed with a poem by Ibn Zamrak, a pupil of Ibn al-Khaṭīb.
The patio is surrounded by galleries with a projecting central kiosk at either end and an upper central belvedere on the longer sides. An older lantern-kiosk with a gadroon vault was incorporated into the south-east corner of the palace. The patio has magnificent rooms on all four sides. On its west side, the Sala de los Mocárabes (xx) is named for its original mocárabes ceiling (severely damaged in the 16th century, partially replaced in the 17th). On the south side, the Sala de los Abencerrajes lies below the level of the cobbled street that ran east to west to the south of the Comares and Riyāḍ palaces, separating them from the higher ground and the Rawḍa; the Sala de los Abencerrajes (xxi) has a square ground-plan, which ascends by means of squinches to form a star-shaped drum supporting a supremely beautiful star-shaped mocárabes vault. On the east side, the Sala de los Reyes (xxii) is sectioned into complex compartments surrounded by alcoves: three square spaces alternate with two rectangular ones; they are separated by elaborate mocárabes arches and enclosed on three sides by alternating rectangular chambers and vaulted cubicles. Three alcoves have vaults painted with Gothic– Muslim scenes; those on the lateral vaults show a Muslim knight and a Christian knight competing in hunting and for the love of a maiden; the Muslim wins, killing his adversary. The central vault shows a meeting of ten high-ranking Nasrids seated in council inside a tent. The other alcoves have exquisite mocárabes vaults.
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Cuarto Dorado, façade of the Palacio de Comares, Alhambra, Granada, Spain, mid-14th century; photo credit: Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom
The most successful Nasrid palatine complex lies on the patio’s north side: the Qubba Mayor (Sala de las Dos Hermanas; xxiii). Its transverse entrance aisle has a latrine and stairs to the upper storey. The large square lantern-hall has side alcoves on both levels and ascends by means of mocárabes squinches to form an octagon at the upper level, where high windows illuminate its magnificent mocárabes vault. Constructed on a geometric pattern of eight-pointed stars, this ravishing vault creates an impression of floating spaces suspended above the room. Above the geometrically patterned dado runs a frieze resembling a textile band, containing the finest epigraphic composition in the Alhambra: a 24-verse poem by Ibn Zamrak, placed in lobed circles and rectangular cartouches. An arched entrance leads north to the transverse Sala de los Ajimeces (xxiv) with another fine mocárabes vault, and thence to the intimate Mirador de Lindaraja (xxv), where the decoration displays the culmination of Hispano-Muslim kufic patterning. The frames of the windows have a poem by Ibn Zamrak in fine cursive calligraphy, while the decorative glass ceiling on a wooden frame envelops the Mirador in coloured light.
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(iv) Decline at the turn of the 15th century: the Qalahurra of Muhammad VII.
The fourth stylistic period of Nasrid art survives in Muhammad VII’s military and palatial Qalahurra (Torre de las Infantas; xxvi). It follows the general plan of the Riyāḍ’s Qubba Mayor, compressed to fit the tower: a bent entrance, with stairway to the upper floor and terrace, leads to a gallery surrounding the central lantern-hall, whose lintelled lower and upper galleries give on to other rooms. The main room has alcoves and a shallow belvedere reduced to the thickness of the wall. The decorative work shows marked stylistic decline. Fine large decorative lustre panels, and smaller ones in relief, survive from modifications made by Yusuf III to an older palace of Muhammad II in the Upper Partal.
(v) Renaissance during the Christian period: the palace of Charles V.
The large Renaissance palace of Charles V (1526–50; xxvii) adjoining the Patio de Comares was designed by Pedro Machuca. He built the Puerta de las Granádas (c. 1546; xxviii) as a formal Renaissance entrance to the Alhambra precinct. The construction of the palace began in 1533; the design was revised by Juan de Herrera, and work continued for over a century, but the palace was never completed. Perhaps the finest Renaissance palace in Spain, it has a square plan and a circular courtyard, the lower storey of which has an arcade of Doric columns; the upper level has Ionic pilasters between the windows. The octagonal chapel (xxix) in the eastern corner of the palace was intended to have a dome, but this was never built.
Bibliography: ‘Gharnāṭa’, ‘Mukarbaṣ’, ‘Naṣrids’
L. Torres Balbás: ‘La Alhambra de Granada antes del siglo XIII’, Al-Andalus, vol.5 (1940)
L. Torres Balbás: Arte Almohade, arte Nazarí, arte Mudéjar (Madrid, 1949), vol.4 of Ars Hispaniae (Madrid, 1947–77)
L. Torres Balbás: La Alhambra y el Generalife (Madrid, 1950)
R. Arié: ‘Quelques remarques sur la costume des musulmans d’Espagne au temps des Naṣrides’, Arabica, vol.12 (1965)
Cuad. Alhambra (1965–) [many articles on Granada and the Alhambra]
M. Gómez Moreno: ‘Granada en el siglo XIII’, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, vol.2 (1966)
E. García Gómez and J. Bermúdez Pareja: The Alhambra: The Royal Palace (Granada, 1966)
A. Fernández-Puertas: ‘Un paño decorativo de la torre de las Damas’, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, vol.9 (1973)
A. Fernández-Puertas: La escritura cúfica en los palacios de Comares y Leones (Granada, 1974 and 1981)
A. Fernández-Puertas and D. Cabanelas: ‘Inscripciones poéticas del Partal y de la fachada de Comares’, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, vols.10–11 (1974–5)
A. Fernández-Puertas: ‘El lazo de ocho occidental o andaluz’, Al-Andalus, vol.40 (1975)
Enc. Islam/2
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B. Pavón Maldonado: Estudios sobre la Alhambra, 2 vols, of Anejos de Cuadernos de la Alhambra (Granada, 1975–6)
A. Fernández-Puertas: ‘En torno a la cronología de la torre de Abū l-Hajjāj’, XXIII Congreso Internacional de Historia del Arte: Granada, 1977
O. Grabar: The Alhambra (Cambridge, MA, 1978)
A. Fernández-Puertas and D. Cabanelas: ‘El poema de la fuente de los Leones, Cuadernos de la Alhambra’, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, vols.15–16 (1979–81)
A. Fernández-Puertas: La fachada del palacio de Comares, vol.1 (Granada, 1980)
A. Fernández-Puertas: ‘Las puertas chapadas hispanomusulmanas’, Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos, vols.29–30 (1980–81)
A. Fernández-Puertas: ‘Memoria de excavación realizada en el sector N. del Mexuar del palacio de Comares’, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, vol.18 (1982)
A. Fernández-Puertas: ‘El trazado de dos pórticos protnazariés: el del exconvento de San Francisco y el del patio de la Acequia del Generalife’, Miscelánea de estudios árabes y hebraicos, vol.31 (1982)
A. Fernández-Puertas and D. Cabanelas: ‘Los poemas de las tacas del arco de acceso a la sala de la Barca’, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, vols.19–20 (1983–4)
P. Marinetto: El capitel en el palacio de los Leones: Génesis, evolución, estudio y catálogo (Granada, 1984)
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P. J. Girault de Prangey: Impressions of Granada and the Alhambra: A New Reproduction of Lithographs of the Pictures, Plans and Drawings Made on his Visits there in 1832 and 1833 (Reading, 1996)
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2. Gardens.
D. Fairchild Ruggles
During the medieval period Granada was an agriculturally rich region with two rivers providing abundant water for its famous farm estates, gardens, and orchards, which produced, among other crops, excellent figs. According to the historian Ibn al-Khaṭīb (1313–75), the Alhambra palace complex, like Granada, was densely planted with so many verdant gardens that the light-coloured stone of the towers and belvederes of the palace appeared like bright stars in an evening sky of dark vegetation.
In the gardens of the Alhambra there is a constant play between openness and closure. While enclosed spaces are defined and contained by architecture, they are also juxtaposed with miradors offering multi-levelled views on to the palace gardens situated on the lower slopes of the Alhambra, looking beyond to the Albaycín Hill and surrounding countryside, and views from the Generalife across the ravine to the Alhambra with the Sierra Nevada in the distance. Such cultivated vistas are often framed by arched polylobed windows, as in the Salón de Comares (xiv) or the elegant Cuarto Dorado (xvi). From the latter the view is north to the hills and streams of the ‘natural’, exterior landscape or in the opposite direction into an enclosed paved courtyard in which the only reference to nature is a fluted
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water basin in the centre. The all-encompassing, sweeping vistas of garden and landscape at the Alhambra and Generalife belie the traditional concept of the Islamic garden as a self-contained, private space organized according to a simple, rigid geometry; instead, they show that different kinds of landscape experience were incorporated into garden design by manipulating the direction and distance of the gaze.
The poetry inscribed on the walls and fountains of the Alhambra refers to the gardens and landscape. In the Patio de los Leones (xix), for example, Ibn Zamrak’s verses refer to the watercourses and vegetation, the architecture and space surrounding the garden, and the view on to the surrounding countryside, as well as to Muhammad V, the patron for whom the garden was built. The belvederes and pavilions in the middle of each of the galleried sides contain small water jets or rivulets that flow toward the Lion Fountain and create an axial organization that suggests a miniature, ‘four-plot’ garden (Pers. chahār bāgh). A visitor in 1602 observed six orange trees in each quadrant; thus the garden in the Patio de los Leones was probably planted with orange trees, vegetation, and flowers, the surface of the soil a half metre or more below the level of the pavement.
Several gardens in the Alhambra were refashioned after the Christian conquest of 1492. The Patio de Lindaraja (xxxi) in its original state was an open Islamic garden with an overlook provided by the projecting Mirador de Lindaraja (or de Daraxa; xxv; Arab. ‛ayn dār ‛ā’isha: ‘Eye of the ‛A’isha’s Palace’), which was subsequently enclosed when converted into private apartments for Emperor Charles V (reg 1519–58). The Torre de las Damas (xxxiii) in the Palacio del Partal is also of the Nasrid period, functioning as a mirador with ground-floor windows and a tower on the left side providing expansive views toward the Albaycín Hill; the gardens of the Partal, however, are 20th-century restorations with modern designs and types of plants.
When the Patio de la Acequia was excavated and restored in 1959 following a fire, a 13th-century quadripartite, Islamic garden was discovered. The original soil level was half a metre below the surrounding pavements, and the original irrigation system was intact, although neither was retained in the restoration. Two tall pavilions mark the ends of the garden, which is organized along a central axial watercourse, the water for which is supplied from the mountains via the same aqueduct that supplies the Alhambra. The water-channel is bordered by planted beds and intersected by a short, narrow walkway. Although the garden is enclosed on four sides, the west wall is pierced by arches and a projecting mirador, which looks over the lower gardens (rest.) and across to the Alhambra. Above and to the north-east are other water-channels, pools, and gardens, redesigned in later centuries after the Christian conquest. The highest is reached via a stairway ascending through verdant vegetation; the coping of the low walls of the stairs is hollowed to conduct refreshing and decorative trickles of water while water jets adorn each landing. Elsewhere the 18th-century avenue of cypress trees leads to the modern entrance of the Generalife.
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L. Torres Balbás: ‘Patios de crucero’, Al-Andalus, vol.23 (1958), pp. 171–92
J. Bermúdez Pareja: ‘El Generalife después del incendio de 1958’, Cuadernos de la Alhambra, vol.1 (1965), pp. 9–39
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