Moorish works, and approach the buildings which owe their foundation to
the Nasrite or Grenadine dynasty. The story which credits Al Ahmar
(Mohammed I.) with the creation of the Red Palace in the middle of the
thirteenth century appears to be well-founded, for when the Alhambra is
referred to as existing in earlier times, it is undoubtedly the Alcazaba
that is meant. To the same hands may be safely attributed the great
outer wall of the Alhambra which girdles palace and fortress, following
the inequalities of the hill’s contour. Al Ahmar has left his device,
_Wa ha ghalib ila Allah_ (There is no conqueror but God), in many parts
of the building. These words were uttered by him in mournful deprecation
of the acclamations of his subjects on his return from assisting the
Christians in the Conquest of Seville. During the two and a half
centuries of the Nasrite rule, the palace underwent many radical
transformations and renovations, so that it is difficult to distinguish
between the works of the various sultans. Ford infers, rightly as it
seems to us, from the frequent repetition of their names upon the walls,
that Yusuf I. and Mohammed V. had the largest share in the embellishment
and restoration of the edifice. Since the Reconquest many changes and
additions have been made--notably the Palace of Charles V., to which
detailed reference will be made later.
The summit of the Alhambra hill was probably peopled in Al Ahmar’s time,
and it continued to be so during the reigns of his successors. The
population thus dwelling at the foot of the throne was mainly composed,
in later times at least, of hangers-on at the Court, ex-favourites and
discarded sultanas, ulemas and doctors of the law, soldiers of fortune,
and ambassadors, permanent and extraordinary. Such powerful tribes as
the Beni Serraj, which exercised so much influence in the last stages of
Nasrite rule, would also have had quarters for their leaders here. The
little town--which seems to have had no parallel before or
since--extended from the eastern extremity of the hill to within as near
the doors of the palace as the temper of the monarch for the time being
may have permitted.
The precise limits of the palace, even at the time of the Conquest of
the Catholic sovereigns, have never been ascertained. Portions of it
were undoubtedly demolished to make room for the palace of Charles V. On
the other hand, it is recorded in the archives of the Alhambra that
various private houses were acquired for the purpose of enlarging the
older building. But making due allowance for demolitions, extensions,
and restorations since the fifteenth century, we have before us in the
Palace of the Alhambra a magnificent example of the last or third period
of Hispano-Arabic architecture.
On the general plan of the edifice, the remarks of Contreras are worth
quoting _in extenso_: “We penetrate into every Arabic monument through
an outlying tower, or between two towers, except in the dwelling-houses
of the people, in which case the entrance is by a small, square opening,
a portal useless among us, though seen with frequency in the ancient
houses of Andalusia. A long, narrow hall cuts the axis perpendicularly,
thus determining the distribution into two wings of the edifice. By the
meeting of the two axes is found the entrance, before which we find
those effects of perspective which are so fantastic in these buildings.
Following the ingress we find a court with tanks and fountains, with
light and graceful arcades. Behind the second gallery, following the
same central axis, are oblong naves which cross each other at right
angles to the extreme end of the building, where the cupolas or turrets
of the innermost dwelling apartments rise majestically above the level
of the edifice and are reflected in the waters of the basins. The halls
of a house of this kind, according to its rank or grandeur, were
arranged in little pavilions on the long sides of the courts, as various
in their style of decoration as the tents of a Turkish camp, where the
quarters of an Amir may be found beside those of the common soldiers.
And if these rows of chambers are now found disposed according to the
strict alignment of Mudejar eaves, it is an indication that the severe
genius of the Christian conquerors has transformed them, not permitting
those crests, cupolas, or steeples which disturb the symmetry of the
decoration.
“Outside this plan, absolutely classical, which we may compare to a
cross with the transverse arm prolonged and cut at various distances by
perpendicular arms parallel to each other, but of different length, the
Spanish Arabs found no other easy method of building, so that, while
diminishing or prolonging the arms of the axis as much as the
dependencies of the largest palaces might require, they never departed
from the system, wherever they might build.... This, then, is the true
scheme of the Alhambra, and it is quite other than that conceived by the
classicists of the eighteenth century, with its façades, angles, and
squares.”
It must, however, be admitted that order is much more conspicuous in the
decoration than in the ground plan of the palace. All Moorish
ornamentation is based on a strictly geometrical scheme, and every
design may be resolved into a symmetrical arrangement of lines and
curves at regular distances. The intersection of lines at various angles
is the secret of the system. All these lines flow from a parent stem,
and no figure or ornament is introduced at random. Moslem ornamentation
abhors irregularity and rejects symbolism. The law of Islam which
forbade the delineation of living objects was not, however, always
observed in this palace of half-Europeanised Arabs.
Simplicity and a love of the elementary characterise also the colouring
of the decorations. On the stucco work only the primary colours were
used: blue, red, and yellow. The secondary colours occur only in the
dados of mosaic. The green groundwork of much of the ornamentation as it
is to-day was formerly blue, time having changed the tint of the
metallic pigment employed. The decoration of the surfaces seems to have
been planned with strict regard to the colouring they were to receive.
Both as regards decoration and colour, allowance must always be made for
innovations since the Alhambra passed into Christian hands.
“Let us look for a moment,” writes Mr. John Lomas, “at some points of
detail--more especially of the ornamentation. Wherever the eye falls, it
may rest upon some fine bit of arcading or peristyle, so delicate in the
transparent tracery of its spandrils, in the rich work of its capitals,
and its slenderness of pillar, that one marvels at first how such
fairy-like construction could stand for even a single generation.
‘Lovers’ tears’ they call this lace-work, and they tell one to stand
just within the dim hall or vestibule, and get a vision of the blue sky
that appears beyond as a little cloud of sapphires. But it is surely
better--an insight into a piece of truer art--to stand outside the
eastern kiosk of the Lion’s Court and looking through spandril,
vestibule, and sala, catch the light glinting through the distant
opposite windows. That is transparency of effect, indeed! One would like
to meet with the architect who thought it out.
“Some of the irregularities which obtain here seem almost incredible.
What could be more satisfactory than this range of exquisite arcading,
its slender palm-like stems, its gracefully stilted arches, and the
fairy filigree-work of the spandrils? There seems to be not one single
point that can offend the justest eye, and yet there are nearly a dozen
different archings, differing in form, or height, or width; the cloister
varies in breadth at every turn; the upper galleries are uneven; the
doorways are the personification of self-will; the columns are placed,
sometimes singly, sometimes grouped, and the numbers of them on the
respective sides in no way correspond.... And, nevertheless, there is an
all-prevailing symmetry--and harmony. The whole is a triumph of
accurately judged effect.”
In a foot-note Mr. Lomas adds: “As an instance of the careful way in
which the architects of these olden days went to work, it may be
mentioned that the exact relation between the irregular widths of
cloistering on the long and short sides of the court is that of the
squares upon the sides of a right-angled triangle. This obtaining of
beautiful symmetry through irregularity is a strangely lost art.”
We will now proceed to a more detailed description of the Palace of Al
Ahmar.
THE PATIO DE LA MEZQUITA AND ADJACENT BUILDINGS.
Recent researches have shown that the ancient ingress to the Palace of
the Alhambra was by a doorway leading into what is now the chapel. It is
square in shape and has long been walled up. Above it may be deciphered
the following inscription: “O place of the high kingdom and asylum of
prodigious aspect! Thou hast achieved a great victory, and the merits of
the work and of the artificer [are] the glory of the Imam Mohammed. The
Shadow of the Most High [be] upon all!” This text is believed to refer
to Mohammed III. (1302-1309).
The chapel, which had been established by Ferdinand and Isabel adjacent
to the Patio de los Leones, was transferred to this part of the Palace
of Philip IV. in 1621. At that time a fine chimney-piece in the
Renaissance style was converted into an altar. The apartment contains
but few remains of its Moorish builders. Without, is the Patio de la
Mezquita, with an exquisite façade, much disfigured by a modern
gallery. The walls are adorned with the oft-recurring device, “God alone
is Conqueror,” and with sentences extolling the sultans, in various
sorts of arabesques. The inscription round the central window refers to
Mohammed V. (1354-1391).
The grand Mosque of the Alhambra was built in 1308 by Mohammed III., and
was in good preservation until the occupation of the French, who,
according to Gayangos, entirely destroyed it. An account of it has been
left to us by Ibn-ul-Khattíb, the Wizir of Yusuf I.: “It is ornamented
with mosaic work and tracery of the most beautiful and intricate
patterns intermixed with silver flowers and graceful arches, supported
by innumerable pillars of polished marble; indeed, what with the
solidity of the structure which the Sultan inspected in person, the
elegance of the design, and the beauty of the proportions, the building
has not its like in this country, and I have frequently heard our best
architects say that they have never seen or heard of a building which
can be compared with it.” Little more remains of this superb temple than
the small oratory entered through a door in the wall opposite the altar
of the chapel. Here the _mihrab_ is still to be distinguished. Before
it, Yusuf I., in the act of prayer, fell a victim to the poniard of an
assassin in the year 1354.
Adjacent to the _mihrab_ is the ruined tower of Puñales, which presents
many architectural points of difference from the rest of the palace, and
has features which may have suggested these characteristics of the
Mudejar style seen in other parts of Andalusia. The principal window of
the tower was furnished with a wooden balcony with lattices similar to
those seen in Constantinople and Cairo.
Retracing our steps across the Patio de la Mezquita, we reach the
spacious Court of the Myrtles or of the Fish-pond (Patio de los
Arrayanes, or de la Alberca). This is the court first entered by the
visitor through the modern entrance. It is one of the most beautiful
parts of the palace, and gives a foretaste of the glories that lie
beyond. One feels immediately transported to the East. “The originality
of the architecture [says Don Francisco Pi Margall], the airy galleries,
its rich _alhamis_ or alcoves, the splendid apartments of which glimpses
are obtained through its arches, the fountains and foliage, the
reflection of its stuccoed walls in the waters of the pond, the murmur
of the breezes that agitate the dense myrtles, the transparency of the
sky, the silence that reigns all about--all oppress the soul at the same
time, and leave us for some moments submerged in a sea of sensations
which reveal to us little more than the harmony of the whole scene.”
The court forms an oblong, bounded at the north and south by two
galleries supported on eight columns of white marble, and to the east
and west by walls pierced with doors and twin-windows covered with
arabesques, but differing in degree of ornamentation. At each angle we
find an _alhami_ or alcove, where the Moors were accustomed to laze away
the day, extended on rich carpets and divans. The walls of these little
places are encrusted with reliefs in stucco, their roofs are of the
stalactite pattern. Along the middle of the court extends the _alberca_
or fish-pond, its margins hidden by orange trees and myrtles. The clear
water gushes up into two round basins at either end. To the north, the
prospect is closed by the battlemented Tower of Comares, to the south by
the walls of the Palace of Charles V. Through one of the entrances can
be seen the fountain in the Patio de los Leones. The court is redolent
of the languor, voluptuousness, and splendour of the East.
Each arcade is composed of seven semicircular arches, the central one
reaching up to the cornice, while the others, much lower, are closed
with perforated woodwork or lattices. The roof of the southern gallery
is of artesonado or troughed form, and bears seven small cupolas; over
the central arch of the northern gallery is a single cupola painted with
little gold stars on a blue ground.
In this court there are numerous inscriptions, of which the following
are the most important.
“Go and tell true believers that Divine help and ready victory are
reserved for them.”
“I am like the nuptial array of a bride, endowed with every beauty and
perfection.”
“Truly Ibn Nasr is the sun, shining in splendour.”
“May he continue in the noontide of his glory even unto the period of
his decline.”
In the Patio de la Alberca is an arch differing altogether from all
others in the Palace. Only one surface is decorated, and that with a
principal or guiding figure made out by colours. The ornaments
approximate more closely than is usual in Moorish architecture to
natural forms, and the arch has very much of a Persian character.
This court is believed to have constituted the division between the male
apartments, frequented by the general public, which we have already
described, and the _Harem_, or private quarters, including the Patio de
los Leones, &c.
We pass through a beautiful arch decorated with tasteful floral designs,
into the Sala de la Barca, or ante-room of the Hall of Ambassadors. This
fine apartment, formerly radiant with colours, was seriously damaged in
the fire of 1890. The ceiling of this hall, says Owen Jones, “is a
wagon-headed dome of wood of the most elaborate patterns, receiving its
support from pendentives of mathematical construction so curious that
they may be rendered susceptible of combinations as various as the
melodies which may be produced from the seven notes of the musical
scale; attesting the wonderful power and effect obtained by the
repetition of the most simple elements.”
Beyond this hall rises the Tower of Comares, appearing to rest on the
slenderest pillars and almost to be balanced in the air. The real
supports have been purposely kept out of sight. The view from the summit
of the massive battlemented tower is magnificent. From this platform,
Washington Irving remarks, the proud monarchs of Granada and their
queens have watched the approach of Christian armies, or gazed on the
battles in the Vega. The walls of the tower are of surprising thickness.
The interior, which is a square of 37 ft. by 75 ft. high up to the
centre of the dome, is occupied by the Sala de Embajadores, the
reception-room of the Sultans. It is the largest and perhaps the most
imposing of the halls of the Alhambra. Lifting our eyes, we behold a
glorious, airy dome, of artesonado work, with stars and painted angles.
Owen Jones is of opinion that the present ceiling replaced an earlier
one, which was supported by an arch of brick. The hall lacks its former
pavement of marble, its central fountain, and the lattices that filled
in its twin-windows. But it is still adorned by a beautiful mosaic dado
(known as _sofeisfa_) reaching to the wooden cornice. Numerous are the
Kufic and African inscriptions introduced into the decoration, the motto
of Al Ahmar being frequently repeated. Opening on to the hall are nine
alcoves, each with twin-windows, which have replaced balconies. The
alcove opposite the entrance was the site of the Sultan’s throne, as the
long poetical inscriptions testify. What gorgeous assemblies must have
filled this saloon in bygone years--and what tumultuous scenes and
fateful decisions must have been here enacted!
THE PATIO DE LOS LEONES AND ADJACENT APARTMENTS.
The Patio de los Leones (Court of the Lions) occupies, with the chambers
opening on to it, the south-eastern quarter of the Palace. “There is no
part of the edifice that gives us a more complete idea of its original
beauty and magnificence than this,” says Washington Irving, “for none
has suffered so little from the ravages of time. In the centre stands
the fountain famous in song and story. The alabaster basins still shed
their diamond drops; and the twelve lions, which support them, cast
forth their crystal streams as in the days of Boabdil. The
architecture, like that of all other parts of the palace, is
characterised by elegance rather than grandeur; bespeaking a delicate
and graceful taste, and a disposition to indolent enjoyment. When one
looks upon the fairy tracery of the peristyles, and the apparently
fragile fretwork of the walls, it is difficult to believe that so much
has survived the wear and tear of centuries, the shocks of earthquakes,
the violence of war, and the quiet, though no less baneful, pilferings
of the tasteful traveller: it is almost sufficient to excuse the popular
tradition, that the whole is protected by a magic charm.”
The court is an oblong measuring 116 ft. by 66 ft. On each side is a
peristyle or portico, and at either end a graceful pavilion with a fine
dome. The supporting marble columns are 124 in number and 11 ft. high.
They are placed irregularly, sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs--an
arrangement which does nothing to mar the general impression of harmony.
The arches exhibit a similar variety of curve, and spring from capitals
decorated with rich foliage of various designs. The space above the
arches is filled in with the usual arabesque work, and adorned with
verses from the Koran. The ceilings of the porticos are enriched with
delicate stucco work, and the walls are covered to a height of five feet
with a dado of blue and yellow azulejos, bordered with blue and gold
enamelled escutcheons bearing an Arabic motto on a bend.
In the centre of the court is the fountain from which it derives its
name. This is composed of two basins (in Moorish times there was but
one) supported by twelve marble lions. These Arabian sculptures, remarks
Ford, are rudely but heraldically carved, and closely resemble those to
be seen supporting Norman-Saracenic tombs in Apulia and Calabria. “Their
faces are barbecued, and their manes cut like the scales of a griffin,
and their legs like bedposts, while a water pipe stuck in their mouths
does not add to their dignity.” Indeed, the consolatory reminder
contained in the tremendously long inscription round the basin, that
there is nothing to be feared from these creatures, for “life is wanting
to enable them to show their fury,” seems ludicrously unnecessary. As
specimens of Arabian sculpture they are in all probability unique; the
builders of the Alhambra were evidently not over-strict in the
observance of their religion. The inscription referred to has been
versified by Valera, and runs into forty-four lines of Castilian.
On the south side of the Patio de los Leones is the Sala de los
Abencerrages (Hall of the Beni Serraj), so called because it is believed
to be the scene of the massacre of thirty-six chiefs of that tribe by
order of Boabdil. A reddish vein in the marble flooring is pointed out
as the victims’ indelible bloodstains. The story has only the slenderest
historical foundation, and was first circulated by a writer of the name
of Ginés Perez de Hita, who lived in the sixteenth century. According to
some, the usurper Aben Osmin (1446) was beheaded here by order of the
prince Muley Hassan; but others, writing of that confused period of
Granadine history, say the tyrant fled to the mountains. This chamber,
perhaps the most elegant in the Alhambra, does not seem a likely place
for deeds of blood. It is entered through a wonderfully graceful arch,
growing out of, rather than springing from, marble shafts. The chamber
is a square, prolonged on the east and west by two _alhamis_ or alcoves,
which are entered through exquisitely-curved arches. But the glory of
the Sala de los Abencerrages is its roof--its plan like that of a star,
with pendants or stalactites, and sixteen windows in its vaultings.
“Its thousand stalactites,” writes Don Francisco Pi Margall, “its
colours, its innumerable archings, its crowns of stars, its complicated
depressions and projections, its cones, its polygons, its accidents of
light, the effects of chiaroscuro, present it at first sight as
something confused, indefinable, indecipherable, resplendent, and vague,
like that broad band, the Milky Way, which crosses the pavilion of the
heavens. Yet in reality it is most regular, although irregular in
appearance; the compass of the geometrician had more to do in planning
it than the genius of the artist; but its lines are so many, and their
combinations change so rapidly, that the scheme is only to be
comprehended after a long and patient study.”
The azulejos which face the walls date from the time of Charles V. In
the centre of the hall is the marble basin beside which the Beni Serraj
are fabled to have been slain.
Opposite this hall, on the north side of the Lions’ Court, is the Sala
de las Dos Hermanas (or, of the Two Sisters), so called after two twin
slabs of marble let into the pavement. An exquisite arch gives
admittance from the court to a narrow corridor, which communicates on
the right with the upper storey, and with the mirador or latticed
balcony, from which the ladies of the Harem would gaze into the _patio_
below. The hall is as rich, as graceful, as suggestive of Eastern luxury
and repose as that which we have just left. In each wall is an arched
opening, two being entrances, the others admitting to alcoves somewhat
more shut off than in other parts of the Alhambra. Above each arch is a
window corresponding to the apartments in the upper storey, now
vanished. The roof exhibits the same marvellous combinations of
geometrical forms, the same confused symmetry, as are seen in the Sala
de los Abencerrages. Indeed, this hall is generally (but not
universally) considered the more admirable of the two. The surface of
the walls is hidden beneath costly reliefs of stucco and azulejos.
Inscriptions on the sixteen medallions and cartouches have been
deciphered into a long poem by Ibn Zamrek, composed in honour of
Mohammed V., and translated into eleven verses of Spanish by Valera. One
verse exhorts us “to look attentively at my elegance and reap the
benefit of a commentary on decoration; here are columns ornamented with
every perfection, the beauty of which has become proverbial.”
In this magnificent apartment formerly stood the famous vase (_el
jarron_), which tradition says was discovered in one of the subterranean
chambers of the Palace, full of gold. It is now in the little Alhambra
Museum. The vase, which dates from the fourteenth century, and is
beautifully enamelled in white, blue, and gold, is described by Baron
Davillier in his work on Spanish Pottery.
Beyond the Hall of the Two Sisters is a long, narrow apartment called
the Sala de los Ajimeces (Hall of the Twin Windows). Its ceiling and
decorations are little inferior to those of the larger hall. On the
north side opens the exquisite Mirador de Lindaraja, or
prospect-chamber, affording a delightful view of the garden beyond. In
wealth of detail and ornamentation, this little bower of fifteen by ten
feet surpasses all other parts of the Palace. In Moorish days the
Sultanas could look from behind the lattices of the three windows across
the town and the plain of the Vega. When their eyes wearied of the
prospect they could scan the numerous poetical effusions traced upon the
walls.