The Alhambra: Paradise in Stone — Nasrid Art and the Last Kingdom of Al-Andalus
On a hill above the city of Granada, looking out over the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada on one side and the sprawl of the Andalusian plain on the other, stands a palace complex that many architects and travelers have called the most beautiful building in the world. The Alhambra — al-Qal'a al-Hamra , "the Red Fortress" in Arabic, named for the reddish hue of its outer walls at sunset — is the supreme surviving monument of Al-Andalus , the Muslim civilization that flourished in the Iberian Peninsula between the eighth and fifteenth centuries. Built and continuously elaborated by the Nasrid dynasty between 1238 and 1492, the year of the Christian Reconquista's final triumph over Granada, the Alhambra is simultaneously a royal palace, a fortress, a city within a city, and a meditation in stone and water and light on the nature of paradise. The Nasrid emirate of Granada was the last Muslim political entity in the Iberian Peninsula, a small kingdom that survived...