Chapter 8 The Alhambra

The Alhambra sits on a hill above the town of Granada in the south of Spain. Behind this large red building up on the hill, you can see snow on the mountain tops of the Sierra Nevada.

From below, from the outside, it looks good. But when you leave behind the hot, noisy streets of Granada and go inside the Alhambra, it is even better. Inside the beautiful rooms and gardens of the Alhambra, it is cool – and the only noise is the quiet sound of water.

The Alhambra was built by the last Muslim kings of Spain. The first Muslim armies crossed the sea from North Africa and arrived in Spain in AD 711. In less than ten years, nearly all of Spain and some of France belonged to them. Only a small piece of the north of Spain, Asturias, was still Spanish. But the Spanish did not stop fighting. Slowly they pushed the Muslim armies back to the south. After five hundred years, only a small corner of the southeast of Spain was still in Muslim hands. And the story of the Alhambra began.

In AD 1237, Muhammad ibn al-Ahmar (Sultan Muhammad the First) made Granada his capital city. He decided to build the Alhambra on the hill

above the town. He built a canal from the Darro River 8 kilometres away to bring water to the Alhambra. His new building was a fort – a place to defend. In fact, the name Alhambra means ‘red fort’. It was a good place to put a fort, because up there on the hill you can see a long way. If enemies are coming, you can see them a long time before they arrive. Muhammad ibn al-Ahmar lived here until his sudden death in 1273.

But the kings who came after him changed the Alhambra. They changed it from a fort into a palace – a home for kings. And no kings lived in a more beautiful palace than the Sultans of the Alhambra!

At the centre of the palace is the famous Court of Lions. This is an outside room full of sunlight and shadow. At the centre of the court, in the sunlight, is a fountain with stone lions around it. Long, narrow canals take water across the floor to and from the fountain. Around the sides of the court are more than a hundred thin columns of

stone. You can walk in the shadow of the columns and listen to the water that falls from the fountain. And you can think of the words that are on the fountain, words of the writer Ibn Zamrak:

Water and white stone look the same,

And we cannot know which of them is moving.

The Court of Lions

The rooms and gardens of the Alhambra are places to sit, and look, and think. In the Hall of the Abencerrajes, when you look up you see a great white star with eight arms. Light comes through the windows under the star. You think that the star is flying in the sky, not resting on the four walls of the room below it.

The Sultans of the Alhambra stayed in Granada for less than two hundred years. They left in AD 1492. But their palace on the hill is still there –

one of the greatest examples of Muslim building, one of the greatest treasures of Spain, and one of the wonders of the world.