Al Khattíb refers to the Citadel of Granada in these terms: “The southern part of the city is commanded by the suburb of the Alhambra or Medina Alhamra, the court of the sultanate, crowning it with its turrets, its lofty towers, its strong bastions, its magnificent Alcazar, and other sumptuous edifices, which by their splendour ravish the eye and the soul. There is, too, such an abundance of waters that, overflowing in torrents from the tanks and reservoirs, they form on the declivity streams and cascades, whose sonorous murmurs are heard afar on. At the foot of the walls are spacious gardens, the domain of the Sultan, and leafy groves, through the dense greenery of which the white battlements gleam like stars. There is, in short, around the circuit of the walls, no spot that is not planted with gardens and orchards.” The scene has not greatly changed since the Arab wrote. Gurgling brooks still run down the slopes of the Alhambra Hill, and nightingales sing in the thick woods of elm.
The Alcazaba, being the oldest part of the palace-fortress, should be studied first. It is entered by the Torre and Casa de las Armas, through a horseshoe arch in red brick, with fine azulejos or glazed tiles. To the left is the Torre de Homenage, with which war and time have not dealt too gently. It contains, it is interesting to note, a Roman votive altar, embedded by the Moorish builders in the masonry, and inscribed by “the grateful Valerius to his most indulgent wife, Cornelia.” At the opposite extremity of the Alcazaba is the Torre de la Vela, or Watch Tower. It is in two storeys, communicating by a dark and narrow staircase, with loopholes in the wall.[D] In this tower is hung a famous bell, to be heard, it is said, at Loja, thirty miles away. It is rung on the anniversary of the Conquest of Granada, on which day it is the custom, according to local superstition, for damsels, desirous of husbands, to strike it with all their strength. On the summit of this tower the cross was first planted by el tercer rey, Cardinal Mendoza. The view from the platform, of city and snow-clad Sierra, luxuriant Vega, and white-walled towns and villages, is as extensive as it is beautiful. At the foot of the Torre de la Vela extends the place of arms, defended by two towers, now styled de los Hidalgos and de la Polvora, and formerly known as the Paniagua and Cristóbal del Salto—names suggesting legends now forgotten.
An ancient document at Simancas names among the towers connecting the Alcazaba with the rest of the fortress, the Torre del Adarguero, “the Tower in which dwelleth the servant of Doctor Ortiz,” the Torre de Alquiza, the Torre de Hontiveros (now the Torre de las Gallinas), and the Tower and Room of Machuca. Of these remains exist, but of another tower, referred to as the Torre de la Tahona, no trace remains.
The Alcazaba, according to the most recent researches, was separated from the site of the palace by a ravine where, after the Conquest, cisterns were constructed by order of the Conde de Tendilla and over which the existing Plaza de los Algibes was formed. These works appear to have necessitated the demolition of a wall which ran across from the Torre de las Gallinas on the north to the beautiful Puerta del Vino on the south. This gateway is now quite isolated from the wall of circumvallation. Over the horseshoe arch is an inscription in stucco, of the usual Moorish character, invoking the Divine protection for the builder, Sultan Mohammed V. It appears to commemorate some striking victory. Over the arch again is a fine double window or ajimez. On the keystone is seen the key, so often figuring as a symbol in all parts of the Alhambra, with a G in Kufic characters—perhaps the initial letter of the city. The interior façade has a large horseshoe arch and the twin-windows above. The Puerta del Vino was probably the entrance to the courts and gardens of the palace.
Having crossed the Plaza de los Algibes, we leave behind us the early 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.