Court of the Lions: The Moors Last Sigh
The City of Granada finds her equal
not in Cairo, nor Damascus nor Iraq
She is the bride unveiled
while others are just the dowry
In the seventh century, heralded by the prophet Mohammed, a religious fervor called Islam, submission to the will of Allah, rose out of the desert of Arabia, and swept like a tidal wave across the Middle East and North Africa. In 710 this was stopped at the Battle of Poiter in France. The Iberian peninsula, conquered and contested for centuries by Neolithic tribes, Romans, Visigoths, and Phoenicians now had the presence and richness of the newly found Islamic world. The Islamic Court, though preferring its subjects were Muslim, were tolerant and welcomed Jews and Christians. The usual restrictions and persecutions of Jews that were characteristic of Christian Europe did not exist. While Europe floundered in the long chaos and ignorance of the medieval period, the Moorish courts flourished. The center of this Empire was the Al Hambra in Granada, and its prized architectural jewel was the Court of the Lions.
Granada sits in the middle of the plains and in the center is the imposing mountain fortress of the Al-Hambra, the Red Fort. This citadel fortress is more than two kilometers in circumference, carved out of the top of a mountain with a commanding view of the valley and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was hewn from the same ruddy sandstone you would find in the arid oasis of Marrakech, home to many of Granada’s previous rulers. From this pinnacle rulers were able to keep careful watch on their vast towns and fields. As the centuries passed the Alhambra transformed itself from a military bastion to an oasis of gardens, a center of learning and culture, and the apogee of Islamic civilization.
The steep walk up to the Alhambra requires a walk over a kilometer in length and now the hillsides are wildly overgrown with forests and ruins of ancient walls and portals, and barely hint at the hundreds of armies that have traversed this hillside and the thousands of soldiers who died in the attempts of conquest. Peacefulness envelops you as you approach the outer ramparts of the massive red stone fortress walls, the paths are winding cobblestones and each turn offers you a glimpse of Granada below. As you enter one of a series of gates and cross over a bridge there is a moat more than 40 meters deep hints at the virtual impossibility to seize the fortress. Walking towards the core of this city fortress, the paths are lined with fruit trees, and the ruins of centuries of occupation. At one time markets with food, textiles, exotic birds, and jewels from all corners of the globe would line these roadways and fill the air with dozens of languages calling out their wars. One epoch giving way to another, flourishing, and then replaced by the next generation.
The human effort, to carve a mountain city and fortress to be impregnable, staggers the imagination. In the center of this complex are the Nasrid Palaces that personifies the soul of Islamic culture, one that nurtured geometry and allowed that genius to be best expressed in perfect symmetry of architecture. Architecture that is lyrical and expressive; yet, by necessity ruled by logic and the constraint of weight and time. The apotheosis of this empire was expressed in the perfect inner sanctum of the Al-Hambra, the Court of the Lions.
The center of the Granada kingdom of the Nasrid dynasty was the Court of the Lions. Past the courtyards for visiting dignitaries with imposing elegance and views of the city ambassadors would be greeted and entertained. In the center courtyard is the Alberca, known as the Blessed or the Myrtle Court with its reflecting pools some forty meters in length and less than three meters wide, and as you stand at the far end you’re looking through a series of portals that appear as the elegant vulva like arches that recede into the distance. At the height of Islamic culture, its style of music, architecture, and literature, even its sacred literature, had a sensual fluid sensibility. In the courtyards the mellifluous sound of fountains and running water was music to the ear while the fragrances of myrtle trees and orange blossoms fragranced the air.
Walk further through more portals and passageways and you finally reach the true center of an empire, the Court of the Lions. The space is symmetrical and logical, ordered, rational, but sensual at the same time. The fountains of the Lions represent nourishment from the four directions of the globe with narrow channels leading to each cardinal point of the compass. The inner courtyard’s once luxuriant with fragrant gardens are now filled with crushed stones. The counterpoint balance of stone and gardens, sensuousness with symmetry, rationale and intuitive, is reflected in each facet of this jewel known as the Court of the Lions.
If one pauses in the courtyard, finds a quiet niche and allow their mind to drift back through the centuries to the time of the last Moor, the Emperor Boabdil, who contemplated the gradual loss of his empire in the late 1400’s. The Christian armies of Ferdinand and Isabelle had conquered the other Moorish kingdoms of Castile, Seville, and Cordoba. The Reconquest that replaced the Crescent moon of Islam with the Cross was making its way to this fortress. As the Boabdil contemplated his options he drank sweetened tea and listened to his generals and armies, but he knew that there was inevitability. Sitting in the courtyard he looked up at the calligraphy on the wall to the words of the Koran “Allah’s will, shall be done” that spoke so clearly about inevitability of time. The fragrance of orange blossoms, myrtle and jasmine fills the air. Small swallows darted through the inner sanctum, flickers of dark light against the white plaster courtyards. In the courtyard the Oud, the distinctive Arabic guitar, and the lamentations of the singers resonated in the warm wind. Perhaps, it was a lamentation for an empire that at one time stretched to France and embraced the entire Iberian peninsula.
From the 700’s to the 15th Century the rest of Europe was in the thick sleep of the Middle Ages, while the courts of the Moorish kings, held a welcoming place for scholars who divined the secrets of astronomy, architecture, literature, art, hydraulics, and enough disciplines to fill a modern university. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars and artists lived and worked in these courts. The graceful calligraphy on the walls were lyrical and elegant meditations on the Koran. Even poems were lovingly scripted in plaster, adjacent to the flowing verses of the Koran. In the midst of the vulgarity of conquest and the messy business of running an empire, was a world of order and clarity
This garden and court of the Lions, with its twelve stone lions, not the ferocious lions of Renaissance art, but oddly still: A stasis as if time has been suspended. In the walls of the courtyard, with precise form, and love of the geometric clarity and the repetition of phrases of the Koran evoked phrases of justice, order, and rule. Most importantly, was the submission of even the mightiest Caliph is to Allah
Why do empires fall, beyond the obvious reason of conquest and dissent? The politics of court and power? Rivalries? Divisions? Trade? Wealth? Corruption? Famine? Laziness? Greed? Inertia? Or a much simpler answer: seasons. The human experience seeks to master and impose a human will and order to the world, but in the Court of the Lion and its adjacent throne room a vaulted gilded ceiling carved in wood and inlaid with gold and brass lays out the cosmology of the heavens. In the epicenter of the constellation was Allah: the alpha and the omega. The representation of the ineffable, was not some cartoonish figure of God or the pantheon of Saints painted across the ceiling or on the walls; simply, a star at the center of the heavens. Instead, the words of Allah as spoken through the prophet Mohammed, in the careful well articulated cursive script of the Koran that celebrates “the Word.” The word was sculpted and become arches, and inspired the geometric symmetry and precision of the court of the Lions. Sometimes the words become flowers that transformed into birds and peacocks. In the expression of devotion, in the mystical vision of art, was found the expression of Allah in every facet of life and nature. Nature was not separate from humans, but integral to it. In Court of the Lions was the apogee of the spirit of Islam; ordered by a logic, cohesion, and restraint.
Surely one can understand why the expression “the Moor’s Last sigh” arose. In a court dedicated to art, beauty, and order for these past seven hundred years, the world was collapsing. The symmetry and beauty of the court, with its slender columns and voluptuous vulvar arches, and the graceful cuneiform writing that boldly declared the verses of the Koran. This world, as imperfect as the coming Christian era, nevertheless gave way. By the time of the last Nasrid Emperor Boabdil surrendered to the Christian armies within a few short years the tolerance of Islam gave way to the expulsion of Jews from Granada and by the early 17th century all Muslims were expelled.
But we can walk back in time; preferably, in the winter months when the invading armies of tourists are few and you have the luxury to slow and gracefully absorb the genius of Islamic art and architecture. As you allow yourself to walk through these rooms, imagine the slower pace of time when a sculpture might take months to carve a verse of the Koran into the arch, or glaziers to spend years making the individual geometric tile patterns. In the Court of the Lions where if you pause you can hear the fountains gurgling, the voices of the Arabic rulers, poets of the court reciting verse to the playful sound of the out, smell the fragrance of jasmine and oranges, and feel the cool breezes of the Sierra Nevada mountains. For a moment, if you allow yourself, you can step back in time.
