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More than 500 years
ago, Catholics conquered Spain killing or expelling every
Muslim amongst them and conclusively ending 800 years of
Islamic Spanish rule.
But on Thursday, a muezzin is calling Spanish Muslims to
prayer at the first mosque to be opened in Granada since the
reconquista, the culmination of a 22-year-old project.
For those who built
the Great Mosque of Granada, which looks out onto the Alhambra
Palace, its inauguration - attended by a string of Muslim and
non-Muslim dignitaries - heralds a new dawn for the faith in
Europe.
.
"The mosque
is a symbol of a return to Islam among the Spanish people and
among indigenous Europeans that will break with the malicious
concept of Islam as a foreign and immigrant religion in
Europe," says Abdel Haqq Salaberria, a spokesman for
the mosque and convert to Islam.
"It will
act as a focal point for the Islamic revival in Europe."
The mosque's
insistence on harmonious co-existence has smoothed the way to
good relations within the local community.
At a time when
Islam is portrayed with some suspicion by certain sections of
European media, Spanish Muslims firmly but gently remind the
continent of the vast cultural and intellectual contribution
made by Islamic Spain to art and architecture, astronomy,
music, medicine, science, and learning.
Their rule is also
seen by historians as an excellent example of religious
tolerance in medieval Europe.
"In a time
of tranquillity and justice, the Christians have never been
compelled to renounce the Gospel or to embrace the Qur'an"
Ref: Gibbon
The Islamic period
in southern Spain saw Muslims and Jews living side-by-side.
Islamic tolerance for people of other faiths, an aspect of the
religion not often acknowledged by non- Muslims, resulted in
the city of Cordoba becoming a cultural centre for both
faiths, while universities sprang up in cities across
Andalucia. Trade and industry also flourished.
The new mosque
intends to offer a series of courses on subjects such as
education, law and medicine, as well as Arabic language
classes, and is planning on issuing its own degree in science
to European Muslims.
The mosque and its
extensive gardens will also be open to the public.
It will serve as a
spiritual home to 500 Spanish Muslims, the majority of whom
have converted to the faith in the course of the last 30
years.
The land on which
the mosque has been built was bought 22 years ago, but city
authorities continually objected to the planning proposals.
When it was finally accepted that the land could be used for
religious purposes, objections were raised to the layout of
the building.
Planners had to
rethink the height and design of the building's minaret.
But opposition to
the scheme, which received financial backing from Libya, the
United Arab Emirates and Morocco, gradually subsided.
The mayor, a member
of Spain's ruling right-wing party, will attend Thursday's
inauguration.
The king of Spain
was also offered an invitation.
But "prior
engagements" meant he was unable to accept.
Spain's Islamic
Past
When the Arab and
Berber armies crossed from North Africa into Spain in the
eighth century, they thought they'd discovered heaven on
earth.
By the time their
descendants and native Spanish Muslims were driven out in 1492
they had actually created an earthly celebration of paradise -
the Alhambra palaces and gardens in Granada.
Muslims and Arabs
in general have a great respect for the natural world and
water is prized. In the melting snow of the Sierra Nevada
mountains they found what they wanted. By a series of
intricate channels they directed water into the palace grounds
and onto the dusty plains below.
Still today at the
Alhambra you get a glimpse of paradise. Small streams take the
water hither and thither to innumerable fountains and ponds -
at one point rushing down channels in the balustrades of a
stone stairway. Everywhere, splashing and gushing water. And
great splashes of colour under the conifers - roses, lilies
and sweet-smelling jasmine.
Not to mention the
luxury of the palaces themselves with their courtyards shaded
by trees and cooled by fountains and with the walls decorated
by elaborate Arabic inscriptions and patterned tiles.
A visit to Alhambra
is an experience of a lifetime. But when the Christians
captured Granada, they burnt all 80,000 books from the palace
library - as if to expunge the memory of Islamic rule. Then
they built a cathedral on the site of the great mosque and put
a baroque facade around the main palace.
Today the Alhambra
is marketed very much as a major Spanish tourist site. One
Spanish guidebook says that the Alhambra is to Granada what St
Peter's is to Rome or St Mark's Square is to Venice. What the
guidebook doesn't say is that the Alhambra is a legacy of
nearly eight centuries during which the Arabs not only
occupied Spain but also introduced into Europe mathematics,
philosophy and Greek scholarship. Furthermore, the Arabs
brought into Spain oranges, lemons, rice, sugar, date palms,
cotton and much more.
And then there was
the elaborate irrigation system, bringing water to the plains
of Andalusia and giving it the landscape it has today. Even
when the Arabs had been expelled en masse, two families were
required to stay in each village to operate the irrigation
system.
In other words, the
Christians of Europe were happy to inherit the legacy of the
Arab occupation of Spain, but were reluctant to acknowledge
its Islamic origin. The American traveller, Washington Irving,
noticed this when he visited Granada at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. The Spanish, he said, considered the
Muslims nothing more than "invaders and usurpers".
And that still seems to be the case today.
Muslims quite
rightly feel bitterly resentful at how they're portrayed in
the West - as ignorant people, lacking the advantages of
European history and civilisation, but the Alhambra is a
tangible legacy of a great Islamic civilisation. And there are
many other intangible legacies from the days of Arab rule in
Spain, ingredients of daily life taken for granted. Commentary
on the Alhambra
"On a
hill overlooking Granada, the Alhambra—a sprawling
palace-citadel that comprised royal residential
quarters, court complexes flanked by official chambers,
a bath, and a mosque—was begun in the thirteenth
century by Ibn al-Ahmar, founder of the Nasrid dynasty,
and was continued by his successors in the fourteenth
century. Its most celebrated portions—a series of
courtyards surrounded by rooms—present a varied
repetoire of Moorish arched, columnar, and domical
forms. The romantic imagination of centuries of visitors
has been captivated by the special combination of the
slender columnar arcades, fountains, and
light-reflecting water basins found in those courtyards—the
Lion Court in particular; this combination is understood
from inscriptions to be a physical realization of
descriptions of Paradise in Islamic poetry."
—Trachtenberg,
Marvin and Hyman, Isabelle .
Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism. p219.
Resources
Sources
on The Alhambra
Ching,
Francis
D. K. (1979) Architecture: Form, Space, and Order.
New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. ISBN
0-442-21535-5. LC 79-18045. NA2760.C46. plan drawing,
p194. — A nice graphic introduction to architectural
ideas. Updated
1996 edition available at Amazon.com
Clarke,
Rob. The Alhambra in Spain Photos .1-6.
www.robclarke.org
Corner, Donald and Jenny Young. Slide from photographer's
collection. PCD.2260.1012.1841.088.
PCD.2260.1012.1841.087
Davis,
Howard. Slide from photographer's collection. Photo May
1987. PCD.2260.1012.1537.064. PCD.2260.1012.1537.063.
PCD.2260.1012.1537.061. PCD.2260.1012.1537.059.
PCD.2260.1012.1537.060. PCD.2260.1012.1537.062
Fletcher,
Sir Banister (1987) A History of Architecture.
London: The Butterworth Group, 1987. ISBN 0-408-01587-X.
LC 86-31761. NA200.F63. section drawing, fig f,
p566. — The classic text of architectural history. Expanded
1996 edition available at Amazon.com
Grabar,
Oleg (1978) The Alhambra. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. ISBN 0-647-01556-8. LC 77-24555.
NA387.G73. ground plan drawing, endpaper. site plan
drawing, f7, p31.
Kostof,
Spiro (1985) A History of Architecture. New
York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503472-4.
LC 84-25375. NA200.K65 1985. Available
at Amazon.com
Matthews,
Kevin (2001) The
Great Buildings Collection on CD-ROM.
Artifice. ISBN 0-9667098-4-5.— Available
at Amazon.com
Norwich,
John Julius, ed. (1975) Great Architecture of the
World. New York: Random House. colour
photo of the interior of the Hall of Judgement, p139.
Reprint edition: Da Capo Press, April 1991. ISBN
0-3068-0436-0. — An accessible, inspiring and
informative overview of world architecture, with lots of
full-color cutaway drawings, and clear explanations. Available
at Amazon.com
Rosengarten,
A. (1910) A Handbook of Architectural Styles. London:
Chatto and Windus. NA200.R7 1910. elevation detail
drawing of court superstructure, fig296, p211.
Sturgis,
Russell (1984) The Architecture Sourcebook. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. ISBN 0-442-20831-9.
LC 84-7275. NA2840.S78. Alhambra view from the south,
p13. Alhambra construction detail drawing, p12.
Trachtenberg, Marvin and Hyman, Isabelle (1986) Architecture,
from Prehistory to Post-Modernism. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-044702-1.
NA200.T7. discussion p219. — available
at Amazon.com
Additional
Information
Geometrical
patters in Al Humbra Arabesque
http://weasel.cnrs.humboldt.edu/~spain/alh/index.html
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