Published on 17 Jumaada Ul Awal, 1424.

Mosque Opens in Granada, Spain
- Featuring The Alhambra, Andalusia.

By Charmel Kava

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 patterns in Al Humbra Arabesque

http://weasel.cnrs.humboldt.edu/~spain/alh/index.html