Christina Hawkes
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The Alhambra's Court of Lions: Place of Luxury or of Learning?
In Robert Irwin's 2004 book, The Allhambra, Irwin proposes that the Alhambra's Court of Lions was not a pleasure garden with buildings for a harem, as is the widely held and accepted idea of the court's function, but a center of religious learning. While he writes persuasively in favor of this interpretation, he himself admits that there is no concrete proof of it. I'd like to examine his ideas about the court as a madrasa more closely, highlight and analyze the features of the Court of Lions in light of his theory. Informed by this analysis, I'd like to bring attention to the weaker parts of his argument and other concerns that call his proposal into question.
First, a brief introduction to the Alhambra is in order: it is a Moorish palace located in southern Spain, in what was known as al­Andalus during its Muslim occupation. This occupation lasted from an initial strike and rapid conquest in 711 to a period of Christian reconquest culminating in the capture of the Alhambra in 1492. Constructed in the fourteenth century, the Alhambra functioned as a palace and sanctuary for the Nasrid dynasty as they presided over a dwindling kingdom (Stewart, 162). Founded by Muhammad Ibn Nasr, the family left its motto, “There is no conqueror but God,” in carved calligraphy throughout the palace (Jacobs, 26).
When the Alhambra was reclaimed by the Christian Spaniards, King Charles V added a palace 1
for official functions in an incongruous style. Before that, however, the palatial complex consisted of three major areas: a cluster of public spaces around the Mexuar reception hall, a diwan arranged around the Court of Myrtles, and finally the debated Court of Lions (Hillenbrand, 453).
Constructed in the 1370's, the Court of Lions is divided into four quadrants by water channels emanating from the central fountain, whose twelve carved lions give the court its name. Each of the four quadrants has been thought of as a sunken area from which trees and other plants grew, as described by Hillenbrand. Surrounding it are relatively modest domestic quarters. As Jacobs reports in Alhambra (p. 118), this palace “is widely thought to have been the domain of the women of the household.” A “presumed harem,” it contains a small patio on the higher floor of unknown purpose (perhaps private celebrations of the ruler). Much of the first floor is thought to have functioned as entertainment halls, and some areas are posited to be a room for a favored wife or even a throne hall. In this accepted conception of the Court of Lions, it was a luxurious garden with the architecture of the surrounding buildings existing, in Irwin's words, as “a frame”.
Irwin attempts to contradict all of this. He first questions whether there was a garden in the Court of Lions at all, by citing Enrique Matauco. Matauco based his argument on the account of a German traveler who toured the Alhambra in 1494 and enthusiastically described the marble pavement of the court. Irwin claims that the court was only made into a garden in the 19th century, when the original paving was sold off.
This proposal is merely a lead­up to Irwin's assertion that the Court of Lions was a madrasa, a place for religious scholars to stay and study the Koran, hadiths (sayings of the Prophet), theology and religious law, and perhaps partake in scholarly debates in front of the sultan (p. 89). He notes that madrasas suddenly became popular in northern Africa during the 14th century, generally sponsored by a 2
wealthy ruler in hopes of buying a better religious reputation for himself. They often shared many characteristics with the Court of Lions, Irwin claims, including a fountain in the middle of a court, simple living quarters, and an ornate and self­describing style of decoration.
With regards to the layout of the court, Irwin presents the Bu­`Inaniyya madrasa as an example of a fountain in the middle of a court (p. 91). But neither this nor any other examples of madrasas that I could find in Hillenbrand's fairly comprehensive overview in Islamic Architecture or in Mitchell's Architecture of the Islamic World included the four­part division of a court by water channels, much less the secondary fountains at the ends of the channels as in the Court of Lions; sometimes a single channel was present, but more often there was only a fountain. This makes sense, since this four­part division can instead be viewed, as Rabbat says (p. 70), as a garden­irrigating form derived from the Persian chahar­bagh garden layout.
Additionally, several examples of a four­part garden layout existed in Muslim Spain prior to the Court of Lions' construction. According to Hillenbrand (p. 446), the garden at the Castillejo of Murcia and at the Almoravid palace of Marrakesh both exhibit this style, and were constructed during the 1100's. If the Court of Lions' layout is to have a specific prototype indicating its function, it seems to me that these local, well­established palatial examples would be much more likely candidates than newer religious examples located in northern Africa.
Another major point of Irwin's argument is that the extravagant decoration in the Court of Lions doesn't necessarily preclude it from being a madrasa, and that the Moroccan madrasas were often as richly decorated, with similar carved texts exalting the ruler/sponsor and the building itself (p. 91). This is perhaps the most compelling of his observations. There are many stylistic similarities in the decorations of the Court of Lions and the examples he presents.
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The decorations around the Court of Lions are dense and intricate, with honeycombed arches and carvings covering the flat surfaces above the delicate pillars. Similarly intricate decoration is characteristic of the Moroccan madrasas Irwan points out, such as the Bu­'Inaniyya madrasa in Fez and the Madrasa Dar al­Majzan. Perhaps the most compelling example of similar decoration is the way that Salé, where diamond shapes form the main repeating unit for the baroquely carved upper facade facing into the court. The same diamond theme also dominates the interior facades of the Court of Lions.
It is in Salé that Irwin finds the most interesting carved inscriptions to compare to the Court of Lions as well. He points out these examples of its self­praising text:
“Look at my wonderful door! Rejoice at how carefully I am put together, at the remarkable nature of my construction and at my marvelous interior! The craftsmen have completed there a piece of artistic workmanship which has the beauty of youth...”
“The wonders of this madrasa perturb the faculty of reason and captivate both ascetics and the pious alike”
“I am constructed like a tiered palace and sparkle like rows of pearls on the neck of one that is engaged to be married.”
All of the Alhambra has text in a similar style throughout its buildings, including the Court of Lions. The mingling of influences and styles between the seemingly disparate building types of Andalusian palace and Moroccan madrasa is thus illustrated.
Irwin is right to point out the bulk of such similar madrasas were constructed in the 1350's, over a decade prior to the Court of Lions' construction. However, he neglects to analyze the nature of the 4
inscriptions themselves within the court. The text carved on the outer rim of the fountain itself reads:
“Blessed be He who gave the Imam Muhammad Villas that adorned by their beauty all other villas
Save this garden which contains wonders that God forbids that beauty would find an equal to.” (Rabbat, 70).
Unlike the text in Salé, there is no mention of the space functioning as a madrasa. What is actually written needs almost no interpretation to be read as a simple statement of the court's more likely function: a garden in a villa. The waters are muddied a bit by the reference to the Caliph granting favors to the lions of the jihad; teaching and holy war were sometimes metaphorically linked. A hadith (Hillenbrand, p. 173) compares a person entering a mosque to learn or teach to a mujahid. Nonetheless, it seems like quite a stretch to ignore the court's self­identification as a villa garden in favor of an interpretation it can only very obliquely support.
The final portion of Irwin's theory concerns the assignment of various functions to the buildings around the Court of Lions in a way that meshes with his idea of the complex as a madrasa. He admits that some rooms are not perfect matches for the types a madrasa requires: in the space he posits may have served as a prayer room, there is no mihrab (p. 95), which seems odd—unlike the many Moroccan madrasas that displayed a variety of creative ways to fit a form into a confined urban plot of land (Hillenbrand, 242), the Court of Lions would presumably have been planned and built with virtually no constraints. The lack of a mihrab in what Irwin argues ought to be a religious room (lacking secular poems in its decoration) is therefore confusing.
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While I have never visited the Alhambra or other works of Islamic architecture myself, a book reviewer from The Scotsman has, and also disagrees with Irwin's assessment of the Court of Lions:
However interesting, the notion doesn’t stand up to first­hand observation. I have visited madrasas in Fez and Marrakech: the architectural impact of those deep, cool, dark cloisters is a world apart from the Court of Lions in which the extraordinary achievement was to combine the cool of shadow and water with the maximum play of sunlight. Rather than a parallel in sombre madrasas, I could point to a thousand modest houses in the old quarter of Cordoba, their inner courtyards exquisitely tiled, full of cool light and the sound of small fountains. The Court of Lions is domestic architecture, surely, even if (in the opinion of many) it is the most beautiful building in the world.
Irwin is highly derisive of the idea put forth in 1956 by Frederick Bargebuhr that the fountain in the center of the court came from an old Jewish palace and was referred to in famous verses by Ibn Gabirol, and that the Alhambra was in a way a “belated product of eleventh­century Jewish culture.” (Irwin, 127). His main objections are the lack of archaeological evidence supporting Bargebuhr's claims, and the presence of evidence which directly contradicts it (for example, by dating the fountain to the fourteenth century). It is ironic that his own interesting­but­unprovable assertions about the very same court have similar weaknesses.
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Falla, Johnathan. “Moor myths of a Spanish legend.” The Scotsman. Available from http://living.scotsman.com/books.cfm?id=33312004
Hillenbrand, Robert. Islamic Architecture. Edinburgh University Press (2000).
Irwin, Robert. The Alhambra. Profile Books (2004).
Jacobs, Michael. Alhambra. Rizzoli International Publications (2000).
Rabbat, Nasser. "The Palace of the Lions, Alhambra and the Role of Water in its Conception." Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Centre 2 (1985): 64­73.
Stewart, Desmond. The Alhambra. Newsweek Book Division (1979)
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