The Alhambra Explained

Premiered Oct 13, 2022 | Explore with me the medieval citadel of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, and its precious Nasrid Palaces seen from an architectural point of view. I'll point out all the details you need to know to understand the Architecture of Islam.

WIKIPEDIA: Alhambra.

Arabs in Spain – Award-winning Documentary | الأَنْدَلُس

Mar 12, 2018 | Fascinating and beautifully shot documentary which examines the spread of Islam and how its crusaders [Sic! Misnomer] finally took most of Spain, arriving from Morocco in 711. In one summer the "Arabs had taken half of the peninsular and in five years controlled almost all of the country".

The Enduring Echoes of Moorish Spain

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Exploring the country’s Arab influence is an impossibly romantic journey, involving palaces with intricate geometric designs, castles and grand mosques reconfigured by Christians into cathedrals.

Córdoba’s Mosque-Cathedral, or La Mezquita, was one of the first and grandest mosques in Europe. | Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York Times
There is a way through Spain that is all horseshoe arches, keyhole windows and bronze doors carved in Arabic script. It meanders into crenelated forts, Moorish castles overlooking the Mediterranean and grand mosques reconfigured by Christians into cathedrals.

As the child of an Iraqi woman and a Swedish-American man, I have always been drawn to places where West and East converge and dissolve into each other. The southern edge of Spain, where North Africa is just an hour away by water, is one of these places.

One midsummer week, my husband and I immersed ourselves in what remains of Moorish Spain, places that brought to mind the sights, sounds and scents of childhood visits to my mother’s homeland. We took an impossibly romantic path through Seville, Córdoba, Granada, Málaga, the port city of Tarifa and, finally, by ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar, to Tangier, Morocco.

Arab influence in Spain dates to the early 700s, not long after the founding of Islam, when Muslims from North Africa crossed the Strait of Gibraltar (from the Arabic for “Tariq’s rock”). The Europeans called the invaders Moors, after Mauretania, the Roman name for North Africa. Over the centuries, the Moors left a legacy in Spanish architecture, music, food and language in the region they then called al-Andalus. The name of Spain’s greatest hero, El Cid, comes from the Arabic honorific, Sayid. The 16th-century novelist Miguel de Cervantes framed his fictional story of the knight-errant Don Quixote as the translation of a recovered Arabic manuscript. Where cultures meet, and endure » | Nina Burleigh | Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Al Andalus, l'Espagne musulmane | Espagne, l'histoire vue du ciel | ARTE

Sep 14, 2021 • Disponible jusqu'au 13/11/2021

En cinq thématiques, l'Espagne vue du ciel. Dans ce volet : en 711, l'invasion arabe change le cours de l'histoire de l'Espagne. Dès lors, la péninsule Ibérique est partagée entre deux civilisations : l'Orient musulman et l'Occident chrétien.

D'un côté, al-Andalus, l'Espagne musulmane, de l'autre, l'Hispania catholique. Vu du ciel, l'héritage architectural d'al-Andalus est aujourd'hui toujours présent, de l'Alhambra de Grenade à l'Alcazar de Séville, en passant par la Grande Mosquée de Cordoue...