From the Private to the Public Space: Domestic and Urban Architecture of Islamic Granada (original) (raw)

2022, A Companion to Islamic Granada

Among all cities of al-Andalus, Granada was the one that endured longest within the Islamic culture. Its status as the capital of the last Andalusi kingdom for more than two and a half centuries caused it to pass through all of the various processes of urban evolution, with a highly built-up medina and the creation of extensive walled suburbs. This work sets out briefly to analyse the main types of buildings and facilities that existed in the urban centre and its immediate outskirts. It excludes those of the royal city of the Alhambra, as they are the subject of another specific study in this volume. As in any medieval city, the most abundant buildings were residential dwellings, in their various typologies, from the most humble to palaces. The quality of life in the houses of Nasrid Granada, and in Andalusi houses in general, exceeded that of other contemporary dwellings throughout the Iberian Peninsula. They were routinely equipped with latrines and a sanitation system. Furthermore, they usually had decorative plaster elements, as well as paintings on the wood of their ceilings. In the suburbs that were taking shape and in the peri-urban areas there were almunias, large mansions surrounded by fruitful orchards watered by irrigation channels. Granada had many mosques and numerous public baths. It was unusual in that it had two great mosques, one in the medina and the other in the Albaicín suburb. Of its religious buildings, a courtyard and two minarets from mosques have been preserved, along with a kind of hermitage known as a marabout. Four reasonably complete public baths have also survived. Due to its status as the Nasrid capital, it had certain specific facilities, such as the Maristán, or hospital, and the official Madrasah, which were not present in other cities in the emirate. Certain commercial features, such as the Alcaicería, also only existed in important urban centres. The little that is preserved of each of these is of great historic value, as it is all that is left standing of the many and various examples of these facilities that must once have existed in al-Andalus. The latter is true of the New Alhóndiga, which is the only remaining example across the entire peninsula of a type of building that was once commonplace in every large commercial city.