The Court of the Lions ( - ) is the main court of the Nasrid dynasty

Nasrid dynasty

The Nasrid dynasty was the last Moorish and Muslim dynasty in Spain. The Nasrid dynasty rose to power after the defeat of the Almohad Caliphate in 1212 at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa...

 Palace of the Lions, in the heart of the Alhambra

Alhambra

The Alhambra , the complete form of which was Calat Alhambra , is a palace and fortress complex located in the Granada, Andalusia, Spain...

, the Moorish citadel formed by a complex of palaces, gardens and forts

Fortification

Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...

 in Granada

Granada

Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...

, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. It was commissioned by the Nasrid sultan Muhammed V

Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada

Muhammed V was the eighth Nasrid ruler of the Moorish Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula.Muhammad V was the eldest son and heir of Yusuf I by his slave Butayna, born in 1338. He also had a younger full-blood sister, A'isha, two half brothers and five half-sisters...

 of the Emirate of Granada

Emirate of Granada

The Emirate of Granada , also known as the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada , was an emirate established in 1238 following the defeat of Muhammad an-Nasir of the Almohad dynasty by an alliance of Christian kingdoms at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212...

 in Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...

. Its construction started in the second period of his reign, between 1362 and 1391 AD. The site is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage List and minted in Spain's 2011 limited edition of 2 € Commemorative Coins.

Background and architectural influences

The Palace of the Lions, as well as the rest of the other new rooms built under Muhammad V

Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada

Muhammed V was the eighth Nasrid ruler of the Moorish Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula.Muhammad V was the eldest son and heir of Yusuf I by his slave Butayna, born in 1338. He also had a younger full-blood sister, A'isha, two half brothers and five half-sisters...

, like the Mexuar

Mechouar

Mechouar or mashwar is a place mainly existing in Maghreb. It is served as a place for pledging of allegiance to the Sultan in a ceremony called Bayaa. The custom consists of kissing hands of the monarch....

 or Cuarto Dorado meant the beginning of a new style, an exuberant mixture of Moorish and Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 influences that has been called Nasrid style. During the period that Muhammad V was ousted as sultane of Granada by his stepbrother, Abu-l Walid Ismail, he discovered in exile a host of new aesthetic influences that were not in the language of his predecessors, not even in his own first contributions to the enrichment of the Nasrid palaces of the Alhambra. In Fes

Fes

Fes or Fez is the second largest city of Morocco, after Casablanca, with a population of approximately 1 million . It is the capital of the Fès-Boulemane region....

 he saw the Almoravid mosque of Qarawiyyin, built by Andalusian architects. The splendor of the decorations, specially the profuse use of the muqarnas

Muqarnas

Muqarnas is a type of corbel used as a decorative device in traditional Islamic architecture. The term is similar to mocárabe, but mocárabe only refers to designs with formations resembling stalactites, by the use of elements known as alveole.Muqarnas takes the form of small pointed niches,...

 that had once decorated the palaces and mosques of Al-Ándalus, stunned the ex-sultan, as did the ruins of the Roman city of Volubilis

Volubilis

Volubilis is an archaeological site in Morocco situated near Meknes between Fez and Rabat along the N13 road. The nearest town is Moulay Idriss. Volubilis features the best preserved Roman ruins in this part of northern Africa...

, where he could directly examine the classical orders, Roman ornamentation and, above all, the disposition of the Roman 'impluvium'; the Roman ruins at Volubilis were particularly well preserved since they had been abandoned for a period of time in the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

 and later constructively re-used as a necropolis

Necropolis

A necropolis is a large cemetery or burial ground, usually including structural tombs. The word comes from the Greek νεκρόπολις - nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead"...

. Muhammad became an ally of his personal friend, the Christian king Pedro I of Castile, who helped him to regain the throne and defeat the usurpers. Meanwhile, he was also astonished with the construction of the palace of Pedro I, the Alcázar of Seville

Alcázar of Seville

thumb|right|250px|Baths of Lady María de PadillaThe Alcázar of Seville is a royal palace in Seville, Spain, originally a Moorish fort....

, built in Mudéjar

Mudéjar

Mudéjar is the name given to individual Moors or Muslims of Al-Andalus who remained in Iberia after the Christian Reconquista but were not converted to Christianity...

 style by architects from Toledo

Toledo, Spain

Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...

, Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

 and Granada

Granada

Granada is a city and the capital of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of three rivers, the Beiro, the Darro and the Genil. It sits at an elevation of 738 metres above sea...

. The influence of this Mudéjar style of King Pedro in the future Palace of the Lions was going to be decisive, especially the structure and disposition of the Qubba rooms along two axis of the 'Patio de las Doncellas' ("Court of the Maidens").

Description

The Court of the Lions is an oblong court, 35 m in length by 20 m in width, surrounded by a low gallery supported on 124 white marble columns. A pavilion projects into the court at each extremity, with filigree walls and light domed roof, elaborately ornamented. The square is paved with coloured tiles, and the colonnade with white marble; while the walls are covered 1.5 m up from the ground with blue and yellow tiles, with a border above and below enamelled blue and gold. The columns supporting the roof and gallery are irregularly placed, with a view to artistic effect; and the general form of the piers, arches and pillars is most graceful. They are adorned by varieties of foliage, etc.; about each arch there is a large square of arabesques; and over the pillars is another square of filigree work. In the center of the court is the celebrated Fountain of Lions, a magnificent alabaster basin supported by the figures of twelve lions in white marble. At present, the fountain is under restoration in an effort to preserve its integrity. The lions surrounding the basin have been temporarily removed for their accurate restoration, and a large wooden and glass structure has been erected around the fountain to shield it from the elements during the process.

Meaning of the structure

The structure of the court, has, as it has been said, a direct influence of the Sevillian Patio de las Doncellas, but its meaning and origins connect with the Persian gardens

Persian Gardens

The tradition and style in the garden design of Persian gardens has influenced the design of gardens from Andalusia to India and beyond. The gardens of the Alhambra show the influence of Persian Garden philosophy and style in a Moorish Palace scale from the era of Al-Andalus in Spain...

 that is root of the Islamic gardening

Islamic garden

Traditionally, an Islamic garden is a cool place of rest and reflection, and a reminder of paradise. The Qur'an has many references to gardens, and the garden is used as an earthly analogue for the life in paradise which is promised to believers:...

, the court divided in four parts, each one of them symbolizing one of the four parts of the world. Each part is irrigated by a water channel that symbolize the four rivers of Paradise

Paradise

Paradise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization, and in paradise there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness. Paradise is a place of contentment, but it is not necessarily a land of luxury and...

. This court is, therefore, an architectural materialization of Paradise, where the gardens, the water, and the columns form a conceptual and physical unity. The slender column forest have been said to represent the palm trees of an oasis in the desert, deeply related with Paradise in the Nasrid imagination. In the poem of Ibn Zamrak

Ibn Zamrak

Ibn Zamrak or Abu Abd Allah Muhammad b, Yusuf b. Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Surayhi, was a poet and statesman from Granada, Al-Andalus. Some his poems still decorate the fountains and palaces of Alhambra in Granada.He was of humble origin but thanks to his teacher Ibn al-Khatib he...

 on the basin of the fountain, a further meaning is stated clearly: "The fountain is the Sultan, which smothers with his graces all his subjects and lands, as the water wets the gardens."

Nowadays the flower garden has been substituted by a dry garden of pebbles, in order not to affect the foundation of the palace with the watering. In Nasrid times, the floor of the quartered planting beds was slightly lower than the general level, and the visual effect was like a tapestry of flowers, as the top of the plants were cut to the same level of the court, and these were carefully chosen to cover a host of color nuances.

The Fountain of the Lions

The origin and meaning of the Fountain of the Lions has generated many legends, mainly due to its unusual themes for a Muslim palace: twelve figurative lions. The Fountain from the XI Century is a Jewish fountain, part of the Naghrela palace's destroyed after 1066 Granada massacre

1066 Granada massacre

The 1066 Granada massacre took place on 30 December 1066 when a Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, which was at that time in Muslim-ruled al-Andalus, assassinated the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred many of the Jewish population of the city.-Joseph ibn Naghrela:Joseph...

 . The fountain and the lions had a model in the Fountain of the Temple of Solomon, described in the Books of Chronicles

Books of Chronicles

The Books of Chronicles are part of the Hebrew Bible. In the Masoretic Text, it appears as the first or last book of the Ketuvim . Chronicles largely parallels the Davidic narratives in the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings...

 of the Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

 The parallels are explicit in a poem of the Hispano-Hebrew Ibn Gabirol, which is a tissue of quotes and parallels of the Hebrew Bible:

...and there is a full sea, matching Solomon's sea

"There is a pond, like the Sea of Solomon

It doesn't rest over bulls

but over lions arranged in circles:

They seem to roar to their prey.

Water flows from their mouth without end,

it springs like the torrents of a stream.

It runs to their feet through channels

arranged like open drainpipes under the Sun

to irrigate the bloomed parterres.

Their limpid streams flood the grass

They want to refresh the Garden of the Myrtles!

They elevate themselves over clouds just up to the top of the trees

and they scatter balsamic perfumes

smelling just like the scent of the myrtles and the incense.

The birds chirp on the branches,

looking beneath the date palm trees.

The flowers form lusty private open rooms

of rose, narcissus and camphor tree scents.

Their varieties are countless!"

The lions were re-used, taken from the Palace of Joseph Ibn Naghrela, vizier of the Kingdom of Granada and son of Samuel ibn Naghrela

Samuel ibn Naghrela

Samuel ibn Naghrela , also known as Samuel HaNagid , , was a Talmudic scholar, grammarian, philologist, poet, warrior, and statesman, who lived in Iberia at the time of the Moorish rule....

. The basin was changed when Mohammed V

Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada

Muhammed V was the eighth Nasrid ruler of the Moorish Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula.Muhammad V was the eldest son and heir of Yusuf I by his slave Butayna, born in 1338. He also had a younger full-blood sister, A'isha, two half brothers and five half-sisters...

 moved the fountain to its definitive location: the poet and minister Ibn Zamrak

Ibn Zamrak

Ibn Zamrak or Abu Abd Allah Muhammad b, Yusuf b. Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Surayhi, was a poet and statesman from Granada, Al-Andalus. Some his poems still decorate the fountains and palaces of Alhambra in Granada.He was of humble origin but thanks to his teacher Ibn al-Khatib he...

 was commanded to write a poem to describe the beauty of the courtyard. It was going to be carved around the border of the new basin.

Excerpt of Ibn Zamrak

Ibn Zamrak

Ibn Zamrak or Abu Abd Allah Muhammad b, Yusuf b. Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Surayhi, was a poet and statesman from Granada, Al-Andalus. Some his poems still decorate the fountains and palaces of Alhambra in Granada.He was of humble origin but thanks to his teacher Ibn al-Khatib he...

's poem on the basin

"...Such a translucent basin, sculpted pearl!

Argentic ripples are added on it by the quiet dew

And its liquid silver goes over the daisies, melted, and even purer.

Hard and soft are so close, that it would be hard to distinguish

liquid and solid, marble and water. Which one is running?

Don't you see how water overflows the borders

and the warned drains are here against it?

They are like the lover who in vain

tries to hide his tears from his beloved..."