Muqarnas or stalactite vaulting in the Mocarabes court leading into the Court of the Lions. The ceiling of this hall was blown up in 1590 when the French were using it as a storage room for gunpowder. The word ‘mocarabes’ refers to the kind of muqarnas/stalactite vaulting applied especially in al-Andalus.
The Alhambra as a whole is one of the most fantasized monuments of Islamic Architecture, captivating the imagination of a vast number of writers and artists, including Washington Irving and the French author Chateaubriand, to name just a couple. Indeed, some parts of the Alhambra, such as the Court of the Lions, are commonly written about examples of the most beautiful architecture in the world. The palace-complex as it stands today was built mostly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries under the Nasrid dynasty (1238-1492), in particular by Yusuf I (1333-54) and his son Muhammad V (1354-59, 1362-1391). Out of six royal palaces, only two survive (the Comares palace and the Palace of the Lions). A summer palace called the Generalife (from the Arabic jannat al-arif, ‘the garden of the architect’) is also extant. – SK
Photograph created 1963. Photograph processed September 1963. Formerly catalogued as B49.242, BV.046. Notes written on the slide or index: Stalactites.
