Aljafería: Difference between revisions

Aljafería Palace.

Interior view.

Inner court of Aljafería

The Aljafería Palace (Spanish: Palacio de la Aljafería; Arabic: قصر الجعفرية, tr. Qasr al-Jaʿfariya) is a fortified medieval Islamic palace built during the second half of the 11th century in the Taifa of Zaragoza of Al-Andalus, present day Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. It was the residence of the Banu Hud dynasty during the era of Abu Jaffar Al-Muqtadir after abolishing Banu Tujibi of Kindah dynasty. The palace reflects the splendor attained by the kingdom of the taifa of Zaragoza at the height of its grandeur. The palace currently contains the Cortes (regional parliament) of the autonomous community of Aragon.

The structure holds unique importance in that it is the only conserved testimony of a large building of Spanish Islamic architecture of the era of the Taifas (independent kingdoms). So, if a magnificent example of the Caliphate of Córdoba, its Mosque (10th century), and other one of the swan song of the Islamic culture in Al-Andalus, of the 14th century, the Alhambra of Granada, must be included in the triad of the Hispano-Muslim architecture the Aljafería of Zaragoza (11th century) like sample of the realizations of the taifa art, intermediate time of independent kingdoms previous to the arrival of the Almorávides. The Mudéjar remains of the palace of the Aljafería were declared World Heritage Site by Unesco in 2001 as part of the "Mudéjar Architecture of Aragon" ensemble.

The solutions adopted in the ornamentation of the Aljafería, such as the use of mixtilinear arcs and of the springers in «S», the extension of the arabesque in large surfaces or the outlining and progressive abstraction of the yeseria of vegetal character, influenced the Almoravid art and Almohad art both of the Magreb and of the Iberian peninsula. Also, the transition from decoration to more geometric motifs is at the base of Nasrid art.

History

After the reconquest of Zaragoza in 1118 by Alfonso of Aragon "the Battler", the Aljafería became the residence of the Christian kings of Aragon, becoming the main focus of the Aragonese Mudejar diffusion. It was used as a royal residence by Peter IV of Aragon "the Ceremonious" and later, on the main floor, was carried out the reform that turned these paradors into the palace of the Catholic Monarchs in 1492. In 1593 it underwent another reform that would make it into a military fortress, first according to Renaissance designs (which today can be seen in their surroundings, pit and gardens) and later as a quarters of military regiments. It underwent continuous reforms and major damage, especially during the Sieges of Saragossa of the Napoleonic French invasion, until finally it was restored in the second half of the twentieth century and currently houses the Parliament of Aragon.

Originally the building was outside the Roman walls, in the plain of the Saría or place where the Muslims developed the military fanfare known as La Almozara. With the urban expansion through the years, the building has remained within the city. It has been possible to respect around a small landscaped environment. It has been respected around a small garden setting.

Troubadour Tower

Troubadour Tower.

Ground floor in the Troubadour Tower.

The oldest construction of the Aljafería is called Troubadour Tower. The tower received this name from Antonio Garcia Gutierrez’s 1836 romantic drama The Troubadour. The drama was converted into a libretto for Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il trovatore in 1853.

The tower is a defensive structure, with a quadrangular base and five levels which date back to the end of the 9th century AD, in the period governed by the first Banu Tujibi, Muhammad Alanqur, who was named after Muhammad I of Córdoba, independent Emir of Cordoba. According to Cabañero Subiza (1998) the Tower was built in the second half of the 10th century. In its lower part, the tower contains vestiges of the beginning of the heavy walls of alabaster ashlar bond masonry, and continues upwards with plank lining of simple plaster and lime concrete, which is a thinner substance for reaching greater heights. The exterior does not reflect the division of the five internal floors and appears as an enormous prism, broken by narrow embrasures. Access to the interior was gained through a small door at such height that it was only possible to enter by means of a portable ladder. Its initial function was, by all indications, military.

The first level conserves the building structure of the 9th century and shelters two separated naves and six sections, which are separated by means of two cruciform pillars and divided by lowered horseshoe arcs. In spite of its simplicity, they form a balanced space and could be used as baths.

The second floor repeats the same spatial scheme of the previous one, and remains of a Muslim factory of the 11th century in the brick canvases, which indicates that, from the 14th century something similar happens with the appearance of the last two floors, of Mudéjar invoice, and whose construction would be due to the construction of the palace of Peter IV of Aragon, that is connected with the Tower of the Troubadour thanks to a corridor, and would be configured as tower of homage. The arches of these plants already reflect its Christian structure, because they are slightly pointed arches, and support unveiled roofs, but flat structures in wood.

Its function in the 9th and 10th centuries was the watch tower and defensive bastion. It was surrounded by a moat. It was later integrated by the Banu Hud family in the construction of the castle-palace of the Aljafería, constituting itself in one of the towers of the defensive framework of the outside north canvas. From the Spanish Reconquista, it continued being used like tower of the homage and in 1486 became dungeon of the Inquisition. As a tower-prison was also used in the 18th and 19th centuries, as demonstrated by the numerous graffiti inscribed there by the p2.

The Taifal palace

The building of the palace - mostly made between 1065 and 1081— was ordered by Abú Ya'far Ahmad ibn Sulaymán al-Muqtadir Billah, known by his honorary title of Al-Muqtadir (The powerful), second monarch of the Banu Hud dynasty, as a symbol of the power achieved by the Taifa of Zaragoza in the second half of the 11th century. The king himself called his palace "Qasr al-Surur" (Palace of Joy) and the throne room which he presided at receptions and embassies, "Maylis al-Dahab" (Golden Hall) as witnessed in the following verses of the monarch himself:

Oh Palace of Joy !, Oh Golden Hall!

Thanks to you, I arrived at the height of my desires.

And although in my kingdom I had nothing else,

For me you are all that I could long for.

The name of Aljafería is first documented in a text by Al-Yazzar as-Saraqusti (active between 1085 and 1100) - which also transmits the name of the architect of the Taifal palace, the Slav Al-Halifa Zuhayr— and another from Ibn Idari of 1109, as a derivation from the pre-name of Al-Muqtadir, Abu Ya'far, and "Ya'far", "Al-Yafariyya", which evolved to "Aliafaria" and from there to "Aljafería".

The general layout of the whole palace adopts the archetype of the castles of the desert of Syria and Jordan of the first half of the 8th century (such as Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, Msatta, Jirbat al-Mafyar, and from the first Abbasid stage, the castle of Ujaydir) which were square-shaped and ultrasemicircular towers in its cloths, with a central tripartite space, which leaves three rectangular spaces of which the central one houses a courtyard with pools and, at the northern and southern ends of the same, the palatial rooms and the dependencies of daily life.

In the Aljafería, this castle-palace model is honored, whose noble zone is located in the central segment of its square plant, although the alignment of the sides of this plant is irregular. It is the central rectangle that houses the palatial dependencies, organized around a courtyard with cisterns in front of the north and south porticos to which the rooms and royal saloons are poured.

At the north and south ends are the porticos and room dependencies, and in the case of the Aljafería, the most important of these sectors is the north, that in origin was endowed with a second plant and had greater depth, besides being preceded by an open and profusely decorated column wall that stretched in two arms by two pavilions on its flanks and served as a theatrical porch to the throne room (the golden hall of the verses of Al-Muqtadir) located at the bottom. It produced a set of heights and cubic volumes beginning with the perpendicular corridors of the ends, it was emphasized by the presence of the height of the second floor and ended with the tower of the troubadour that offered its volume in the background to the look of a spectator located in the courtyard. All this, reflected also in the cistern, enhanced the royal area, which is corroborated by the presence at the eastern end of the northern border of a small private mosque with mihrab.

In the center of the northern wall of the interior of the Golden Hall was a blind arch - where the king stood - in whose thread was a very traditional geometric pattern imitating the latticework of the mihrab facade of the Mosque of Córdoba, building to which it was sought to emulate. In this way, from the courtyard, it appeared half-hidden by the plots of columns of both the archway of access to the Golden Hall and those of the immediate portico, which gave an appearance of latticework, an illusion of depth, which admired the visitor and lent splendor to the figure of the monarch.

In order to remember the appearance of the palace at the end of the 11th century, we must imagine that all the vegetal, geometric and epigraphic reliefs were polychromed in shades in which red and blue predominated for backgrounds and gold for reliefs, which, together with the soffits in alabaster with epigraphic decoration and the floors of white marble, gave the whole an aspect of great magnificence.

The various avatars suffered by the Aljafería, have made disappear from this layout of the 11th century a large part of the stuccos that made up the decoration and, with the construction of the palace of the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, the entire second floor, which broke the ends of the Taifal arches. In the current restoration, the original arabesques are observed in darker color and in white and smooth finishes the reconstruction of plaster of the decoration the arches, whose structure, however, remains undamaged.

The decoration of the walls of the Golden Hall has disappeared for the most part, although remains of its decoration are preserved in the Museo de Zaragoza and in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. Francisco Íñiguez began its restoration, restoring the decorations that existed in its places of origin and extracting complete emptyings of the arcades of the south portico.

These were the functions and aspect of the 11th century Banu Hud palace. Below are the most important parts of the building as they are today.

North side stays

In the north wall, the most important complex of buildings of the Banu Hud period is built, as it includes the Throne Room or Golden Hall and the small private mosque, located on the eastern side of the access portico that serves as an antechamber to the oratory). In its interior it houses a mihrab in the southeast corner, whose niche, therefore, is oriented in the direction of Mecca, as it happens in all the mosques except in the one of Córdoba.

The soils of the royal stays were of marble and walked them a plinth of alabaster. The capitels were of alabaster, except some of reused marble of Caliphate period. These rooms were surrounded by a band of epigraphic decoration with Kufic characters reproducing Quran surahs that alluded to the symbolic meaning of ornamentation. The surahs corresponding to these inscriptions have been deduced from the surviving fragments.

In two of these calligraphic reliefs can be the name of Al-Muqtadir, reason why the construction of the palace has been dated, at least in a first phase, between 1065 and 1080. They say verbatim "This [= the Aljafería] was ordered by Ahmed al-Muqtadir Billáh".

The Golden Hall

The Golden Hall had at its ends east and west two rooms that were private alcoves possibly of royal use. Today the alcove of the western flank has been lost, which was used as a royal bedroom and also used the Aragonese kings until the 14th century.

Most of the yaserias of arabesques, which carpeted the walls of these stays with decorative panels plastered with plaster, as well as an alabaster base of two and a half meters high and the white marble floors of the original palace, have been lost. The remains that have been preserved, both in museums and the few that are in this royal hall, nevertheless allow to reconstruct the appearance of this polychrome decoration, which, in its day, should have been splendid.

Ceilings, wood carvings, reproduced the sky, and the whole room was an image of the cosmos, clothed with symbols of the power exercised over the celestial universe by the monarch of Saragossa, who thus appeared as heir to the caliphs.

The access to the Golden Hall is made through a canvas with three vanes. A very large central one, consisting of five double marble columns with very stylized Islamic alabaster capitals that support four mixtilinear arches, among which, in height, there are other simpler horseshoe.

The entrance portico to the Golden Hall

Towards the south, another dependence of similar size is poured that it pours to the courtyard by a portico of great polilobulated arcades. Again there is a tripartite space, and its east and west ends extend perpendicularly with two lateral galleries which are accessed by wide polyhedral lobes and which end at the end of their arms in separate pointed arches also polilobulated whose alfiz is decorated by complex laqueus and reliefs of arabesques.

It should be noted that this whole structure seeks an appearance of solemnity and majesty that the scant depth of these stays would not give a spectator to access the king's room. In addition it should be noted that all the ornamentation of yeserias of the palace was polychrome in shades of blue and red in the back and gold in the arabesques. Among the filigrees is the representation of a bird, an unusual zoomorphic figure in Islamic art that could represent a pigeon, a pheasant or a symbol of the king as winged.

The traces of interlocking mixtilinear arches are characteristic of this palace and are given for the first time in the Aljafería, from where they will be diffused to the future Islamic constructions.

On the eastern side of the portico is a sacred space, the mosque, which is accessed through a portal inspired by caliph art and described below.

The mosque and the oratory

At the eastern end of the entrance portico to the Golden Hall, there is a small mosque or private oratory for use by the monarch and his courtiers. It is accessed through a portal that ends in a horseshoe arch inspired by the Mosque of Córdoba but with S-shaped springers, a novelty that will imitate the Almoravid art and Nasrid art. This arch rests on two columns with capitals of leaves very geometricals, in the line of the realizations Granadan art of solutions in Mocárabe. Its alfiz is profusely ornamented with vegetal decoration and on it is arranged a frieze of half-point arcs crossed.

Already inside the oratory there is a reduced space of square plant but with chamfered corners, that turns it into a false octagonal plant. In the southeast sector, oriented towards Mecca, is located the niche of the mihrab. The front of the mihrab is conformed by a very traditional horseshoe arch, with Cordoban shapes and alternating camouflage threads, some decorated with vegetal reliefs and other smooth ones (although originally they were decorated with pictorial decoration), reminiscent of the mihrab thread of the Mosque of Córdoba, only what were rich materials (mosaics and Byzantine bricklayers) in Zaragoza, with greater material poverty than the Caliphian Córdoba, are plaster stucco and polychrome, the latter having been lost in almost the entire Palace. Continuing with the arch of the portal, an alfiz framed its back, in whose curved triangles two mirrored rosettes are recessed, as is the dome of the interior of the mihrab.

The rest of the walls of the mosque are decorated with blind mixtilineal arches linked and decorated throughout the surface with vegetable arabesques of Caliph's inspiration. These arches lean on columns topped with capitals of slender basket. A slab of square marble slabs covers the bottom of the walls of the mosque.

All this is topped with a splendid theory of interlocking polyblocked arches, which, in this case, are not blind in their entirety, because those in the chamfered corners let now see the angles of the square plant structure. This gallery is the only one that conserves remains of the pictorial decoration of the 11th century, whose motives were rescued by Francisco Íñiguez Almech after removing the liming with which they were covered after the passage of the Aljafería to chapel. Unfortunately, this restorer, praiseworthy for having saved from the ruin of the monument, worked in an age of different criteria to the present ones, because he intended to restore all the elements to their original appearance. For this he repainted with acrylic paint the traces of Islamic remains, which makes this performance irreversible and, consequently, we will never see the, although very faded, original pigment.

The dome of the mosque was not preserved, because that is the height in which the palace of the Catholic Monarchs was built; However, the characteristic octagonal plant suggests that the solution should follow literally the existing ones in the maqsurah of the mosque of Córdoba, that is to say, a dome of semicircular arches that are interlaced forming an octagon in the center. The covering proposal of Francisco Íñiguez is, however, in this case, reversible, as it is a detachable dome of plaster. In 2006, Bernabé Cabañero Subiza, C. Lasa Gracia and J. L. Mateo Lázaro postulated that "the nerves of the vault [...] should have the section of horseshoe arches forming an eight-pointed star pattern with a dome agglomerated in the center, as those existing in the two domes of the transept of the Mosque of Córdoba.

The Patio de Santa Isabel

It is the open and landscaped space that unified the entire Taifal palace. To it would pour the north and south porticos, and probably rooms and outbuildings to the east and west of this central courtyard.

Its name comes from the birth in the Aljafería of the infanta Elizabeth of Aragon, that was in 1282 Queen of Portugal. The original pool of the south has been conserved, whereas the one of the north front, of 14th century, has been covered with a wood floor. The restoration tried to give the courtyard the original splendor, and for that a marble floor was arranged in the corridors that surround the orange and flower garden.

The arcade that is contemplated looking towards the south portico is restored by means of the emptying of the original arcs that are deposited in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid and in the Museo de Zaragoza . They suppose the greater audacity and distance for their innovation with respect to the caliphs models of the arcades of the north side.

According to Christian Ewert, who has studied for fifteen years the arches of the Aljafería, the more related to noble zones (Golden Hall and Mosque) are the ornaments of the arcades, more respect they have to the Córdoban tradition from which they leave.

South side stays

Completing the tour of the 11th century palace, one arrives at the south portico, which consists of an arcade on its southern flank that gives access to a portico with two lateral stays.

This portico was the vestibule of a great south hall that would have the same tripartite disposition of the existent one in the north side, and of which only the arcades of access of mixtilineal arches of geometric decoration remains. Perhaps in this southern sector the greatest daring in arches, through the interlocking of lobulated forms, mixtilinea, and the inclusion of small reliefs of shafts and capitals with exclusively ornamental function.

The complexity of laqueus, arabesques and carvings leads to a Baroque aesthetic, which is a prelude to the filigree of the art of the Alhambra and which are some of the most beautiful of all Andalusian art.

Bibliography

• BORRÁS GUALIS, Gonzalo (1991). "La ciudad islámica". Guillermo Fatás (dir.) Guía histórico-artística de Zaragoza. Zaragoza City Council. pp. 71–100. 3rd ed. ISBN 978-84-86807-76-4
• BIEL IBÁÑEZ, María Pilar (2008). "Nuevas noticias sobre el palacio de la Aljafería". Guillermo Fatás (dir.) Guía histórico-artística de Zaragoza. Zaragoza City Council. pp. 711–727. 4th ed. ISBN 978-84-7820-948-4.
• CABAÑERO SUBIZA, Bernabé et al. (1998), La Aljafería. I. Zaragoza: Cortes de Aragón. 1998. ISBN 978-84-86794-97-2
• EXPÓSITO SEBASTIÁN et al. (2006). La Aljafería de Zaragoza. Zaragoza: Cortes de Aragón. 2006 (6ª ed.) ISBN 978-84-86794-13-2

External links

• Aljafería Palace in Museum with no frontiers
• Virtual Visit to the Aljafería Palace
• Al-Andalus: the art of Islamic Spain, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Aljafería (see index)