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AANDERSON_f9_166-191.inddNDERSON_f9_166-191.indd 166166 88/22/2007/22/2007 5:36:285:36:28 PPMM PART IV CONQUEST AND COLONISERS: AL-ANDALUS AND BEYOND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY AANDERSON_f9_166-191.inddNDERSON_f9_166-191.indd 167167 88/22/2007/22/2007 5:36:295:36:29 PPMM AANDERSON_f9_166-191.inddNDERSON_f9_166-191.indd 168168 88/22/2007/22/2007 5:36:295:36:29 PPMM THE ANDALUSI HOUSE IN GRANADA (THIRTEENTH TO SIXTEENTH CENTURIES) Antonio Orihuela* 1. Territorial Setting and Urban Context1 1.1. Location, climate, and site The exceptional location of Granada in the heart of the massive natural fortress of the Bética mountain range allows it to dominate a valley that measures 50 km in length by 35 km at its greatest width, has an average altitude of 600 m, and is surrounded by mountainous areas ranging from 1000 to 3500 m in height. This valley, through which the Genil River fl ows, remained isolated from the great communication routes that crossed the Iberian Peninsula in antiquity. It is composed of fertile terrain whose irrigation is guaranteed by the great reserves of water accumulated in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Granada’s climate is similar to that of Spain’s southern sub-plateau: its temperatures display pronounced characteristics of a continental interior, although the city is located only 50 km from the Mediterra- nean. In the region of Andalucía, it constitutes an abnormal thermal nucleus, due to its average temperatures as well as its annual conditions and fl uctuations. Winters are cold and prolonged and summers are very warm, while springs and autumns are brief and temperate, but with frequent frosts. The average daily temperature exceeds 20°C in the four warm months between June and September, although the average low temperature only rises above 10°C in July and August. Precipitation is essentially Mediterranean in character, with sum- mer droughts and rains occurring approximately 90 days per year, in * This article was published in Spanish with the title “La casa andalusí en Granada (siglos XIII–XVI)”, in La Casa Meridional: Correspondencias (Seville: Junta de Andalucía, 2001), pp. 299–314. It has been revised and adapted for the present English version, and translated by Lisa Mosier. 1 Any study of mediating factors in the formation and evolution of the city of Granada should be based on the fi rst detailed investigation of Spanish cities that employed the geographic method: Joaquín Bosque Maurel, Geografía Urbana de Granada (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1988). AANDERSON_f9_166-191.inddNDERSON_f9_166-191.indd 169169 88/22/2007/22/2007 5:36:295:36:29 PPMM 170 antonio orihuela spring, winter, and autumn. The annual average of only 475 litres/m² in the area of Granada is insuffi cient for the normal development of vegetation, but fortunately in the Sierra Nevada rainfall exceeds 1000 litres/m² per year. There are abrupt alternations between rainy and dry years in which precipitation can increase or decrease by up to 50% of the average. The most common cycles are usually one to two rainy years followed by two to four dry years. These climatic characteristics combined with human intervention have produced a varied landscape that was fundamentally modifi ed in the Islamic period with the implementation of irrigation. Great contrasts exist between irrigated and dry land; fertile green valleys are surrounded by eroding, barren hills. Granada was able to eclipse the other settlements in the area due to several important factors: its agricultural potential, the ease of water provision, its location at a crossroads of local and regional character in the valley of the River Genil, and above all, its defensive capacity. The urban settlement, which can be classifi ed as a mountain city by its location and site,2 was initially established in the hills bounded by the Genil and the Darro rivers, with three tributaries of the Genil nearby; thus the supply of fresh water from the surrounding high mountain ranges was assured all year round. The location also has some negative characteristics, such as the danger of fl oods, the diffi culty of communication due to the complex and uneven topography, and high seismic activity. However, in this last respect, by chance or due to empirical wisdom of the ancients, most of the historic centre was located on hills made up of aggregates that are much less sensitive to earthquakes than are the Vega’s quaternary alluvial terraces. 1.2. Plan and urban development The oldest vestiges of the city yet discovered in archaeological excava- tions date to the Iberian culture of the seventh century B.C.E. They are part of a walled settlement located on a hill by the bank of the Darro, now integrated into the extensive urban quarter known as the Albaicín.3 The same site was maintained in the Roman, Visigothic, 2 Bosque, Geografía Urbana de Granada, p. 38. 3 Andrés Adroher Auroux and Marcos López López, “Iliberri: origen y desarrollo de la ciudad ibero-romana de Granada”, in Jesucristo y el Emperador Cristiano. Exhibition AANDERSON_f9_166-191.inddNDERSON_f9_166-191.indd 170170 88/22/2007/22/2007 5:36:295:36:29 PPMM the andalusi house in granada 171 and initial Islamic periods, constituting the fortifi ed enclosure called the Alcazaba (Ar. al-qaabah). The selection of Elvira—some 10 km away and more centrally located with respect to the Vega—as capital of the amiral and caliphal province, produced a decline in the development of Granada. How- ever, the return of the capital to the city on the Darro when it became the seat of the Zīrid dynasty during the eleventh century, initiated a period of rapid growth that caused Granada to become one of the most important cities in Europe in the fourteenth century, remaining the largest on the Iberian Peninsula until the sixteenth century.4 The reuse of the pre-existing Iberian city explains the absence of an orthogonal plan in Roman Iliberri, which had been a municipality of minor importance. Perhaps the most infl uential urban-planning decision in the evolution of the city was made in the middle of the eleventh century, when the Zīrid monarchs located the great mosque and the souk in the plain, defi ning a new urban centre which remains today. The establishment of the Nasrid reign in 1237 brought with it another critical urban development, limited this time to the sphere of the court. The fortifi ed palatine city known as the Alhambra was built on the hill opposite the Alcazaba, which thenceforth was known as ‘Antigua’, or ‘Old’. The new walled outskirts occupied slopes next to the Alhambra and other parts of the hillsides above the primitive pre- Islamic settlement, but soon the direction of the development toward the Vega initiated by the Zīrids continued, and became the preferred direction for urban expansion after 1492.5 The city that capitulated to the Catholic Monarchs had a labyrinthine plan, with very limited public space, and winding main roads leading from the gates of the outer walls and the remains of the older inner walls into the souks and to the great mosque. The secondary streets that accessed the houses terminated in impasses, which compartmentalized the residential fabric into small districts. The sixteenth- and seven- teenth-century interventions did little to modify the plan of the higher districts; they were focused within the lower city, to which they added catalogue, ed. Francisco Javier Martínez Medina (Córdoba: Publicaciones Obra Social y Cultural CajaSur, 2000), p. 449. 4 Ángel Isac, “Granada”, in Atlas Histórico de Ciudades Europeas: I. Península Ibérica, ed. Manuel Guardia, Francisco Javier Monclus and José Luis Oyon (Barcelona: Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, 1994), p. 318. 5 Luis Seco de Lucena Paredes, La Granada Nazarí del Siglo XV (Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra, 1975). AANDERSON_f9_166-191.inddNDERSON_f9_166-191.indd 171171 88/22/2007/22/2007 5:36:295:36:29 PPMM 172 antonio orihuela new elements of orthogonal design. These did not follow a unifi ed plan, and as a result these extensions are not clearly jointed together.6 1.3. Division of the landscape: evolution and tendencies The long and complex process of urban development outlined in the previous section should give some indication of the diffi culty of study- ing how the division of the landscape evolved. Urban archaeology, initiated in the 1980s, has still not produced signifi cant results in this fi eld in regards to medieval architecture.7 From the beginning of the fi fteenth century, with the loss of Ante- quera in 1410, Granada received great migratory waves of Muslims seeking safe refuge in the Nasrid capital, although there is no indication that the perimeter of the city was extended with new walled quarters as a result. The increase in population caused the urban fabric to become denser, fi lling up unbuilt space, orchards, and even old cemeteries that remained within the city walls; the density was perhaps also augmented by a reduction in individual plot sizes.8 Some Nasrid houses, such as the one located at No. 4 Calle del Cobe- rtizo de Santa Inés, displays evidence that it was added to by building upwards,9 and it is possible that others were divided in two vertically in order to house two families instead of one, as occurred at an unknown date in House No. 9 in the Alcazaba of the Alhambra.10 The Austrian traveller, Hieronymus Münzer, who visited Granada in 1494, was surprised at the small size of the houses he saw in the city and stated that “in the Christian territory, a house occupies more space than four or fi ve houses of Saracens”.11 6 Cristina Viñes Millet, Historia Urbana de Granada (Granada: Centro de Estudios Municipales y de Cooperación Internacional, 1999).