November 11, 2021 – Postcards from Sue and friends

We started our day with a trip to Alhambra. The place has a long and interesting history. It was originally a Roman fortification, and then a small fortress only to fall into ruins until an Arab King rebuilt it. Later it was converted into a royal palace for the Sultan of Granada and then after the Christians reclaimed the area and forced the Arabs out it became the Royal Court for King Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. It was where Christopher Columbus received royal endorsement for his expedition. There is more history to how each building and place obtained its particular form of architecture. There are excellent books to read including one by Washington Irving who lived in the Alhambra while he did the research and it was him who helped save the Alhambra from being torn down – Tales of the Alhambra.
For this post and because this is such a large complex, I will just include some of the pictures so you can see the Muslim influence and the Christian influence, etc. (and because there was so much to remember – I didn’t). Hey, I’m being honest here.
We have been blessed with wonderful weather and small crowds so far.
Enjoy the Alhambra.

One of the gates. There is a date in the center block of 17?2.

One of the cats that live at the Alhambra

And another cat (did you think I would leave them out? hmmmm)

This was the main gate. Notice the open hand on the high arch.

On the keystone of the outer arch an open hand has been carved out, and just inside –above the inner arch—a key. An inscription above the key tells us that the tower was built by Yusuf I in 1348. The hand and key have been the subject of much speculation and guides can wax eloquent on the possibilities: e.g. the hand symbolizes the five basic precepts of Islam, the key denotes the power given to Muhammad to open or close the gates to heaven, or the legend that Granada would not fall until the key had been grasped by the hand.

As you head for the Palace, pause again to look at the sheer volume of Charles V’s Renaissance Palace compared to the low-slung Nasrid complex abutting it. Although condemned by many as an aberration, Charles’s palace serves a very useful purpose: it allows us to see something of the mentality of Christian and Muslim cultures face to face.

Detail of Islamic calligraphy in Mexuar Hall: و لا غالب إلا الله, “There is no victor but God”

The ceiling itself is a tour de force: an artistic cupola made up of over 8,000 pieces of wood representing the seven heavens of Paradise. It looks like a galaxy of shooting stars, or a never ending display of fireworks, exploding simultaneously against the night sky. Half stars along the edges suggest both infinity and man’s finite reach, i.e. the impossibility of ever containing the heavens within human dimensions. The whole ceiling is awesome and beautiful, and probably had a functional role too of transferring some of that awe to the person who sat beneath it: the king beneath the dome of heaven, so to speak. All that is missing now are the original bright colors in which the ceiling was once painted. It is not hard to imagine awestruck visiting dignitaries facing the king, seated on his throne beneath such an illuminated canopy and surrounded by brilliant, stucco tapestries!

Standing two stories tall, the walls of the Hall of Ambassadors are totally covered with intricate, multicolored patterns beginning with the tiles at ground level, and followed upward by several levels of mesmerizing stucco tapestries –reminiscent of oriental carpets– interspersed with Qur’anic and poetic inscriptions.

The thick walls are broken up at ground level by deeply recessed and decorated alcoves/windows with commanding views of the ancient whitewashed Albaicín quarter across the ravine. Near the ceiling, rounded, delicately latticed windows filter the sunlight as it travels along on the walls.

Showing some of the paint / tint still remaining

*Alhambra: Patio of the Myrtles. Note the Reflection.*

The Court of the Lions is an oblong courtyard, 116 ft in length by 66 ft 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 a light domed roof. The square is paved with colored tiles and the colonnade with white marble, while the walls are covered 5 ft up from the ground with blue and yellow tiles, with a border above and below of enameled blue and gold. The columns supporting the roof and gallery are irregularly placed. They are adorned by varieties of foliage, etc.; about each arch there is a large square of stucco arabesques; and over the pillars is another stucco square of filigree work.

In the center of the court is the Fountain of the Lions, an alabaster basin supported by the figures of twelve lions in white marble, not designed with sculptural accuracy but as symbols of strength, power, and sovereignty. Each hour one lion would produce water from its mouth. At the edge of the great fountain there is a poem written by Ibn Zamrak. This praises the beauty of the fountain and the power of the lions, but it also describes their ingenious hydraulic systems and how they actually worked, which baffled all those who saw them.

These paintings of the Hall of Kings on leather are unique in the world, both for the technique used and for the description of scenes. he central painting always captures the attentive look of the visitor, is the most representative of all. It shows 10 illustrious characters, which could be 10 sultans of the Nasrid dynasty or 10 important figures of the court, since they are dressed in turbans and even with the jineta sword, which is the maximum symbol of distinction and dignity.

Represent a challenge between knights, one Christian, the other Muslim, challenging each other by love and by the hand of a maiden.

Some perspective on the size of the door – even the door within the door

Hall of the Abencerrages – dome honeycombed with tiny cells, all different, and said to number 5000 – is an example of the “stalactite vaulting” of the Moors.

One of the few remaining pieces of stained glass

Central fountain in the Patio de Linaraja

Of the outlying buildings connected to the Alhambra, the foremost in interest is the Palace Generalife, or “Garden of the Architect”). This villa dates from the beginning of the 14th century but has been restored several times. The Martyrs’ Villa, on the summit of Monte Mauror, commemorates by its name the Christian slaves who were forced to build the Alhambra and confined here in subterranean cells. There is a whole write-up regarding how the water supply system worked providing “running water”.

The Christian building with the Latin inscribed ceiling

Plaque to Washington Irving who helped save the Alhambra

A young man explaining how they make the inlaid wood items

One last Alhambra cat who came over for pets and belly rubs

We left Alhambra for our hotel and a bite to eat. Later Juanjo took us out for a short walk around town.

Queen Isabel on top – the building is a theater

This bronze, equestrian sculpture was created by Ramiro Mejías to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Granada’s liberation from the Muslims in 1492. It adorns the rooftop of Granada City Hall.

Whew. I am now caught up and good thing too as we leave in the morning for Malaga.

Not Ohio.

Toledo is an ancient city set on a hill above the plains of Castilla-La Mancha in central Spain. The capital of the region, it’s known for the medieval Arab, Jewish and Christian monuments in its walled old city. It was also the former home of Mannerist painter El Greco. The Moorish Bisagra Gate and the Sol Gate, in Mudéjar style, open into the old quarter, where the Plaza de Zocodover is a lively meeting place.

We start our trip after about an hour bus ride from Madrid. Our driver, Victor, pulled over to give us a wonderful view of the city of Toledo from across the river. As you arrive in Toledo, one of the first sights you’ll notice is the winding El Rio Tajo, Spanish for the Tagus River, which surrounds the city on three sides—much like a moat would surround an ancient castle.

The Puente de San Martín (English: St Martin’s Bridge) is a medieval bridge across the river Tagus.

The Puente de San Martín features five arches, with the largest in the middle having a span of 131 feet. Only very few bridges in the world were that long at the time of its construction.

Map of the city of Toledo – we are at the left most edge

Not sure if you noticed from the first photos the bridge was just outside the photo to the left side and we are going to walk up to the cathedral. Well, some of us. I elected to take a cab, while Gloria walked up that hill.
Our first stop was at a former Jewish synagogue. By the time the first surviving synagogues were built in Spain, Jews had lived there for more than a thousand years. The first Jews likely arrived on the Iberian peninsula among the Roman conquerors and colonizers who flowed there in the first century C.E. Jews were persecuted by Christians during the Late Antique period (beginning in the 4th century), but when Muslim rule was established in 711, the legal and economic status of Jews improved. Often well integrated into the governments and economies of the cities in Muslim Al-Andalus, many Jews spoke Arabic and wore the same clothes as their Muslim neighbors.
By the late Middle Ages, there were at least eleven synagogues in the city of Toledo in central Spain. Two of these—the Samuel Halevi Abulafia synagogue and the Ibn Shoshan synagogue—stand only a few blocks apart in the old Jewish quarter. Both synagogues display a style inspired by the Islamic buildings that surrounded them, sometimes called Mudéjar. This style was used by Muslim, Christian, and Jewish patrons and builders living in parts of Spain formerly governed by Muslims. The earlier Muslim builders had themselves borrowed from the cultures that preceded their arrival by including details that had been popular with Romans and Late Antique Christians in Spain, such as reused columns, The interior is divided into five aisles by four rows of stout octagonal piers. The piers carry rows of capitals decorated with stucco pinecones and volutes, surmounted by giant horseshoe arches. Above the arches are layers of low-relief stucco tendrils and roundels, scallop shells, geometric interlacing, and rows of blind arches with multiple lobes(called poly-lobed arches), a wealth of surface decoration that recalls the type found in earlier Spanish buildings. Our guide told us that the Jewish people had Muslim builder build the synagogue.

Multiple columns which would be more of a mosque than a synagogue. It was also built facing east.

Notice the Cross. After the Jewish people were forced to convert or leave, this was used as a church.

In one panel on the wall was the only Star of David in the building.

top part of building shows how the rock was used in between brick and then it would be plastered over.

We walked passed a number of little shops – this one ceramics

A shop for swords and suit of armor if required

You want a sword – here is a master swordsmith.

A catholic church with a muslim bell tower

While the formula and ratio for marzipan varies from country to country, the traditional recipe is an ancient one that contains the same building blocks wherever you go. Raw, ground almonds are blanched and emulsified with sugar to make an almond paste. Some confectioneries will then take the mixture and add in other subtle components like honey, almond oil, almond extract, or egg whites. A great example of this is a seventh-generation marzipan maker in Toledo, Spain that runs Santo Tome. Their recipe calls for 57% raw, ground almonds, 40% sugar, and 3% honey.

If you are looking for a high quality marzipan sweet, you want to look for one that has a high percentage of included almonds. The higher the almond percentage, the better the marzipan is going to taste, as it won’t include cheaper substitutes like apricot kernels. Ideally, you are looking for a marzipan confection that contains at least 50% almonds. You will definitely find this in Finland and Sweden, Germany, and in Toledo, Spain where percentages range from 50-65%.

Since marzipan has been embraced by so many different cultures since its invention, it is hard to track down its exact origin point. While it is believed to have been introduced to Eastern Europe through Edirne (Adrianople), a northwestern Turkish province close to the borders of Greece, many attribute its invention to Lübeck, Germany. During the 15th century famine, flour for bread was scarce and so bakers needed a replacement and used eggs, sugar, and almonds together to make marzipan. However, this is only one proposed line of origin, as other cities like Toledo, Spain, Italy, and Hungary also make claim to its invention.

According to the Spanish, the origin lies with them, as historical texts indicate that Postre Regio was eaten in Toledo, Spain as a specialty during the reign of Alfonso VII (1150). In addition to this, a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales called The Book of One Thousand and One Nights which is also known as Arabian Nights, mentions an almond paste being eaten during Ramadan as an aphrodisiac. It is also believed that sugar and almond could have been used to make an almond paste during the famine that ensued in Castile after the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. To top all of this off, the European Union does recognize the name, Marzipan de Toledo, as the protected designation of origin.

They tell the story of how the nuns made the marzipan

German influenced the construction of this building.

And we round the corner and there is the Cathedral of Toledo.

The Primatial Cathedral of Saint Mary of Toledo, otherwise Toledo Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic church in Toledo. It is the seat of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Toledo.

The cathedral of Toledo is one of the three 13th-century High Gothic cathedrals in Spain and is considered, in the opinion of some authorities, to be the magnum opus of the Gothic style in Spain. It was begun in 1226 under the rule of Ferdinand III and the last Gothic contributions were made in the 15th century when, in 1493, the vaults of the central nave were finished during the time of the Catholic Monarchs. It was modeled after the Bourges Cathedral, although its five naves plan is a consequence of the constructors’ intention to cover all of the sacred space of the former city mosque with the cathedral, and of the former sahn with the cloister. It also combines some characteristics of the Mudejar style, mainly in the cloister, with the presence of multifoled arches in the triforium. The spectacular incorporation of light and the structural achievements of the ambulatory vaults are some of its more remarkable aspects. It is built with white limestone from the quarries near Toledo.

he Visigothic church was torn down and the main mosque of the city of Toledo was erected in its place.

The city of Toledo was reconquered by Alfonso VI, King of Leon and Castile, in 1085. One of the points of the Muslim capitulation that made possible the transfer of the city without bloodshed was the king’s promise to conserve and respect their institutions of higher learning, as well as the customs and religion of the Muslim population which had coexisted with the larger Mozarabic population. Naturally, the preservation of the main mosque was integral to this compromise. Shortly thereafter, the king had to depart on matters of state, leaving the city in charge of his wife Constance and the abbot of the monastery of Sahagun, Bernard of Cluny, who had been elevated to the rank of archbishop of Toledo. These two, in mutual accord and taking advantage of the absence of the king, undertook an unfortunate action which, almost provoked a Muslim uprising and consequent ruin of the recently conquered city.

On 25 October 1087, the archbishop in cooperation with Queen Constance sent an armed contingent to seize the mosque by force. They proceeded to install a provisional altar and hung a bell in the minaret, following Christian custom to ‘cast out the filthiness of the law of Mohammed’. The priest Mariana writes that king Alfonso VI was so irritated by these events that neither the archbishop nor the queen were able to prevent him from ordering the execution of all the active participants. Legend tells that the local Muslim populace itself helped restore peace, with its chief negotiator, faqih Abu Walid, requesting the king to show mercy, and imploring his fellow townsmen to accept the Christian usurpation as legitimate. In gratitude for this gesture, the Cathedral Chapter dedicated a homage to Walid and ordered his effigy to be placed on one of the pillars in the main chapel, in this way perpetuating his memory. Thus the conversion of the Toledan mosque was upheld and it remained consecrated as a Christian cathedral.
Pope Urban II recognized this church in 1088 as the primatial cathedral over the rest of the kingdom. The mosque-cathedral remained intact until the 13th century, when in the year 1222 a Papal bull issued by the Pope authorized the construction of a new cathedral which was begun in 1224.
The layout of the cathedral as now seen was set in the 13th century.

The most important object kept in the Chapel of the Treasure is the great Monstrance of Arfe, also known as La Gran Ostensoria de Toledo. Made of the finest silver and gold and bejeweled with gems, it measures over ten feet tall. The monstrance is famous for being used in the annual feast of Corpus Christi of Toledo.

The creator of the Great Monstrance was the metalworker Enrique de Arfe, born Heinrich von Harff, originally from Harff near Cologne, Germany. Arfe labored on it from 1517–1524, on commission to Cardinal Cisneros. It is of late Gothic design. This triumph of the silversmith’s craft is in the form of a Gothic temple, with all the architectural details, such as columns, arches, and vaultings, the whole resembling a delicate lacework. Scenes from the life of the Savior are illustrated in relief. It has two hundred and sixty statuettes of various sizes, all exhibiting the same skill in workmanship. The Great Monstrance has a hexagonal base, and rises on small exquisitely made columns, with adornments of gems and varied figurines of angels and saints, fleuron’s, small bells and clappers. The work is crowned in the uppermost section by a 17th-century cross. The pedestal on which it sits is in the Baroque style of the 18th century. Originally made of silver, Archbishop Quiroga commissioned its gilding to match the gold plated wood of the monstrance of the altar; it was gilded in 1595 by Valdivieso and Morino. Today it is encased under bulletproof glass and heavily guarded by an automatic security system within the grounds of the cathedral.

In the Middle Ages, Cardinal Cisneros wanted to compete for a grander monstrance than that of Isabella the Catholic, and to show it off in the procession of the Corpus Christi of Toledo, which at the time was the most important feast in the Kingdom of Castile. The monstrance took seven years to create and its cost surpassed 15 million Iberian gold coins, of which Arfe received the stipulated 2,700 reales. He was awarded a bonus of 2,500 Iberian gold coins that the cathedral’s chapter presented to him on Christmas of 1523, having been impressed by the magnificence of his work.

Since 1595, it has been customary to carry the monstrance in the procession of the Corpus Christi, on a float made for this purpose with an adjustable leveling which is mechanically activated. In the procession, political and ecclesiastical dignitaries proceed ahead of the monstrance and behind it the cadets of the Infantry Academy. The monstrance comprises 5,600 different pieces held together by 12,500 bolts and decorated with 260 figurines. 39.6 pounds of 18 karat gold and 403.4 pounds of pure silver were used in its fabrication; it is said to contain the first gold brought by Columbus from the New World.

The retable is a Gothic altarpiece, the work of Pedro de Gumiel with fourteen panels painted by Sancho de Zamora. He was contracted by María de Luna in 1488. In the center is an equestrian figure of Saint James, the work of Juan de Segovia. In the center of the predella is represented the scene of the Weeping Before a Dead Christ, and on its sides the Count Álvaro and his wife are portrayed as patrons accompanied by Saint Francis and Saint Anthony.