Reframing the Alhambra

Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art
Series Editor: Robert Hillenbrand
This series offers readers easy access to the most up-to-date research across the whole range of Islamic art, representing various parts of the Islamic world, media and approaches. Books in the series are academic monographs of intellectual distinction that mark a significant advance in the field.
'This rich and extremely valuable book will change the way we look at the Alhambra. Olga Bush brings together inscriptions, poetry, texts, contemporary optics and poetics and long dispersed luxury objects and furnishings, enabling us to reimagine the architectural spaces of the Alhambra as a living environment. She replenishes its colour, and draws us into its artistic voice and the meanings of its poetry; indeed, into the many languages that the buildings speak, across media, across modes of expression.' Jerrilynn Dodds
The Nasrid builders of the Alhambra - the best-preserved medieval Muslim palatial city - were so exacting that some of their work could not be fully explained until the invention of fractal geometry. Their design principles have been obscured, however, by the loss of all archival material. This book resolves that impasse by investigating the neglected, interdisciplinary contexts of medieval poetics and optics and through comparative study of Islamic court ceremonials. This reframing enables the reconstruction of the underlying, integrated aesthetic, focusing on the harmonious interrelationship between diverse artistic media - architecture, poetry and textiles - in the experience of the beholder, resulting in a new understanding of the Alhambra.
Key Features
. Illustrated in colour throughout
. Takes an intermedial approach integrating the study of poetic inscriptions, textiles and court ceremonial into the discussion of architecture
. Interdisciplinary, combining art history, optics and literary studies
. Case studies explore specific, relatively neglected spaces within the Alhambra
. Informed by both medieval and contemporary theory . Considers the most recent technical analyses to distinguish clearly original elements
Olga Bush is Visiting Scholar of Islamic art and architecture at Vassar College and co-editor, with Avinoam Shalem, of Gazing Otherwise: Modalities of Seeing In and Beyond the Lands of Islam (2015).
Cover image: Palacio de los Nazaries, Alhambra, Granada © coverimages.com
Cover design: Stuart Dalziel
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ISBN 978-1-4744-1650-4
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