What to see in Seville, Ishbiliya إشبيلية in muslim times

The Islamic kingdoms of medieval Spain are legendary for their artistic and architectural glories. They are also famous, although perhaps at times through rose-tinted spectacles, for centuries of co-existence between Muslims, Jews and Christians, and for the flowering of a rich culture which drew on the best of the Religions of the Book.

Nowadays, the best-known (and most visited) of the cities of these medieval kingdoms are Granada, home to the Alhambra palace, and Cordoba, site of the breathtaking Mezquita mosque with its forest of red and white arches.

But Seville, now a sprawling modern city, also deserves recognition for its Islamic-influenced cultural heritage. Seville was founded as the Roman city of Hispalis, and was known as Ishbiliya (Arabic:إشبيلية) after the Muslim conquest in 712.

During the Muslim rule in Spain, Seville came under the jurisdiction of the Caliphate of Córdoba before becoming the independent Taifa of Seville; later it was ruled by the Muslim Almoravids and the Almohads until finally being incorporated into the Christian Kingdom of Castile under Ferdinand III in 1248

The Moorish urban influences continued and are present in contemporary Seville, for instance in the custom of decorating with herbaje and small fountains the courtyards of the houses. However, most buildings of the Moorish aesthetic actually belong to the Mudéjar style of Islamic art, developed under Christian rule and inspired by the Arabic style. Original Moorish buildings are the Patio del Yeso in the Alcázar, the city walls, and the main section of the Giralda, bell tower of the Seville Cathedral.


You can visit this city in our tour Spain & Morocco of  10days / nights

Torre del Oro

Overlooking the river is the Torre del Oro, which began life in the 13th century as a Moorish watchtower, part of the city walls that secured one end of a large chain that blocked off entrance to the harbor, which was at the time right in the center of Seville.

When the Catholic kings regained Seville and the city was granted the monopoly on all trade with the New World, the tower became an inspection point for taxing all cargoes before they were unloaded at the port.

The river eventually silted up, forcing the port to move to Cadiz, and the tower was no longer needed, and eventually the city walls around it were demolished. But the tower remained, later used as a prison.

Today it houses a maritime museum. Inside are displays relating to the Guadalquivir, and its role in navigation history. You’ll find ship models (including the three with which Columbus set out from Seville), maps and drawings, figureheads and a fine collection of navigation instruments.

Maria Luisa Park (Parque de María Luisa)

When Seville hosted the 1929 Exposición Ibero-Americana, this whole southern end of Seville was transformed into the fairgrounds, and various nations hired cutting-edge architects to design eye-catching pavilions were they could showcase their arts and technology.

Other pavilions were constructed to show off Spain’s on industry and innovation.

After the fair, several nations kept their pavilions as consulates, other buildings were turned into museums, and the entire park became Seville’s back yard.

Stretching along the river, Parque de María Luisa is a green space filled with fountains, gardens, palms, orange trees, Mediterranean pines, flower beds, pools and walkways, liberally dotted with benches and decorated throughout by colored tile work. Plaza de España defines one end, while at the other end two of the largest pavilions have become museums featuring archaeology and popular arts. Around the edges are consulates, including those of Peru and Colombia, and other buildings in Art Nouveau and Art deco styles, many of them also former fair pavilions.

Plaza de España

The focal point of the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, Plaza de España is the work of architect Aníbal González, who blended elements of Spanish baroque, Mudéjar revival and the Art Deco that was popular at the time.

The towers were inspired by those on the great cathedral at Santiago de Compostella, and all around the immense crescent plaza are alcoves with colored tiled scenes representing the various provinces of Spain. Behind this is a wide arcaded gallery with views into the plaza and the moat that surrounds it.

The water feature is enhanced by boats and by ornate bridges crossing at intervals. Scenes from the movie Lawrence of Arabia were filmed here, and more recently scenes from two episodes of Star Wars. The fountain at the center of the plaza is lighted at night.

Jardines Reales Alcázar Gardens

Lovely and complex, the gardens are arranged, like the palace itself, into a series of garden rooms, through which you can stroll at leisure. And like the palace, some are intimate, some grand and soaring.

Wander among them to find fountains, tall topiary arches, walls of colored tile, carefully tended beds inside perfectly trimmed hedges, and other places where nature and Seville’s Mediterranean climate have been allowed to tend the garden.

Look especially for the spacious tree-shaded English Garden, the romantic Poet’s Garden, the Jardin de la Danza and the garden of Carlos V. The gardens are especially welcome in the summer, when their shade and fountains offer a respite from the heat.

Real Alcázar (Royal Palace)

Begun by the Islamic rulers in 712, building was continued in the 1360s by King Pedro, who favored the Mudéjar style, a revival of the Moorish architecture and decoration.

One of the oldest European royal palaces that are still in use, the Alcázar seems to flow in and out between almost overwhelming interiors and elegantly arranged patios, whose decoration is no less splendid, but brighter and airier for being open to the sky.

Each of these spaces – grand rooms or exquisite patios – is a jewel box on its own, and together they form one of the world’s most opulent palaces.

Beyond their splendor, in these rooms and tiny enclosed gardens are a millennium of history. Their architecture is a catalog of changing tastes and styles, from the earliest Arabic period through the Mudéjar extension of Moorish elements as they blended with Gothic in the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, Baroque and even later periods.

 Highlights are the delicate stone traceries of the Patio del Yeso and carvings of the Doncellas Patio, and the soaring and intricately tiled walls and dome of the Salon de Embajadores.

La Giralda

In proclaiming this former minaret a World Heritage Site, UNESCO called it “the masterpiece of Almohad architecture.” Built 1184-96, the tower, considered the finest of the three remaining great Almohad minarets, was designed not only to call the faithful to prayer, but as an observation point to guard the city.

So important was the tower to the Moors that they wanted to destroy it when they knew their city would fall to the Christian kings in 1248. King Alfonso X threatened death to the entire city if a single stone were removed, saving it for posterity – or maybe so he’d have a place from which to view his restored domain, which he promptly did – on horseback.

In the Renaissance era (1560-68), the top of the belfry was extended and the present balconies added, but everything below the bells is the original Almohad minaret, its walls built of brick trellis work forming different patterns on each side, highlighted by niches and windows. La Giralda’s beautiful design has inspired a number of other buildings, among them the clock tower of the Ferry Building in San Francisco, the Wrigley Building in Chicago and The Biltmore in Miami.

Seville Cathedral

One of the three largest in the world (measured by volume it’s even bigger than St Peter’s in Rome), Seville’s cathedral is resplendent in gold and silver, all part of the riches that flowed through Seville when the city had the monopoly on trade with the New World.

The high altar is nearly 120 feet tall, a tour-de-force of woodcarving with all of its statues and surfaces covered in gold.

To one side, the tomb of Christopher Columbus is held high by four giant figures, and several chapels have ornate altars and paintings by major Spanish artists. The Sacristy holds some of the church’s vast treasury of intricate reliquaries of precious metals and stones, as well as paintings by some notables. The church follows the footprint of the mosque that it replaced, and the courtyard planted in orange trees was its courtyard.

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Ishbiliya إشبيلية, the muslim Seville

You can visit this city in our tour Spain & Morocco of  10days / nights

The Islamic kingdoms of medieval Spain are legendary for their artistic and architectural glories. They are also famous, although perhaps at times through rose-tinted spectacles, for centuries of co-existence between Muslims, Jews and Christians, and for the flowering of a rich culture which drew on the best of the Religions of the Book.

Nowadays, the best-known (and most visited) of the cities of these medieval kingdoms are Granada, home to the Alhambra palace, and Cordoba, site of the breathtaking Mezquita mosque with its forest of red and white arches.

But Seville, now a sprawling modern city, also deserves recognition for its Islamic-influenced cultural heritage.

Torre del Oro and Guadalquivir River

Seville was founded as the Roman city of Hispalis, and was known as Ishbiliya (Arabic:إشبيلية) after the Muslim conquest in 712.

During the Muslim rule in Spain, Seville came under the jurisdiction of the Caliphate of Córdoba before becoming the independent Taifa of Seville; later it was ruled by the Muslim Almoravids and the Almohads until finally being incorporated into the Christian Kingdom of Castile under Ferdinand III in 1248

The Moorish urban influences continued and are present in contemporary Seville, for instance in the custom of decorating with herbaje and small fountains the courtyards of the houses. However, most buildings of the Moorish aesthetic actually belong to the Mudéjar style of Islamic art, developed under Christian rule and inspired by the Arabic style. Original Moorish buildings are the Patio del Yeso in the Alcázar, the city walls, and the main section of the Giralda, bell tower of the Seville Cathedral.[8]


Centuries of Islamic Architecture

The most prominent remnant of Seville's Islamic past is La Giralda, the towering minaret of a 12th century Almohad mosque, which became the city's Catholic cathedral after its conquest by Saint Ferdinand in 1248. At 320 feet high, La Giralda was once the tallest tower in the world. Modeled on the minaret of the Kutubiyya mosque in Marrakech, it has a sister in the Hassan Tower at an uncompleted mosque in Rabat.

La Giralda, the towering minaret of a 12 th century Almohad mosque

The modern-day cathedral was begun in the late 14th century, after the Great Mosque was pulled down, but it still holds the tomb of Saint Ferdinand. The tomb's inscriptions celebrate Ferdinand's achievements not only in Castilian and the monastic language of medieval Christianity, Latin, but also in Hebrew and Arabic. And Ferdinand's son, Alfonso, tried to make Seville a centre for Arabic scholarship and translation, losing out to the long-established academia of Toledo. 


Floodlit at Night


La Giralda's golden stone glows softly, towering over the busy nightlife of the old quarter of Seville whose narrow streets remind visitors of their original character as the city's souk. In the square around the foot of the tower are citrus trees, bearing the Seville oranges famous the world over.

Alcázar of Seville

Just seconds' walk away – close enough for first Muslim and then Christian kings to reach their place of worship through a private tunnel – is the site which has been home to several generations of royal palaces, of the Almohad dynasty and the later Christian kings.


The present occupant of the site is the spectacular Alcazar palace; its name is a corruption of the Arabic al qasr. Its ornate plasterwork – which incorporates repeated Arabic scripts, including the phrase Wa la ghalib ill Allah – "There is no victor but Allah" - is a reflection of the splendors of the Alhambra in Granada, and its tile work also draws heavily on Muslim Andalucian designs. No casual visitor, wandering the Alcazar's courtyards, would be likely to guess that it was commissioned by a Christian monarch.

But the palace – although built around structures which may date as far back as the Umayyad period of the 10th and early 11th centuries, when their Caliphate centered on Cordoba - was completed by workmen who had spent several generations building Granada's Alhambra, and who were then lured west by the Christian king Pedro the Cruel.

Ibn Khaldun, the great philosopher of history, whose distant ancestors hailed from Seville before they fled the Almoravid conquest of the city in the 11th century, visited Seville during his travels around Andalucia in 1364-5, when the ornate plasterwork of the Alcazar was only just dry. Pedro the Cruel tried to persuade him to stay, offering him his family's historical lands, as well as high office – but his interest in the one remaining Muslim kingdom in Spain, Granada, won out.

The Andalucian Melting-Pot  

The Alcazar's cultural, artistic and religious mixture epitomizes the blurring of religious and cultural lines in Andalucia, where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived and worked alongside each other and where Muslim and Christian armies often fought alongside one another against rival small kingdoms, or taifas.

One of the most famous figures of the period was El Cid (a corruption of the Arabic sayyid, 'lord'), described by writer Maria Rosa Menocal as “this Christian warrior with the Arabic name [who] was leading troops into battles between one Muslim and another,” who fought for the King of Seville in late 11th century battles against Granada. He became the hero of a great epic poem in medieval Spanish, and finally of a Hollywood movie.

Another was Samuel the Nagid, the Jewish vizier of Granada, who helped maintain his city's military strength under the Berber King Habbus al-Muzaffar in the 11th century, and who conquered Seville in 1039 for Habbus' son Badis.

For centuries this patchwork of Muslim and Christian kingdoms, with their shifting alliances, fostered a vibrant artistic life. It did not, perhaps, rival the scale of the Madinat as-Zahra in Cordoba, built by Abd ar-Rahman III at the height of the Caliphate and lost for a millennium after it was sacked in the civil war that brought down the Umayyads in Spain. But its creations do include the Alhambra in Granada, the Alcazares of Seville and of Segovia and Carmona, and the fashion for Mudejar craftsmanship lived on even after the Christian conquest of Spain was completed in 1492, with noble palaces commissioned in this style for decades to come.

According to Professor Maria Luise Fernandez, of Caracas University, the strength of Islamic artistic traditions even carried it to the Americas. Mudejar designs can, she says, be found in Spanish colonial architecture in cities such as Mexico City, Quito and Caracas, and in the 'azulejo' style of blue tilework – from al-zulaij, colloquial Arabic for ornamental tiles – which became associated with towns such as Puebla in Mexico.

Poet-Kings and Philosophers

But the glories of Seville's Muslim past are not only in its visual architecture.
In her book on the centuries of Muslim kingdoms which made up medieval Andalucia, Ornament of the World: how Muslims, Jews & Christians created a culture of tolerance in Medieval Spain, Menocal refers to 11th century Seville as “the poetry-mad Abbadid taifa of Seville.” The rivalry between Seville and the neighboring taifa of Toledo was, says Menocal, as much about the cities' cultural profile as their military strength.

“Military and cultural ambitions were purposefully intertwined and their Seville became the new haven for poetry in al-Andalus,” continues Menocal. “The Abbadid-sponsored academy of poets played all sorts of important roles in poetic history, attracting poets from inside and outside the peninsula and leaving us an important diwan, or anthology, of the poetry of the period.”
Mutamid Ibn Abbad, the last king of the Abbadid dynasty, was not only a great patron of the arts, but is considered one of the greatest Andalusian poets in his own right. Andalucian poetry spanned topics from romantic love to political satire, and al-Mutamid's own work ranged from praises of his wife:
"Invisible to my eyes, thou art ever present to my heart. Thy happiness I desire to be infinite, as are my sighs, my tears, and my sleepless nights! Impatient of the bridle when other women seek to guide me, thou makest me submissive to thy lightest wishes" [The Poems of Mu'Tamid, King of Seville, translated DL Smith, 1915]

And to celebration of his own military victories:

“I have won at the first onset The hand of the lovely C?rdoba; That brave Amazon who with sword and spear Repelled all those who sought her in marriage. And now we celebrate our nuptial in her palace, While the other monarchs, my baffled rivals, Weep tears of rage and tremble with fear.” [The Poems of Mu'Tamid, King of Seville, translated DL Smith, 1915]

A monument to Seville's “poet-king” and his “sad overthrow” by the Berber Almoravids, who he had supported against Christian rivals in the naïve belief that he could then expel them from his own lands, is still to be found in the grounds of the Alcazar.
 

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