Seiobo There Below (30 page)

not even allowed
, perhaps this sort of deliberation lay in the depths of the wishes of those who ordered it, who knows, no one has ever seen their specific plans, neither Yusuf I nor Mohammed V left any sort of trace behind as to what they were thinking when they built these walls here in this state, we can only guess, just as we also guessed as to why generally no written trace was left concerning the construction of the Alhambra, because nothing remained, and this still is not without precedent, for in the enormous territories of the Islamic empire, documents about this or that building are not too frequently available; it is however unprecedented that in the case of the Alhambra not even one single tiny piece of data has ever emerged about the construction itself, as if it would have been of particular importance to its commissioners that their work — how should one even express it, so as not to obscure things unnecessarily — would remain concealed, concealed in its essence, but by its appearance revealed, that is more or less the conclusion reached by one who lingers over these dilemmas, and this is just the beginning, really, because as one progresses in this Alhambra research, it will be ever more obvious that what earlier seemed self-evident here is anything but, that is to say that it can hardly be seen as an exception that in the case of a very old building, written sources do not survive, or that there are today very few experts to be found who can evoke, in spite of all their expertise, evidence, pertaining to how, for example, the days were spent in the Alhambra, or in any edifice, say, similar to the Alhambra; just that this complexity, this perfection appears to manifest itself as well in the concealment of any knowledge pertaining to the Alhambra at all; an attention extending to all things, that even of the tiniest, the most insignificant of facts, nothing at all should remain; this nonetheless causes one to ponder, because, well then, the question inevitably arises within one, if it isn’t this way because
there were never any traces at all, it just appears that they were hidden,
Professor Grabar, coming from the Marçais school, and towering far above the other scholars of the Alhambra as he is the only one who notices that in this wondrous masterwork there is too much obscurity, briefly he, an instructor at both the University of Michigan and Harvard, the son of André Grabar, wrote an entirely serious monograph about how the story of the Alhambra is in fact nothing but the story of a great conspiracy, and the Alhambra itself, in his view, is a singular attempt at the art of disguise, and clearly the reason why he thinks so, being a knowledgeable expert, is that he cannot resign himself to there being no explanation; it is simply palpable, as one reads onward in Grabar’s book, that this scholar of exceptional aptitude is hardly capable of conceiving that something could exist without a story, circumstance, cause, or goal; he can’t even conceive that its formation, its origination would have no logical continuity, to put it more forcefully, this Professor Grabar neither considers it possible, nor is capable of accepting, that an effect can appear without having been elicited by any cause, hence that ripples would appear on the lake’s tranquil surface without us having thrown a pebble into it, namely, in the case of the Alhambra that this, the Alhambra, could come into being without there being any real commission, and in addition, that the ones who commissioned it had no tangible intention and so on, but in the end Professor Grabar cannot, neither at Harvard nor at Michigan, cannot withstand that inasmuch as all of this is extant, that ultimately it all cannot
finally
be attributed to something logical, in this case then, perhaps in this unique case, we must confront the disquieting possibility that the Alhambra — already far beyond its really being neither fortress nor palace nor private residence — stands there with no explanation, it is wholly extant, the outer walls are extant, the entrance is extant, the spaces inside, ultimately traversable if with some difficulty, are extant, the presumed function of each single spatial element is extant, they point out, for example, that here is where the throne was, and here were the baths, and over there was the tower of the captive Infanta, things like that, they analyze the exceptional craftsmanship of the ornamentation, they look for correlations, and they find them in the universal regularity of Islamic architecture, and they do not grow perplexed when a less perceptive observer, in their view, does grow perplexed; they are not; we, however, are; for our gaze does not glide over self-evident things so easily, well, because we take one more step forward, and we note that no one is perplexed — only Professor Grabar with his own conspiracy-theory, but that is going in a different direction — accordingly then there is no one, although clearly this must have been obvious, or is obvious to every expert: no one is sincerely troubled by the Alhambra’s outwardly very restrained, almost desolate, characterless, attention-deflecting walls, the negligible mortar of these walls built from negligible materials, in a word, the Alhambra places a great deal of emphasis on showing nothing outwardly of the nearly inhuman enchantment with which everything dazzles there within, like the starry sky of a summer’s night above Granada; put differently, that the Alhambra from without betrays nothing of what is inside, and at the same time, from within, it does not betray what awaits a person outside, that is to say that the Alhambra betrays nothing about itself, and generally this or that quality is never shown in this or that direction, it never indicates here that over there this or that will follow; namely that the Alhambra is always the same, and is always at every point identical only with itself, by which statement one does not wish to express, on the other hand, that one knows what this means, but precisely that one does
not
know, he just stands there and acknowledges it, and he acknowledges it by saying oh my, how peculiar that Alhambra is from the outside, a completely different building than within, and utterly different inside than outside, and so it goes, truly one step at a time, when one enters through the little gate; so that his own Alhambra story may begin within a truly insignificant place in the greater whole, the entrance, let’s call it that, but we don’t think of it as such, as we know very well that this entrance is only the present entrance, at one time it was not located here, this is claimed decisively by a few, although already not so very decisively as to where exactly it was “in olden times,” in short the entrance is concealed, says Professor Grabar from Boston or from Michigan, because who could imagine that the path into a palace of wonders would not pass through a gate of wonders, although, no, it isn’t like that in the Alhambra, examining either the presumably earlier or current entrances, it is as if the entrance neither wants to invite anyone in nor to lead him anywhere, it simply allows one inside, an opening, a point where a person may obtain access to the interior spaces if he so wishes, an arbitrarily selected place which merely happened to come about in the course of time, and which offers nothing, is just open and is always open, hence it is possible to step across it; well, after, of course, it is another question of what to do after one has stepped across it, because let us take the simplest scenario, twenty minutes have gone by, the sweat trickles down in the horrendous scorching heat, he pays the
extortionately
high entrance fee, glances at the brief description that comes with the ticket, and sets off in one direction that would appear to be the right one — just that there is no such thing, the Alhambra does not recognize within itself the concept of a right direction, one is rapidly convinced of this when he realizes that fine, he headed off toward the Cuarto Dorado courtyard, and if he is moving inside a work of Islamic architecture for the first time, then certainly a few minutes will go by, perhaps even more, until he comes to, because the first encounter with a space determined by Islamic ornamentation — anywhere in the world, but particularly here in the courtyard of the Cuarto Dorado — completely overwhelms one: but let’s say he regains his senses and establishes that most likely he has approached the inner wonders of the Alhambra from the wrong direction,
the courtyard of the Cuarto Dorado itself tells him this
, as if it was saying, indicating in every one of its single elements, that here is the courtyard of the Cuarto Dorado, and the path does not
lead
here, and from here it does not
lead
any further, the courtyard of the Cuarto Dorado offers only itself, and again just completely by accident he “deduces” from the building’s construction that possibilities of coming into here and going out from there also exist, on the one hand inward, toward the Cuarto Dorado, on the other, away from here, finally from the Mexuar there are the two same directions and potentialities, but by then one is so stunned by the beauty, by this beauty that is so, but so unbelievably
beautiful
, that he thinks he is struck by vertigo, and consequently he just goes here or there, because he feels that the walls and the columns and the floors and the ceilings, the ornamentation carved with breathtaking refinement, have dazed him, the unendurable, immeasurable infinities of the tiles, the surfaces of the walls, the Moorish arches and the stalactite vaults, are collapsing onto him; that is why he proceeds in utter confusion, because only much later does he realize that no, his vertigo and his daze are not the reason why he does not find the right way in the interior of the Alhambra, and it is not because of that he continually feels that he is not stepping into one or the other room or courtyard from the desired direction, consequently, he realizes, his cloudlike enchantment is not the explanation, but that in the Alhambra there
is
no correct path, moreover, after a while he suddenly realizes that in the Alhambra there are no paths at all, the rooms and the courtyards were not formed in such a way as to link to each other, to flow into each other, to be contiguous at all with each other, namely that after some time, with a little good fortune and much spiritual exertion, one also comprehends that here every single room and every single courtyard exists for its own sake, the rooms and the courtyards have nothing to do with each other, which does not mean that they turn away from each other, or that they close themselves off from each other, that is not the case at all, every courtyard and room just represents itself, within its own self, and at the same time within its own self, represents the whole, the entirety of the Alhambra, and this Alhambra exists simultaneously in parts and simultaneously as one single whole, and every one of its parts is identical to the whole as well, just as the reverse is also true, namely the entire Alhambra represents, in every moment, the incommutable universe of every one of its parts, this runs through a person’s mind with crazed speed even in the resplendent light here, yet he has hardly even entered the Alhambra, he is still only in the Cuarto Dorado, he has hardly seen anything and yet he has already seen everything, just perhaps it has not entered his awareness, he however only really now is starting with the Mexuar, then on from there, as if turning back from a dead end in a labyrinth, then the alarming visit to the Sala de la Barca with its maddening wooden ceiling — a visit to the Alhambra — where every visit is alarming, as the Alhambra offers everyone the understanding that it will never be understood, it offers the incomprehensible in the Sala de la Barca, and it offers the same in the long mirror of water of the Patio de los Arrayanes, in the marble-lace intangibility descending ethereally onto the slender columns in the Baths or finally, arriving at the fountain in the Courtyard of the Lions, the Patio de los Leones, one already suspects that he is not a visitor here but a sacrifice, a sacrifice to the Alhambra, but at the same time he is honored by the radiance of the Alhambra as well, a sacrifice because everything is forcing him to take part in a dream that he himself is not dreaming, and to be awake in another’s dream is the most horrifying burden — but at the same time he is a favored being, as he can see something, for the sight of which there is only a distant mandate, or there isn’t one at all, this cannot be known, he can see, in any event, the moment of creation of the world, of course all the while understanding nothing of it, how could he even understand anything of it, for if we know nothing about the story of the Alhambra, it does seem indisputable that its creators, let’s call them Yusuf I and Mohammed V, didn’t even know, it was only through their genial stonemasons that they experienced that knowledge, formed by the Greek, the Jewish, the Hindu, the Persian, the Chinese, the Christian, the Syrian, and Egyptian cultures, in enormous unity permeating the emirates and the caliphates, and creating the highly refined civilization of the Arabs; and it may be, as was already mentioned, that it was the two of them although it is also possible — and this was not mentioned earlier — that the construction of the Alhambra originates solely with Yusuf I, in any case it doesn’t matter, what is certain is that if the creator of the Alhambra was solitary, he had something to rely upon, if however both of them took part equally, then they were also not alone many times over, because until that thought, the thought of the Alhambra, could reach Granada, it had to make its way through an enormous cultural space, spanning continents, countries, and epochs, where Mohammed Bin Musa al-Khwarizmi and Yaqub Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi and Abu Ali al-Hussain ibn Abdullah ibn Sina and Omar al-Khayyam and Abul Waleed Mohammed Ibn Rushd lived and created; Bayt al-Hikmah, the renowned academy of Baghdad under the reign of the flourishing caliphate of Abdallah al-Ma’mun Ibn Harun-ar-Rashid was needed; the nearby caliphate of Córdoba was needed as well, and the spirit of Al-Hakam II, that philosophical spirit, which transmitted to the contemplators of the imagined Alhambra, across inspirations that were so Greek, and yet not Greek, Jewish and yet not Jewish, Sufi and yet not Sufi, the splendid captivating argumentations and world-explanations of Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Yahya Al-Zarqali, Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Mohammed ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi, Abu Mohammed Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Sa’id ibn Hazn, and Abu Bekr Muhammed ibn Yahya ibn Badshra, those learned men so sensitive to the mystical and universal veins of thought, although in the first place it is necessary to mention the exceptionally great figure of Arab culture, Abu Zayd’ Abdu ar-Rahman bin Mohammed bin Khaldun, that is Ibn Khaldun should be mentioned, and named yet again, and even then it would still be impossible to make palpable how great his significance was in the genesis of the Alhambra, even if we pronounce his name again and yet again, namely that originally he was born in Tunisia, but, in an important period in his life, this genius who had returned as one of the followers of Mohammed V became, in al-Andalus, that is, in its center, Granada, the advisor to the sultan, and it is very likely, but not demonstrable, that he had a fateful influence upon Mohammed V, who perhaps continued to build, or was starting to build, the Alhambra on the basis of these inspirations; if it were not the case that it was Yusuf I alone, and not the two of them together, and if just Mohammed V himself were alone the creator of the Alhambra, then Ibn Khaldun as the lion of the Arab spirit truly sufficed, or could have sufficed to persuade the sultan to build such a universal masterpiece, such a monument to the contemplation of universal mysticism, as is the Alhambra, and not just to persuade him, but also to grant the most essential information and spiritual assistance necessary for the creation of such a structure, so that, well, it cannot be excluded — hypothetically, but not demonstrably, because nothing here indicates that the role of Ibn Khaldun in the creation of the Alhambra was much more than we think it was today, but by then one has already gone beyond the Sala de las Dos Hermanas, the Mirador de la Daraxa, and the Sala de los Abencerrajes and their wordless enchantment, and his attention begins to be concentrated on one single aspect of the Alhambra, that is to say he begins to examine the