The Sights of Granada (Some of Them)

The first week of classes was an Introduction to Islamic Law conducted by John Makdisi of St. Thomas School of Law. Since it was an introductory course we spent a fair amount of the first two days learning about the origin of Islam from a historical and socio-economic perspective and the basic tenants of the religion. The text we used for this portion of the class was Karen Armstrong's Islam: A Short History.For the last two days of the course we learned about the sources of Islamic law and some basics regarding the treatment of Contracts and Property as well as the various schools of legal thought.

During this week we also were given the opportunity to take a guided walking tour of Granada. Granada is an extremely beautiful city with many wonderful buildings and views. I don't know if any of my pictures can do it justice, but here goes...

One of our first stops was at a building that served as a government building during the Moorish occupation of Granada. As a result of this time there are lots of Arab influences in the the architecture and decorations of the city. Although the picture isn't a close up, the ceiling in the entryway has beautiful and ornate Arabic script carved into the stone that I've been told is the 99-attributes of Allah. Although, that information did come with a disclaimer that it was a decorative script so the reader couldn't be 100% sure that is what it was.

Most of the class decided to go on the tour, so this is a picture of them hanging out listening to the tour guide in the plaza in front of the Cathedral. The Cathedral used to be the mosque, but when the Moors were driven out of Granada it was "reclaimed" as a Catholic cathedral by the addition of a story and converting the minarets into bell towers. Later in my trip I found out that there is a street dance in this plaza almost every Saturday night during the summer. But during the tour we had to content ourselves with some of the street performers that set up all over Granada.
Around the corner is the seminary and a wall with graffiti that is 400 years old. The tour guide told us that when the doctoral students were finally awarded their Ph.D.s they would paint on the walls their names and general a blessing to Mary or thanks to God (this was after the Catholics reclaimed Granada). The paint they used was a mixture of the red clay found in the area and wolf's blood. It looks nothing like any modern graffiti that I've seen, but it is still interesting to see because of the way it documents the passage of people in a place.

So there were lots of cools buildings. I have a thing for palm tress, so here are gratuitous palm trees plus a cool random building from the tour. We were also able to see the Alhambra from afar.


The view of the Alhambra from the Albaycin is amazing. Wandering around the narrow, and steep, streets you would randomly come out and have a view of the Alhambra. It's an even prettier sight at night.