Alarife

The Spanish terms n° 1 and 4 are borrowed from Arabic while n° 2, 3 and 5 seems to be calques.

These similarities between the two traditions are likely the result of Andalusi Arabic influences (there are few other examples like these).

From Spanish treatise by López de Arenas (17th c.):
Candillijo "little oil lamp"
Zafate harpado "harpoon-shaped Safat"
Almendrilla "little almond"
Zafate "tray"
Calle "alleyway"

Moroccan names for the same shapes:
Qandīl "oil lamp"
Ṣfeṭ l-Ḥarba "spear-shaped Sfet"
Lūza "almond"
Ṣfeṭ
Zqāq "alleyway"

The broken horseshoe arch, the decorative motifs, the Hafsid-style capitals (pic 3), and the Andalusi ones (pic 4) in addition to portal's style were otherwise of local tradition.

Mīḍaʔat As-Sulṭān "the Sultan's ablution pavilion" in Tunis b. in 1450 to serve the believers in their washing ritual before prayers.

The monument’s marble paneling and two-tone decoration reflect Egyptian influences, which had already begun to spread into the Eastern Maghreb by the late 14th c.

The artists' use of color, in this case to amplify certain traits, was a way to visually communicate their identity as Granadan Muslims. In another scene, men dressed in the Castilian fashion, with some of them turbaned, were shown with varying skin tones to distinguish them from the Old Christians.

This contrasts with their N. African counterparts, who until more recent times wore a similar veil, usually in white or beige. Indeed, visual and written sources indicate that although Granadan women did use a range of colors for their veils, white remained the most common.

Pic: Tangier, c. 1880.

A low-relief carving from the altarpiece of the Royal Chapel of Granada, finished in 1522, depicts the baptism of Granadan women c. 1499–1501. The women are wearing veils (Melḥafa) in white, red, pink, green, purple, and light brown, all edged with a golden border.

This peculiarity is also attested in other non-poetic inscriptions of the period.

But what's so "incomparable" about this fountain exactly? Well, it *was* the ceramic decoration with its vivid colors, that was almost exclusively found in wealthy estates or royally sponsored projects in the 14th C.

Aside from the word al-Muʔaṯṯal, the hamza (ء) representing the glottal stop is omitted throughout the text, and in al-Badāyiʕ, it is replaced with a y- (ي) for the palatal approximant. These dialectal features were introduced in an otherwise classical poem to improve its readability to the masses.

The meter is off in the third couplet (lines 5 and 6 in the trans.). On the left side, green tiles with a different script from the original dark ones indicate repairs that likely replaced fallen parts and completed the missing text. However, these repairs only recovered the rhyme of this couplet.

The poem consists of three couplets. The first half is written in the first-person singular, presenting the fountain as the speaker. This poetry style, where objects or buildings "speak" through inscription, was common in the western parts of the Maghreb between the 13th and 16th centuries.

A fountain in the Chrabliyine district from the second quarter of the 14th C. in Fez, Morocco.

Above it, an inscription of a poem, written on tiles using the sgraffito technique, where parts of the glazed surface are scratched away to create a two-tone design.

According to 13th-century historian Ibn Idhari, in 965 CE the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II Phokas sent a mosaic craftsman and about 1,600 kg of tesserae to Caliph al-Ḥakam II, who wanted to replicate in Córdoba what his ancestors had done in the Mosque of Damascus (pictured below).

Byzantine glass mosaic above the 10th century mihrab (a niche indicating the direction of prayer) of the Great Mosque of Córdoba, now a cathedral.

It is interesting that such a visually striking decoration was never reemployed in any other monument in Iberia or in North Africa.

This poem, composed by the diplomat and advisor 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn al-Arqam (d. before 1091 CE), describes a green banner with a white band that was raised above the king of Almeria, al-Mu'tasim Ibn Sumadih (r. 1051-1091 CE). The poem is one of the oldest written descriptions of a European flag.

A wing of bliss was spread over you,
A green [banner] that turned the morning [light] into a sash;
It flutters like the beating heart of whoever opposes you,
Striking the souls whichever way it unfurls;
Assuring you fortune with a triumphant bearing,
So look forth to the preeminent omen of success.

By themselves, these details would be anomalies, but together they strongly suggest a forgery. Whoever made these doors was unfamiliar with Nasrid art and probably relied on ornament books to mimic the aesthetic.

The boors were sold for £223,750 (£414,820 today, adjusted for inflation).

The spacing between the two bands is wider than expected, going against convention. The bands are also meant to continue crisscrossing, even at the edges.

A closer inspection would almost certainly reveal additional details such as types of nails, pigments, assembly joints, wood types, etc.

The top parts don’t seem to have been truncated but rather created as they are now. Additionally, the pattern used in this piece, to my knowledge, was never used by carpenters. Even in other trades, it was short-lived in Nasrid artistic repertoire, appearing only in the last quarter of the 13th c.

The spacing between the two bands is wider than expected, going against convention. The bands are also meant to continue crisscrossing, even at the edges.

A closer inspection would almost certainly reveal additional details such as types of nails, pigments, assembly joints, wood types, etc.

Iberian and N. African carpenters cut notches on both sides of wooden bands, allowing other bands to be inserted into them, forming a double-grooved frame around the geometric shapes (pics). The technique was universally used during the period for this type of decoration, but not here.

In 2000, Christie's auction house sold two truncated wooden doors, alleged to be Nasrid-made from the 14th century.

Despite the low-quality picture, the inconsistencies make me confident these doors are forgeries, possibly made during the 19th century.

For clarification, palaces in Al-Andalus had a formal name used in high register (official documents, poetry, inscriptions) and another for low register. Here, the formal name was Dār al-Mulk, "Palace of Sovereignty," while (supposedly) Kumāriṣ was the dialectal one, which later passed into Spanish.

in words such as ʔAbyāḍ "white” and Ǧawāz “walnut;” and depharyngealization in the shift from /dˤ/ to /d/ in Muḫadar "greenish.”

The text highlights several features of Andalusi Arabic that are also found in other Maghrebi dialects in general, and more specifically in urban varieties. These include contraction, as in Ṯamāniyata ʕašar becoming Ṯamantaʕašar; vowel lengthening...

On line 6°, Rodríguez reads خوتم as Ḫutm "finisher," but I believe it’s Ḫawatim (w/ vowel shortening), pl. of Ḫātam "seal." In Morocco, Ḫātam is used to describe polygonal stars, e.g., Ḫātam Tnāšrī "12-pointed star." The word in this sense is also attested in at least one other medieval text.

On line 3°, the term اسفاط حجميه is ambiguous. Rodríguez interprets it as hexagonal pieces "of the relief." Alternatively, it could mean "pointed" or "protruding" ones.

On lines 1° and 3°, the plural form Aṣfāṭ اصفط from Safaṭ, meaning "basket" or "tray." The term was borrowed into Spanish as Zafate or Azafate (the latter with an assimilated definite article -al) and into Moroccan Arabic as Ṣfaṭ, pl. Ṣfāṭ. In both cases, it is used for an irregular hexagonal piece

The text is thought to be a color key used by artisan-painters who worked on the dome to know which color went where. While the Arabist Cabanelas Rodríguez argued that it served as a key to the entire dome, it was more likely limited to just a section of it given its brevity.

On the bottom of the piece, a word is written vertically in careful calligraphy. Cabanelas reads it as Maqʕad مقعد, meaning "seat," potentially indicating "reverse" (I could only read ـعد).