The Alhambra

Purchased some twenty years ago on a Spanish holiday and finally read! This 1832 volume follows the American author's visit to and residence in the ruined Alhambra; a time long before the current legions of tourists, when he could ramble about and pick where he lodged! He's a good writer and combines a largely descriptive first third - picturing the palace, its environs and the colourful characters encountered there - with traditional fairy tales and a bit of history.

This was the book that cemented the Alhambra's romantic reputation in the minds of the Anglophone reading public. Based on Irving's three-month stay in the palace in 1829, Tales of the Alhambra is presented as a series of traveloguish essays and historical sketches, although they really have more to do with his grand ideas about lost Moorish glories than any realities of medieval Andalusia. Irving finds it impossible to

contemplate this once favourite abode of Oriental manners without feeling the early associations of Arabian romance, and almost expecting to see the white arm of some mysterious princess beckoning from the balcony or some dark eye sparkling through the lattice. The abode of beauty is here, as if it had been inhabited but show more yesterday…

Crucial to this ‘Moslem elysium’ is the fact that it's in ruins (otherwise, presumably, he'd have been writing about contemporary Islamic cities). The crumbling stonework and chipped stucco allow Irving to view the Alhambra as a potent symbol of ‘that mutability which is the irrevocable lot of man and all his works’.

Such is the Alhambra—a Moslem pile in the midst of a Christian land, an Oriental palace amidst the Gothic edifices of the West, an elegant memento of a brave, intelligent, and graceful people who conquered, ruled and passed away.

The stories Irving tells are a mixture of traveller's anecdotes about the Spaniards he encountered during his stay at the Alhambra, and legends about the palace's original Moorish inhabitants. Robert Irwin, in The Alhambra, suspects that many of the former were fabricated in the service of Irving's grandstanding, but the latter are quite interesting if you like fairy-stories and folklore as a genre. Most of them involve djinns, spectral warriors, sequestered princesses and that sort of thing, and in these crypto-mythical tales Irving's rather over-egged prose style is shown to its best effect.

If an imagined and mostly fictional Moorish past is one subject of the book, ‘present-day’ Spain, as the site of this glorious history, is a close second. Thanks to its lost Muslim overlords, Spanish culture and people, Irving suggests, ‘have something of the Arabian character’ to them. Consequently, as one of his fantastic characters relates,

all Spain is a country under the power of enchantment. There is not a mountain cave, not a lonely watch-tower in the plains nor ruined castle on the hills, but has some spellbound warriors sleeping from age to age within its vaults, until the sins are expiated for which Allah permitted the dominion to pass for a time out of the hands of the faithful.

This is quite good fun if you like this sort of thing (I do), but it is probably of minor interest to those who are not planning a visit to the actual place themselves. This particular edition is one of at least three that are sold in gift-shops within the Alhambra grounds; it's clearly been converted from a Spanish edition, as there are several odd typos and all the speech is given in guillemets. The editorial notes do not inspire confidence (on the first page, Scottish artist David Wilkie is glossed as an ‘English painter’), but then again, I found in a weird way that it added to the pleasingly alien effect of the whole ensemble. show less

Irving published this collection in 1832, some time after traveling to Spain and being an actual resident of the Alhambra for several months. Enchanting, dream-like, and with a timeless quality, Irving writes so beautifully and seamlessly in a collection of essays, stories, and legends about the Moors in Granada, that form this travelogue. I have never read anything like it which seemed to put me in a kind of wondrous spell each time i sat down to read. The book first took its hold of me when i was in Granada myself just a few weeks back opening the book for the first time seated on a bench under the shadow of the walls of the Alhambra. Being where I was, i felt i was inside the book and was also a spectator of the images and events so show more vividly described. The feeling just lingered till the last page --- the prose is that magical. show less

I greatly enjoyed Irving's musings on life in & around the Alhambra. I'm so jealous that he actually got to *stay* there in 1829! Even though I visited the Alhambra more than 160 years after Irving did, many of his descriptions & impressions seem spot-on from when I visited it many years ago.

This book is a mix of his thoughts & observations, as well as various recountings of fables & tales he was told during his time there. Many of the folktales center around the time when Granada was under Arabic rule &/or tales of Boabdil (Muhammed XII of Granada) & his people existing in a frozen/enchanted state in the mountains under the Alhambra. I enjoyed Irving's non-fiction writings better than his recountings of the various fables (there was a show more certain amount of repetition among some of the tales). Recommended for those who enjoy travel-related lit & especially if you have an interest in Spain &/or the Alhambra. show less

A perfect little travel book about a marvel of humanity, the Alhambra in Spain, written by the perfect man for the job: An open-minded American writer, familiar with the tradition of German fairy tales and schooled in Spanish history, who combines the fresh look and inquisitiveness of the outsider with a deep local knowledge of having lived for an extended time in Spain and for some months in the palace himself.

Before enchanting the reader with tales of love, treasure, knights and princesses, Irving presents a nuanced picture of the country, the city, its people and the palace (in its then sorry state). The tales are a wonderful amalgam of Christian morality, Arab lore and local mysteries. Sometimes. a tale's resolution is too show more prolonged for modern readers, partially compensated by its charming vignettes.

This edition, printed in Spain, includes a complementing set of gorgeous photographs of the Alhambra. Future editions might benefit from a map of the Alhambra for convenience. show less

This had three layers for me, the first layer was some sweet stories told in a folkloric way, almost as if they came out of the translations of the 1001 nights, told of a time when both Muslim and Christian lived in varying degrees of peace and war in Spain. Centered around the Alhambra. I have an ambition to some day visit the Alhambra and this made that ambition more marked.

The second layer was a wistfulness for the past, a wishing for a simpler time, a fairytale othertime when things were simpler and less fraught by modern issues. The illustrations, by Theaker and nameless others, were sweet but didn't always mesh all that well with the text.

The third layer is as a historian, the occasional judgements on people and in particular show more women, show the attitudes of Irving himself up, and his time, which was also interesting, if occasionally jarring.

Overall it's an interesting collection of stories, worth reading, evocative of both a time that never was and Irving's own desires. show less

A friend suggested this book before a holiday trip to Andalusia. I'm very grateful for the referral - the book gave me some very useful background to the Alhambra itself, and to the broad history that led up to this amazing site.
Irving lived in the Alhambra for several months (!!) during 19th century travels through Spain. The Alhambra was reasonably well known, especially in Spain, but not well maintained. Irving's book made the site more widely known around the world, and lplayed a significant role in the site finally being cared for and restored by the Spanish authorities. Thank you Washington!
I was also pleased to see that Irving was not duped by the accepted story of Boabdil's sins and failures. The historical records is far more show more nuanced than the scuttlebutt that tagged Boabdil as an incompetent and cruel despot who got what he desreved. show less