Moorish Architecture

Moorish architecture is the Islamic building style of Al-Andalus, the Muslim ruled regions of the Iberian Peninsula, and of the Maghreb in North Africa, developed from the eighth through the fifteenth centuries. It is distinguished by the horseshoe arch, an arch that curves inward past a full semicircle before closing, and by dense, intricate surface ornament built from repeating geometric patterns, stylized vegetal arabesque and carved calligraphy, largely in place of the figural imagery avoided in Islamic religious art. A signature structural feature is the muqarnas, a form of stalactite like vaulting built from tiers of small nested niches that create a richly textured, three dimensional ceiling or squinch, often used to transition visually from a square chamber to a dome above it. The style's two most celebrated surviving monuments are the Great Mosque of Cordoba, begun in 785 under the emir Abd al-Rahman I and famous for its forest of double tiered horseshoe arches in alternating red and white voussoirs, and the Alhambra palace and fortress complex in Granada, built primarily in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries under the Nasrid dynasty, whose courtyards, reflecting pools and muqarnas ceilings represent the style's late, most refined phase before the fall of Granada in 1492.