The Aljafería Palace (; , tr. Qaṣr al-Jaʿfariyah) is a fortified medieval palace built during the second half of the 11th century in the Taifa of Zaragoza in Al-Andalus, present day Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. It was the residence of the Arab Banu Hud dynasty during the era of Abu Jaffar Al-Muqtadir. The palace reflects the splendor attained by the Taifa of Zaragoza at its height. It currently houses the Cortes (regional parliament) of the autonomous community of Aragon.
The structure is the only conserved large example of Spanish Islamic architecture from the era of the taifas (independent kingdoms). The Aljafería, along with the Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba and the Alhambra, are the three best examples of Hispano-Muslim architecture and have special legal protection. In 2001, the original restored structures of the Aljafería were included in the Mudéjar Architecture of Aragon, a World Heritage Site.
The style of ornamentation of the Aljafería, such as the use of mixtilinear arches and springers, the extension of arabesques over a large area, and the schematisation and progressive abstraction of the yeserias of a vegetal nature, strongly influenced Almoravid and Almohad art in the Iberian Peninsula. The shift in decoration towards more geometric motifs is at the basis of Nasrid art.
After the reconquest of Zaragoza in 1118 by Alfonso I of Aragón, it became the residence of the Christian kings of the Kingdom of Aragón. It was used as a royal residence by Peter IV of Aragón (1319–1387) and, in 1492, it was converted into the palace of the Catholic Monarchs. In 1593 it underwent another restructuring that would turn it into a military fortress, first according to Renaissance designs (which today can be seen in its surroundings, moat, and gardens) and later for quartering military regiments. It underwent further restructuring and damage, especially with the Sieges of Zaragoza of the Peninsular War, until it was finally restored in the 20th century.
The palace was built outside Zaragoza's Roman walls, in the plain of the saría. With urban expansion over the centuries, it is now inside the city.
Troubadour Tower
The oldest component of the Aljafería is today known as the Troubadour Tower. The tower received this name from Antonio Garcia Gutierrez’s 1836 romantic drama The Troubadour, based largely at the palace. This drama became the libretto for Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il trovatore.
The tower is a defensive structure, with a quadrangular base and five levels which date back to the end of the 9th century, in the reign of the first Banu Tujib, Muhammad Alanqur, who was appointed by Muhammad I of Córdoba, Emir of Córdoba. According to Cabañero Subiza, the tower was built in the second half of the 10th century.Cabañero Subiza (1998), p. 84. Its lower part has vestiges of the beginning of the heavy walls of alabaster ashlar bond masonry, and continues upwards with a plank lining of simple plaster and lime concrete, a lighter substance for reaching greater heights. The exterior does not reflect the division of the five internal floors and appears as an enormous prism, broken by narrow embrasures. Access to the interior was through a small, elevated door that was only reachable with a portable ladder. Its initial function was military.
The first level conserves the 9th-century building structure with two separate naves and six sections separated by two cruciform pillars and divided by lowered horseshoe arcs. In spite of their simplicity, they form a balanced space and could be used as baths.
The second floor repeats the same spatial scheme as the first and contains the remains of 11th century Muslim masonry. There is evidence that in the 14th century something similar happened to the appearance of the last two floors, of Mudéjar style, whose construction was due to the construction of the palace of Peter IV of Aragon, which is connected with the Tower of the Troubadour by a corridor, and would have been used as a keep. The arches of these structures already reflect its Christian structure, because they are slightly pointed and support flat wooden roofs.
Its function in the 9th and 10th centuries was as a watchtower and defensive bastion. It was surrounded by a moat. It was later integrated by the Banu Hud family in the construction of the castle-palace of the Aljafería, constituting one of the towers of the defensive framework of the outside north wall. During the Spanish Reconquista, it continued being used as a keep and in 1486 became a dungeon of the Inquisition. As a tower-prison it was also used in the 18th and 19th centuries, as demonstrated by the numerous graffiti inscribed there by the inmates.
Moorish Taifal palace
The construction of the palace, mostly completed between 1065 and 1081,Bernabé Cabañero Subiza, op. cit., 1998, page 87. was ordered by Abú Ja'far Ahmad ibn Sulaymán al-Muqtadir Billah, known by his honorary title of al-Muqtadir (the powerful), the second monarch of the Banu Hud dynasty, as a symbol of the power achieved by the Taifa of Zaragoza in the second half of the 11th century. The Emir himself called his palace "Qasr al-Surur" (Palace of Joy) and the throne room in which he presided over receptions and embassies "Maylis al-Dahab" (Golden Hall) as is testified in the following verses written by the Emir:
The name Aljafería is first documented in a text by Al-Yazzar as-Saraqusti (active between 1085 and 1100) – which also gives the name of the architect of the Taifal palace, the Slav Al-Halifa Zuhayr – and another from Ibn 'Idhari of 1109, as a derivation from the pre-name of Al-Muqtadir, Abu Ya'far, and "Ya'far", "Al-Yafariyya", which evolved to "Aliafaria" and from there to "Aljafería".
The general layout of the palace follows the archetype of desert castles in Syria and Jordan from the first half of the 8th century (such as Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi,Image of the of Syria. Msatta, Khirbat al-Mafjar, and, from the early Abbasid era, the al-Ukhaidir Fortress). These castles were square with ultrasemicircular towers and a central tripartite space, creating three rectangular spaces, with the central one having a courtyard with pools and, at the northern and southern ends, the palace living quarters.
The Aljafería follows this model, with the section for the nobility in the central segment of the square, although the alignment of the sides of this plan is irregular. It is the central rectangle that houses the palatial buildings, organized around a courtyard with cisterns in front of the north and south porticos containing the royal rooms and saloons.
At the north and south ends are the porticos and living quarters. The north end was more important, as it was endowed with a second floor and greater depth, and was preceded by an open and profusely decorated column wall that stretched across two pavilions on its flanks and served as a theatrical porch to the throne room (the "golden hall" of the verses of Al-Muqtadir). It produced a set of architectural spaces, beginning with the perpendicular corridors of the ends emphasized by the height of the second floor, and ended with the Troubadour Tower looming in the background from the perspective of a spectator in the courtyard. All this, reflected also in the cistern, enhanced the royal area, which is corroborated by the presence at the eastern end of the northern border of a small private mosque with a mihrab.
In the center of the northern wall of the interior of the Golden Hall was a blind arch – where the king stood – with a traditional geometric pattern imitating the latticework of the mihrab façade of the Mosque of Córdoba, the building which it sought to emulate. In this way, from the courtyard, it appeared half-hidden by the columns of both the archway leading to the Golden Hall and those of the immediate portico, which gave an appearance of latticework and an illusion of depth, lending splendor to the figure of the monarch.
At the end of the 11th century, all the vegetal, geometric, and epigraphic reliefs were given polychrome decorations with predominately red and blue backgrounds and gold reliefs. Together with the soffits in alabaster with epigraphic decoration and the floors of white marble, it gave the whole a magnificent aspect.
The various changes to the Aljafería have removed many of the 11th century stuccos and, with the construction of the palace of the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, the entire second floor, which broke the ends of the Taifal arches. In the current restoration, the original arabesques are darker than the reconstructed decorations in white, smooth plaster. The structure of the arches, however, remains undamaged.
The decoration of the walls of the Golden Hall has disappeared for the most part, although remains are preserved in the Zaragoza Museum and in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. Francisco Íñiguez began its restoration, restoring the decorations that existed in its places of origin and extracting complete casts of the arcades of the south portico.
North side halls
Along the north wall is the most important complex of buildings built in the Banu Hud period, including the Throne Room or Golden Hall and the small private mosque, located on the eastern side of the access portico that serves as an antechamber to the oratory. In its interior, it houses a mihrab in the southeast corner, oriented in the direction of Mecca, as in all mosques except the one of Córdoba.
The floors of the royal rooms were marble with an alabaster plinth. The capitals were alabaster, except some that reused marble of the Caliphate period. These rooms were surrounded by a band of epigraphic decoration with Kufic characters reproducing Quran surahs that alluded to the symbolic meaning of the ornamentation. The surahs corresponding to these inscriptions have been deduced from the surviving fragments.
In two of these calligraphic reliefs can be found the name of al-Muqtadir, which date the first phase of construction of the palace to between 1065 and 1080. They say "This [the Aljafería] was ordered by Ahmed al-Muqtadir Billáh".
Golden Hall
The Golden Hall had at its east and west ends two private bedrooms, possibly for royal use. Today the bedroom on the western flank has been lost, but it was used as a royal bedroom and also used by the Aragonese kings until the 14th century.
Most of the arabesque yeserias that covered the walls, as well as an alabaster base two and a half metres high and the white marble floors of the original palace, have been lost. The remains that have been preserved, both in museums and the few that are in the royal hall, nevertheless allow a reconstruction of the ornate, polychrome decoration.
Ceilings and wood carvings reproduced the sky, and the whole room was an image of the cosmos, clothed with symbols of the power exercised over the celestial universe by the monarch of Saragossa, who thus appeared as heir to the caliphs.
Access to the Golden Hall is through a wall with three openings. The very large central opening consists of five double marble columns with stylized Islamic alabaster capitals that support four mixtilinear arches, between which are other simpler horseshoe shapes.
Entrance portico to the Golden Hall
Towards the south, another structure of similar size, but shallower, is connected to the courtyard by a portico of great multilobed arches. Again there is a tripartite space; the east and west ends extend perpendicularly with two lateral galleries that are accessed by wide polyhedral lobes and end in separate pointed, multilobed arches whose alfiz is decorated by complex lacing and arabesque reliefs.
In addition, all the ornamentation of yeserias of the palace was polychrome in shades of blue and red in the back and gold in the arabesques. Among the filigrees is the representation of a bird, an unusual zoomorphic figure in Islamic art that could represent a pigeon, a pheasant, or a symbol of the king as winged being.