Places and Spots in the Alhambra: Mirador de Daraxa (Alhambra)

Mirador de Daraxa (Alhambra)

Short description of the monument

The “Mirador” is the part of the “Dos Hermanas” Hall that has views of the garden. Here several painters, poets and architects worked for hours. From here the whole city of Granada can be seen. Its dimensions are: 15 feet by 10 feet and has three high windows. It is decorated and adorned with verses, and the eyes go to the details of the room’s dome. There are three main figures, characteristic of the Moslem architecture, the right-angled triangle, the rectangle and the isosceles triangle.

History of the monument

From the “Ajimeces” hall we enter the “Mirador” with a pointed arch decorated with “muqarbas”, where another poem is carved on its doorjambs along with a socle of black, white and yellow tiles, beautiful for its fine ornaments. The floor is also covered by tiles, although it is very deteriorated.

This “Mirador” is also called “Lindaraja”, which comes from “Ayun Dar Aisa” (the eyes of the Aisa house). This “Mirador” was restored by “Rafael Contreras” between 1879 and 1880, and 1883 and 1884.

The inside of the “Mirador” has a rectangular shape, with two lateral arches and a double arch in front of the entrance facing the “Daraxa” courtyard, closed by the three rooms of Carlos V. over the windows “muqarbas” pointed arches are placed, with inscriptions of praise to God, to Mohamed V and with poems.

On the right (Ibn Zamrak, translated by “Emilio García Gómez”):

All art has offered me its beauty,
giving me perfections and splendours.
Who sees me, imagines me all the time
giving to ibriq what he desires to have.
To whom looks and meditates, he denies
the visual perception of his thought,
since I am so diaphane, that he sees the moon
happy, place in me like a halo.

On the left:
I am not alone: his created such a prodigy
my garden, another one like it eyes never saw:
a glass floor that who looks at it
thinks of it frightful sea, and it scares him.
All this is by imam Ben Nasar
(¡that the its honour the Lord keeps amongst kings!)
his family won glory of old
Because he gave asylum the Prophet and his people.

The “Mirador” is covered by a wooden-work ceiling with original glass of the “nazarie” period:
<> reads the poem of this “Mirador”. When the courtyard bellow was not closed, you could contemplate the Albayzín sitting down against the window sill.

To such an extreme I get with my delights
That in the sky the stars imitate them.

According to” Rafael Pérez Gómez”, the Alhambra is the only place where the Arab geometricians and tricksters represented each one of the 17 flat crystallographic groups, defined by the Russian “Fedorov”. But at the “Mirador” of Daraxa artisans made a “geometric trick”: they built on the ceramic socle a polygon with nine sides, tracing which is impossible to get with a rule and a compass, instruments used by them.

Bibliography

“Granada en tus manos. Alhambra y Generalife”. Author: Carlos Vílchez Vílchez. Ideal – 2006.

Web sites:

http://www.alhambradegranada.org/historia/alhambraMDaraxa.asp

The Royal Palace

Introduction

Mexuar

Oratory

The Golden Room Courtyard

Golden Room

The Comares Palace

The Arrayanes Courtyard

The Barca Hall

The Comares Tower

The Embajadores Hall

The Lion’s Palace