habitable spaces Andalusian house is organized around a courtyard, usually landscaped, which is the "dejennat", "pharadaisos" or paradise of the House, where the life of believer as a premonition of the celestial paradise.
Medina Azahara
Palatine City of Medina Azahara (936-976) . General plan showing the gardens.
Palatine City of Medina Azahara (936-976) . Oriental Plant Garden.
Palatine City of Medina Azahara (936-976) . Longitudinal sections Oriental Garden.
Palatine City of Medina Azahara (936-976) . Cross sections of the East Garden.
Palatine City of Medina Azahara (936-976) . Aerial view of East Garden.
This is the model garden called cruise home Iranian. So was the garden planted by his own hands by Cyrus the Younger, the great Persian warrior prince in Sardis, as we move Xenophon. Archaeologisque excavated by the Deutsche Institut, Sardis garden is presented as the oldest known cruise gardens.
general outline of the garden of Sardis (now Turkey sixth century BC)
When Islam came late in the reign of Hisham I, the last Umayyad caliph, in his palace Ruzafa in Syria. But the Abbasid caliphate several courtyards were carved in the same type Balkuwara palaces in Samarra. The grandson of Hisham I, young Abd al-Rahman I, having emigrated to Western lands, copied Ruzafa palace and garden on the edge of the Sierra de Córdoba. Today identifiable photogrammetric Turruñuelo the current farmhouse, and was the model of the multiple gardens Hispano cruise.
Garden Scheme Hixem I cruise in Rezafa , Syria (s. VII)
Medina Azahara At the same anastylosis excavated and made a garden, known as the Prince or Alberquilla, and is the most perfect model of what will be, then Andalusian homes in later centuries. The courtyard, slightly elongated, has two separate sides walls. In its two smaller sides rise two pavilions, located west and Outgoing.
Palatine City Medina Azahara (936-976) . Patio Plant of the Alberquilla. 
Palatine City of Medina Azahara (936-976) . Courtyard View Alberquilla. These facilities consist of a long hall with bedrooms path side, some fictional, and preceded by a porch, enclosed by a triple gate horseshoe arches on two columns, very alfiz, and large sheets of woodworking lathe quicialeras stone paths. The double portico evolved into an image, more and more transparent, more airy galleries and the entire width of the yard and moved the leaves for wood interior doors lounge access.
Thus we find in the Alfajería, where the north gate proceeds in two pavilions embracing the garden side pool. On the other hand, the gallery is the most complex of interlocking decorative arches invented by Islam Andalusi result of the popularization and baroque that affected the English art of the Caliphate in its evolution under the Taifa. Pools, beds, ditches or small water estuaries, complete the description of paradise in this plastic gardens.
This art Almoravid expanded in time, missing both the palaces of Marrakech, such as those built by Ibn Mardanix in their gardens of Murcia, as Castillejo de Monteagudo, lookout towers after their classrooms, arranged in nuclei assembled around a cruciform garden without frames, but with two flags in its longest axis.
There were also gardens where the water was fictitious, feigned with polished marble floors of dark, which reflected the architectural elevations. Evoke the palace built by Solomon for the Queen of Sheba to discover the secret of feet hidden by clothing, and the gossips said that crowbars were denouncing his diabolical origin.
of Almohad Seville preserved fortress two courtyards transcendental, the del Yeso, Almohad interpretation of the Dar al-Jund of Medina Azahara, initiatically incorporating the "tsebka" or lattice openwork cast drawing diamonds, geometric result of taking "ad infinitum" the Caliphate intersecting arches of the Mosque of Cordoba. From here comes this absolutely emblematic issue of Andalusian art.
The other courtyard is the House of Trade. Both are the work of Ali al-Gumari, auto Sevillana famous Giralda, the minaret of the Almohad mosque, whose architectural composition derived from these yards, the second of which I dug and I could rebuild in the decade of the seventies. ;
Real Alcázar de Sevilla. Almohad palace of the House of Trade, elevation of the northern gateway to the Almohad period.
El Patio del Yeso model, and the development of safe and secure Toledo Mudejar Moorish led to the formula, which had two stages. In the first dynasty of Granada, Almohad tradition continued support theory brick square. But Ismael, the usurper, was replacing the porch support columns Generalife white marble quarries Macael left open to the subtleties of Moorish art, and no longer ever be closed.
Myrtle Yard centering Comares room or Dynasty Official Palace is perfect in size, quality and classic double patio porch that served as the basis for domestic paradise of English Islam . This court, initiated by Yusuf I and completed by Muhammad V, was an insurmountable goal. The Sultan himself an architect, build a new palace for newest roads, the palace of Riyadh, or Happy Garden, around the source of the Lions of old Judaic tradition.
Don Pedro I de Castilla Lord and protector of Muhammad V had built his Moorish palace in Seville around a peristyle courtyard, which we call "of the Maidens." The Christian world was kept there theory Peristyles classic, and the Moorish king was guest, in his exile, the palace Sevillano. There conceived the Court of Lions, where the best art synthesized with Mudejar Moorish and Gothic interiors, returning to the idea of \u200b\u200bperistyle courtyard but almost breaking his rhythm unit of the Christian model, only broken by the central arch of greater light and elevation, as in the Patio del Yeso, playing a sophisticated change of axes, bows changes prototypes, duplications of columns, and the essential presence of its two pavilions on the shorter sides and the ingenious penthouses its transverse axis.
Alcázar of Sevilla. Longitudinal section of the Patio of the Maidens at the Palace of Pedro I (1356-1366).
Alcázar of Sevilla. Longitudinal section of the Patio of the Maidens at the Palace of Pedro I (1356-1366). 
Lecture by D. Rafael Manzano Martos on November 17, 2010 at the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, USA.
