In the Footsteps of Muhammad

Granada - Monday 5 July, 8 - 8.30pm - Programme 3

Warning: This is a working script, not a transcript, it is for interest only and not reference and it will contain un-corrected material that does not appear in the final programme.

PTC - Medina outside Cordoba

It's the year 929 and Abdul Rahman III has just proclaimed himself caliph and ordered the construction of a new palace here just outside his capital at Cordoba. It's to be a place of extraordinary ostentation complete with solid gold and silver roof tiles and a pool of mercury which could be stirred to create a pleasing reflection. But then the Islamic caliphate of Southern Spain is a medieval superpower - certainly the most powerful regime in Western Europe. The lands controlled by Islam stretch from here to the frontiers of China and the long list of innovations that Islamic culture has brought to Europe includes paper, algebra and a rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy. From here the rest of Europe looks like a benighted and barbarous place. Britain is still plagued by Viking raids and much of Eastern and Northern Europe is still pagan. So what happened? Why did this extraordinary civilisation with its military power, its intellectual vigour and its mercury pools disappear almost completely from Europe?

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The first Muslim armies landed in Spain in 711, only 79 years after the death of Muhammad. What followed is the chapter of our history that tends to get left out of the text books. And it is almost impossible to overstate the impact it had on forming the western world.

Much of the political power in the Islamic empire stayed in the east - in Damascus and then Baghdad. But there was a healthy trade in ideas, and the steady flow of Muslim intellectuals from east to west turned southern Spain - and in particular the city of Cordoba - into a brilliant centre of high culture and innovation.

My guide to Muslim Spain was the historian Robert Irwin - much of its glory has of course disappeared, but he has spent years trying to piece together the clues to what it must once have been, and he's passionate about what he sees.

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Um this was the work of Abdul Rachman the 3rd, the greatest of the Omayyad caliphs in Spain - or indeed the first of the Omayyad caliphs in Spain … he takes the title of Caliph, claiming thereby in theory, leadership of the entire Muslim community. And to mark this, or in parallel with this symbolic gesture, he also decides to build a magnificent new palace some 5 kilometres outside Cordoba. … It's very systematically laid out. It, it cascades down the hill em it, the, the, the top bit which catches the best of the breeze is reserved for the caliph himself and his ministers. … The west side of the top terrace is the royal er residential bit. The further east you go, the more administrative it gets. Then you, if you drop down a level, you come to a garden and game reserve. I think there's probably also an aviary at this point and, and a zoo. Further down yet there are the ordinary people, the artisans and the servants. So there's a kind of hierarchical structure, and the ruler looks down on all he surveys and looks across to Cordoba.
Q: And from what we can see - I mean it's obviously very badly ruined, but bits and pieces are being restored - clearly built to impress.
A: Absolutely. Em there are 2 things a palace is for as far as the Muslims are concerned in Spain. Er firstly a good place to live for a ruler. Er but secondly, and this is really quite seriously important, er these palaces are designed to impress visiting dignitaries er ambassadors from the German empire or the Byzantine empire. And when an em…embassy turns up, they'll get all the treasures out of the royal treasury. They'd spread out all the precious fabrics, they'd get all the star piece - the star piece in this er particular palace was a pearl the size of a pigeon's egg, which would be suspended from the ceiling.
Q: (Laughs) Very impressive. And they had some gadgets too didn't they, that they wheeled out to impress foreigners?
A: Yeah they, they had roaring mechanical lions, they had mechanical singing birds, and the thing I'd most like to see of all is this throne that seems to levitate er, driven by hydraulic power. So when the ambassador enters the audience hall, up rises the caliph.
Q: Bit like a Wurlitzer…
A: (Laughs)
Q: …in an old-fashioned cinema…
A: Yes.
…
A: This is as grand as it gets - certainly as far as em, Muslim Spain is concerned. I, I think the most important thing to realise is that although the Alhambra looks terrific … this palace is far more spectacular, or was far more spectacular.
Q: And that wasn't just ostentation was it? It, it reflected real, political power here in Cordoba?
A: Oh yes. Em Cordoba was one of the capitals…one of the great capital - well it was the greatest capital in the Western world, and probably the greatest city in the western world in the 10th century. Very few cities to rival it. Constantinople and Baghdad.
Q: What was happening here in terms of an intellectual and cultural life at that period?
A: Em, it was, er very rich. Em…there were some very fine poetry produced in this period, and sadly too little of it has been, much too little of it has been translated to English. It's also a great period for mathematics. It's the peak of Muslim mathematics in Spain, the er, this is, this palace is roughly the same time as the lifetime of Mas Lamal Maduriti, who wrote important, an enormous amount of important stuff on mathematics and astronomy and astrology.
Q: So we really are looking here at the, the ruins of a great civilisation?
A: Yes.

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There is of course one great Muslim palace in southern Spain which escaped the fate of Abdal Rhaman's architectural flights of fancy.

The Alhambra, the Red One, still stands on a hill above the city of Granada. Austere and forbidding from the outside, within it is fabulous - fabulous, that is, in the sense that you can well imagine all sorts of improbable events unfolding in its halls and courts.

Much of it is relatively late - 14th and 15th century. It was the administrative headquarters for the sultanate of Granada, so there are barracks and offices within the extended complex. But when you enter those areas which were built for beauty, it is immediately apparent they were created by people with a highly sophisticated idea of the art of living.

Robert Irwin believes it was designed to be enjoyed mainly at night, and he insisted that we make our first visit when the moonlight was reflected in the long pool at the centre of the Court of the Myrtles. We soaked up the stillness for a while before touring a building which he believes has to be read and interpreted as much as admired.

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Q It's certainly got what the tourists might call the 'wow factor' hasn't it?
A Yes…
Q Huge, high walls. It's incredibly intricate decoration on it. What, what's the name of this room?
A It's the Hall of the Ambassadors, and the throne would've been directly in front of us, looking across the Hall of the Ambassadors and out to the pool of the Court of the Myrtles. And, and if one looks up ahead, you've got this extraordinary, elaborate, intricately designed ceiling of (marquetry?). There are 8,017 pieces of wood in that ceiling.
Q (Snort)
A Em and they're, they've been arranged in this…geometric pattern which is theoretically abstract, but in fact symbolises the '7 heavens', as they were understood to be in the Middle Ages, with the sun right at the peak, the centre of the ceiling, and then the descending levels. Em not only does it represent the 7 heavens, but it represents a whole series of 7s which are significant in Islamic thought, particularly the, a philosophical group known as the Brethren of Purity, who argued that the planets were a kind of heavenly representation of the court er down on earth - or vice versa - that the court was an earthly representation of the heavens. So the, the king is the sun, the next planet along is his chief minister, and then there's his scribe, and then there's the maidservant. And they're all represented by different planets or spheres.
Q So the ceiling is, is a, an architectural representation or a decorative representation of a school of philosophy?
A It is. I think it - yes.
Q And, and what period would that have er dated from?
A The school of philosophy is…
Q Indeed, yeah…
A …quite old. I mean it and, and indeed based at the other end of these, well the other side of the Islamic world em the Brethren of Purity flourished in 10th century Basra. But we, they're a very secretive group. We don't know the names of the individual authors. But they produced this enormous encyclopaedia, and um, everybody read it and we know that it was widely read by mathematicians in Spain, and by philosophers in Spain. Most crucially of all, it was read by Muhyi-I-din - ibn-al-Arabi er the most famous Sufi that Spain produced, or indeed one of the most famous Sufis in the history of Islamic mysticism - er, he died in 1240. Er, he absorbed a lot of their ideas and he was in turn read by these ministers of the Nasrid monarch ibn-al-Khratib, and ibn-al-Zamrak, both of whom had strong, mystical tendencies.
Q So what begins as a mystical philosophy…
A Mmm
Q …in what today we'd call southern Iraq…
A Yes
Q …ends up in southern Spain (laughing) as a, as a…
A I think so.
Q …decorative ceiling?
A Yes.
Q That's extraordinary.
A Yes…a lot of what you think is just decoration is actually saying something. I mean y'know, it's saying something about religion and salvation…
Q What's the connection between that ceiling and taking it a step or two further back, and the prophet himself?
A That's quite hard to say. Em…the Brethren of Purity seem to have had rather strange, libertarian ideas about Islam. There are hints that they subscribed to an idea that was a bit more elitist than in the normal Islam. Nevertheless what they were trying to do was, they were trying to preach mathematics as a way of getting people to think about abstraction. And in thinking about abstraction, you're beginning to free yourself from your body. As far as the Brethren of Purity are concerned, what they want to do is escape f…to, to find salvation of the soul through escaping f…from bodily and earthly things. Mathematics is a good way of doing it, 'cos it's so abstract, and so is music. I mean they're very conscious of the relationships between music and mathematics, and there've been a lot of, there is a lot of mathematics embedded in the geometrical designs of the Alhambra and that would've surrounded evening concerts, where music was played, which would've also had f…further discerning in the learned, er a philosophical implication.

Q Would a Muslim of today coming into this room make the connections that you've been talking about between the ideas represented mathematically and in…in design on this ceiling and their religion?
A I doubt that actually. Er the, the Brethren of Purity's 'Rassaille' or encyclopaedia is no longer widely read. Now I, but what they would get um, the ones that are paying attention to what's on the walls, w…would be the, the numerous re…quotations from the Koran in the epigraphy, the…and they'd also pick up on the poetry, which is also embedded in the walls. A lot of that poetry has embedded Koranic references in it. So everywhere one's reminded that God is present, and He's watching, and judgement is coming.

Q And where did the er stress on the importance of mathematics or the, the, the value of mathematics as a way of expressing theological ideas come from? How did that find its way into Islam?
A Well Basra in the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th centuries was a real ferment of a place. Er people came to it from Malaya, from Sumatra, from East Africa, from India - a substantial Jewish colony - and a lot of Greeks. And I think really it's the Greek mathematical tradition that is absorbed by certain Muslim thinkers. It's Pythagoras and Pythagorean ideas about perfect solids and about the underlying harmon…musical harmonies of the universe. So, so it's, it's, it's an infusion of Greek mathematics and philosophy, into Islamic culture. It's something that, it's not just in Basra - it's Baghdad as well. The Abbasid Caliphs create a 'behtal hickmah - a house of wisdom', which has a team of translators working to translate as much as they can of the Greek wisdom. Rather selectively though - they, they don't bother with Homer, they don't bother with plays - why should they bother with this profane entertainment. They, they, they want the serious stuff. They want philosophy, medicine, mathematics.
Q So it's a sort of Renaissance? I mean it's what we would…
A It's, yes…
Q …yes er a r…rediscovery of classical learning - but only a particular…
A Yes
Q …area of it.
A And I'd say that the real fizz of it is in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Q During that period when the er Greek em…er mathematical ideas were being rediscovered by Islamic thinkers and theologians, to what extent were they known about, thought about, talked about in Western Europe?
A During the 9th century?
Q Mm
A Hardly at all. No, I mean the West owes this stuff…not entirely, but to a very large extent, to translation work done in Spain. …
Q So if you're drawing a, I suppose an er…what you might call a family tree of ideas, it, it sort of starts in Ancient Greece…
A Yes…
Q …goes East to Basra and Baghdad…
A Yes…
Q …comes all the way (laughing) across North Africa…
A Yes.
Q …winds up in Spain…
A Yes
Q …and then feeds back into Western Europe.
A Yes. Aristotle comes this way, Euclid comes this way. And that's very exciting and, and then that stops too, em around the 13th century, towards the end of the 13th century…scholastic philosophers and other thinkers in the West stop being so interested in what's coming from the Arabs, and by the time you get to the actual Italian Renaissance of the 15th century, people are saying 'Oh no, no - we can't use these wonky Arab, bad Latin translations and wonky Arab translations of what, God knows what, what it was in Greek. We must try and find the original Greek, and we must try and produce something a bit more elegant as well as more accurate.'

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Dr Eleanor Robson, is a lecturer at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

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Well in some ways the, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad is a bit of a mystery to us, and there's no physical remains surviving. What we have is evidence from historical and literary sources. In some ways, it was an administrative bureau, a bit like the taxation bureau or the Mint, but instead of holding bureaucrats, it was a collection of intellectuals who were working for the state, both translating the works of the Ancient Greek philosophers and scientists, but also reacting to them intellectually, and disseminating that information, first of all to their patron the Caliph, but also to other members of the intellectual community in Baghdad. … Um…whether they were working in a particular building we don't know, or whether this was something that was…that was carried on in people's houses, perhaps we'll, we'll never know.

Q : And what was the motor behind that process? Was it simply intellectual curiosity, or was it utilitarian, or was it indeed religious in its purpose?
A : In some ways it was political as well as religious. The Islamic caliphs at that point believed that Christianity was very irrational, because you couldn't really have three gods in one. And to say that Jesus, who was a human being was a god as well was also irrational. And they also, I think to some extent despised the, the early Christians for their rejection of Ancient Greek, pagan intellectual culture. So the 9th century intellectual movement was about reclaiming the Greek past for Islam, and using the rhetorical power, the argumentative power of science and reason, against Christianity. The idea was that Islam would become the most powerful political and religious movement in the world, not just by the force of its armies, or the force of its belief, but by the sheer power of its intellectual arguments as well.

Q That's a fascinating picture you paint, and one that I suspect will come as a huge surprise to a lot of people listening to this, because certainly a prejudice about Islam today is that it is an unreasoning religion, that it breeds extremism and so forth.
A Mm-hm.
Q But you're painting…
A Yes
Q …a picture of a period when, when, when in fact it was, it was collecting an armoury of logic to fight its cause, and present itself as the reasonable religion.
A Oh completely. And this…Christianity from the 4th century onwards had completely rejected the, the Ancient Greek philosophers and scientists as pagans and, and non believers, and had even driven out the teachers and the scholars from Alexandria and other schools in the Christian world, into the Middle East, into what's now Iraq. And so the Middle East had become a haven for intellectual culture. So at this time in, in the Mediterranean and in Europe, it wasn't just a case of ignorance of the ancient traditions, it was very much a rejection of them …

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The impact of that explosion of intellectual energy has been breathtaking - and I certainly had not realised the extent our debt to those early Muslim thinkers. The contribution of one figure among them especially stands out.

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A: Two very important things that we can't really imagine life today without - the decimal numeration system and algebra. And they can be, both be traced to one man - Muhammad-al-Kharisme, who was in fact from central Asia, but came to Baghdad as this great intellectual centre. … And he wrote 2 very important works, one of which popularised the idea of using the 10 digits that we use today - nul…1 to 9, and zero - which in fact wasn't his invention - Sanskrit mathematicians in northern India had invented this system some time in the 6th century, but wasn't really very well-known yet. But he wrote this lovely book in very simple words, explaining how to use these numerals, and how to do addition and subtraction and fractions, and even multiplication and division. And this was all very new and exciting, because if you think back to the way that Roman numeral system works, how clumsy and awkward that is. And the Greeks had an equally clumsy and awkward system that just used each letter of the alphabet to stand for a number. So the first nine letters of the alphabet were the numbers 1 to 9, the next nine were the numbers 10, 20, 30 to 90 etc. And that meant that calculating with them was very clumsy. And what this very simple er numeral system does - er we don't think about it, it's so efficient, it's so transparent - um is really enable you to write numbers as large as you like, as small as you like, and to do these very complicated um…operations with them very fast and very efficiently, in a way that hadn't really been done at all since the end of Cuneiform writing, which had a very similar system but in base 60 nine centuries before.

Q : Impossible really to think of western science without that system, w…er and indeed er to think of computers without them isn't it?

A: Well absolutely. It's, it's absolutely fundamental. It's impossible to imagine doing almost any aspect of our lives from sort of going to the shops, to turning on the telly, without the decimal number system. And if al-Kharisme hadn't written that book, it may well have just been - especially the system used by mathematicians and astronomers in northern India - I mean and may have died out like other number systems have done in the past.

Q: He also em invented didn't he, algebra and indeed algorithms?

A: Absolutely. Well our word 'algorithm' is a corruption of his name - al-Kharisme - and the word 'algebra' is also er an Arabic word again - his word 'al jabra', which means something like 'completion' - if you remember back to er school algebra, and one of the things you have to do when you have an equation is to balance up the two sides. So if you take something away from er one side, you've got to take it away from the other side too. If you add something to one side of the equation, you have to add it to the other. And this balancing is, is his word 'al jabra'. And so what he does is, he takes very ancient ways of dealing with unknown quantities, that are known in the Middle East, in the Babylonian culture since at least the early 2nd Millennium, and he takes Greek ideas of proof and he puts them together. And he gets this extraordinary, powerful thing. And once again, he's a, not only a great mathematician, he's a marvellous communicator, and he writes this lovely book to the Caliph himself. He says 'I know you're a man of science, I know you're interested in this, and so here's what I'm trying to do in words of one syllable, with lots of examples, so that you can understand. And lots of examples so you can see how useful it is for um working out um, d…dividing up estates for inheritance, for instance and working out all sorts of things to do with land surveying as well.' So he's selling algebra right from the beginning, saying it's not just hard maths, it's also incredibly useful, and that even caliphs need to know about it.

Q: Um if you had to set him aside um more familiar European er figures, what sort of status would you give him? I mean is he an Einstein, a Newton? What, what, what sort of em place does he occupy in the pantheon of great…mathematical and scientific figures?

A : I would put him on a parallel with Newton, where er, not in terms of his scientific discoveries about the natural world, but in terms of his invention of mathematical techniques of explaining the world. Just as we c…without al-Kharisme, Newton wouldn't have been able to invent the calculus, and the calculus and algebra together are these 2 pillars of, of modern mathematics, which it's…which we're completely dependent on. And algebra is as fundamental…to modern mathematics, as Newtonian calculus is.

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There is one of those over-arching questions about the nature of civilisations pushing its way to the surface here, and because of the intense current debate about Islam, trying to answer it is rather more than an intellectual parlour game. Was it just coincidence that all this happened in a Muslim society, or is there something intrinsic to Islam that nurtured it. Dr Azzam Tamimi is the director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London.

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Well in the beginning, the Muslims were only interested in…their book The Koran, and the traditions of the prophets.. How do we understand them, how do we interpret them? Er, initially only the Koran was compiled. The traditions of the prophet, which would explain what the Koran meant had been scattered, and er, the first er, er, I would say between the year '80 to 110 of Islam, of Islamic calendar. The Muslims were so er preoccupied with compiling the traditions and investigating er authentic from non-authentic, because you had to establish this. And the need for this emanated from the er, fact that er many people were inventing traditions, attributing them to the prophet for political ends. And the scholars had to do their homework er, there were probably hundreds of thousands of traditions attributed to the prophet only em, a few thousand were eventually funnelled through er this channel of er authenticity. Then later on as Muslims started having pr…the political crises, politic…political opponents started justifying themselves in terms of theology. Er the first time this happened was during the Omayan Dynasty, when the Omayans were claiming that the people had no right to criticise them, because had it not been for the fact that God willed their coming, they would not have been there in power. So the issue of predestination came up, and the Muslims started thinking about it. What is the margin of freedom? Do we have freedom of choice or don't we have freedom of choice? What areas do we have freedom of choice in, and what areas we don't have freedom of choice in. And as this went on, and it resulted in the evolution of the first Islamic ideological group called the Motazilites or Al Motazila in Arabic, who be…who were so rationalists that er they gave precedence to reason over er text. This coincided with the incoming translations of Greek philosophies, and this is where some er great philosophers of the time, like El Kindi, who is known as the father of Arab philosophy, followed by Al-Farabi, followed by ibn-Sina, or Avicenna as he's know in Western literature, they started resorting to Greek ideas in order to solve the problems that the Muslims had been thinking about regarding the question of er freewill, predestination. And also the questions of er man er, God relationship -the essence of God, the attributes of God - and the beginning of Creation and how it proceeded, etc. (p3)

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Rana Kabbani who writes and broadcasts on Islam, traces this tradition right back to the prophet Muhammad himself.

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It was a religion of er great spiritual and um scientific curiosity. And Muhammad himself was said to have thought knowledge the most important quality, and curiosity of the mind, the most important quality. And there are many 'Hadiths' em or, or y'know, traditions of the Prophet that urge Muslims to teach their children - girls and boys - um to, to be enquiring, and to seek knowledge. Um…and so it comes from that tradition of er, curiosity. And so when they came to civilisations that they conquered that had these er, philosophies, or these em, y'know er discoveries, or these ancient recipes for learning, then the Muslims took those on and em, continued to pursue new em, solutions for them, and continued to er comment and em study, and bring about what came to be a great renaissance in, in human affairs. (p.8)

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Abdal Hakim Murad is a lecturer in Islamic studies at the faculty of divinity in Cambridge.

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Medieval Islam is perplexing in many respects in that so much of what it does is absolutely original, so that Islamic law, for instance, really doesn't seem to draw on pre-existing Byzantine or Roman or Persian law. It really is a, a new creation. Islamic theology draws more extensively on er, certainly Aristotelian methods, such as syllogistic logic, er and the essence attribute er distinction. Er Islamic mysticism, also something that's historically quite open to er the possibility of borrowing from outside. And in its heyday, Islamic civilisation represents that rarest of phenomena, a very self-confident, self-satisfied civilisation that is also very willing and eager to borrow from other cultures. There are texts from Hinduism and Christianity and Judaism, which were being done into Arabic, just to satisfy the curiosity of the educated, pious, middle-classes in Baghdad in its heyday. So it was a very open civilisation in many respects. (p.17)

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And at the Alhambra you can see the mind of that renaissance at work in the stones. Robert Irwin led me into the greatest of its glories, the Court of the Lions.

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Q This is a really extraordinary place. It, it's sort of cloisters em, full of unexpected perspectives, with that em fountain in the middle, surrounded by lions. Can you explain the architecture here?
A With great difficulty (laughs) I'm not even sure I can…
Q Give it…
A …it's quite complicated
Q …a go, 'cos it's fascinating.
A Yes. I mean it used to be thought that, that…central fountain, supported by 12 lions was a piece of loot from a much older Jewish palace. It's now quite clear this is not the case. This was designed for this particular courtyard, this particular palace in the late 14th century, and all the measurements of the rest of the courtyard are based on the size of the fountain. Em, and the size of the fountain in turn actually I…it seems to have been er…made in such a way that it could (sigh) carry precisely the poetic inscription that ibn-Zamrak designed to run round the fountain. He composed lots of poetry for the building, y'know 'This is a fountain that does such and such, this is a window through which you may see the glories of my Lord's kingdom. This door, blah, blah, blah.' Em and then they…they build these, you've got 4 squares aro…surrounding the er, the, the lion fountain - or sorry - they're not squares. That's the point - they're rectangles. Em and the rectangles are based on… (Interruption/discussion). Th…the Fountain of the Lions is surrounded by 4 rectangles. These are not casually designed rectangles. They are based on the proportions of an absurd and irrational number. What the architect designers have done is taken a square, er conceptually at least, and drawn a diagonal wh…so you get the length of that diagonal is the square root of 2, which is an irrational number. They then prolonged the length…
Q What's, what's (laughing) an irrational number, just (laughs)…?
A An irrational number is one of those things that goes 'point 68934523334…' - y'know like Pi…
Q Like Pi - right.
A Yes - exactly so. Er…square root of 2, I can't tell you off the top of my head but… (Discussion). But they've prolonged the er square by the length of that irrational number, and it creates a satisfying harmony. So that sets out the basic ground plan of the courtyard and then all around it, the heights of the various er columns and windows re based on essentially the same proportions, and then when you get to the detail of these of s…some of the styles on the walls, they are rotated squares, again employing the same kind of proportions. It's, it's…very systematic working away with rather sophisticated mathematics, but probably rather primitive instruments. Em, probably using a lot of pegs and em, ropes to, to get things right. Only in, only in the case of the elevations of the buildings would they have used something more sophisticated. They would use an astrolabe to gauge the height of the walls they were building.
Q But essentially this courtyard is not just a very pretty space…
A Yeah
Q …a very beautiful space - it is an extremely complicated, mathematical…
A Yeah.
Q …game.
A Yeah. I think when you walk through the Alhambra it's a very strange experience once you start to think about it, 'cos you're actually walking in a book. It, it's a book that contains a lot of the Koran, it's a book that contains a lot of poetry, and it's a book that contains the treatise on solid geometry and mathematical proportions. Em, in my own book on the subject I, I remarked that this was a place designed by intellectuals with mystical inclinations, and that it is 'a machine for thinking in.'
Q And what are you supposed to think in this particular space?
A I couldn't tell you. I, I think…now you're getting into very difficult territory. The, the, the abstract decoration is fundamental to Islamic Art. Er, abstraction of various kinds, er geometric or floral er, or I suppose calligraphy just about counts as abstract decoration. Em I think what the abstraction allows the person gazing on it thoughtfully is to…he can make what he will of it. It, it…the abstraction is there as a pattern to be imposed upon. You, you impose your own thoughts, your own knowledge, your own experience of life on that pattern. It's like seeing er images in, in the flames of a fire. The, the…it's not dictating what to think, it's allowing you to think with its structures.
Q But why for example choose the square root of 2 as a way of designing a courtyard? What's, what's the…
A I can only say…
Q …thinking behind that?
A …well look at it. It's so harmonious. It, it…it, it - and it's not just the Alhambra. There are quite a few er Muslim monuments that have clearly, deliberately worked with this, er as far away as Bokhara. Er and, and the great mosque in Damascus, which is very important as a model for em, Muslim architects in Spain. Because they always, all the time, they're looking back to Syria, which is where the original Omayyad Dynasty came from, and the Omayyads - the last of the Omayyad princes fled to Spain and set up his own dynasty here in the 8…er…late 8th century.
Q So is there any theological reasoning or, or thinking behind the, the maths?
A Em…(sigh)…it's…it's (sigh)… It's part and parcel of the way people like ibn-al-Khratib thought em…er, when he comes across the number 1, he doesn't just think 'Oh well it's a digit' - 1 stands for the unity of God. Y'know and then all the other numbers radiate out from the central unity. It's, it's, it's the way they think, or used to think. Q It so, so, so…not I see yes, sorry shall I…(laughs). Um…and, and again, is there any relation between, relationship between that and the Koran and/or Muhammad's thinking? How, how does Islam get to that point?
A Not easy to say. Em, again here we, we've got a garden here effectively and, and…all…the water, the fountains - it would speak to a person, it would take them back to the Koranic texts again about paradise.
Q OK. Great… (Discussion). I mean er w…we, what is this beautiful space for?
A Well em for centuries er westerners who come here - and indeed Arabs who've come here in the last few centuries - have thought this was the private quarters, the harem quarters that the, the, the Court of the Myrtles was the public palace where there were receptions and diplomats came. And, and the women were kept here, and the private parties were here. I think…there's not much evidence either way, but I think what evidence we have is in fact, this was a religious training college and people would've come into this fabulous, palatial looking place actually to study the Koran, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, and perhaps Sufi mysticism as well. And probably we're standing a few feet from where the library was, just behind you.
Q So it, it's quite, quite likely that there was some kind of theological thinking behind the maths… A Oh yes. I mean it would've been…
Q …the design that they've used to design…
A …very appropriate…
Q …the courtyard.
A …to this place, which in turn would've been only a step away from the great mosque. But this would've been a place where people were, were learning to become er well - Imams and preachers and, and indeed, government ministers, y'know. It's very useful to go through this theological training for that - just as it was in Medieval England. I think a lot of kings' ministers came from the churchmen. And over there em you can see the entrance into the Hall of the ibn-Sarajas, er so-called, because of some fanciful tale about the murder of a group of people called the Bano Saraj. In fact it was probably the prayer chamber of this particular complex.
Q Is it fanciful to think that choosing a, a, a number which…I think is called an 'irrational number' like the square root…
A Mm
Q …of 2 as the, the foundation for building the design of this courtyard, that there was a theological purpose behind that?
A (Sigh) It's possible. It's certainly the case that infinity is, seems to be what the decorators are aiming for. They're, they're trying to achieve effects through repetition and complexity of pattern within pattern within pattern that is indeed trying to speak to people about the infinite nature of God and the universe He has created. Q So the, a number that's point something recurring…
A Yes…
Q …fits into that idea?
A It…I've never seen that explicitly stated in any Medieval texts, but it does seem plausible. And certainly I think the intricacy of the decoration is intended to suggest infinity and infinity in turn to summon up thoughts of God. So there is a theological purpose behind this very, very, very complex, abstract decoration. It practically reaches its peak in the Alhambra.

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Like, I suspect, most of those who tramp through on a hot Spanish day I visited the Albambra as an outsider - a non-Muslim trying to get a sense of the way the world looks through Muslim eyes. For a Muslim it can be a much more profound and troubling experience. The Lebanese novelist Hanan Al Shaykh told me what she found there.

Clip Hanan Al Shaykh
It was the written word, the decoration was the written word. Sometimes you, you are um…you are fazed by a sculpture, by a beauty of a painting, by a beauty of colours. But I was fazed by the word which em, it was used as decoration. It was everywhere. The word, the written word, the phrases, became sculptures, became colours, um became sublime beauty er…I mean I, I couldn't believe that one could do s…er such mar…er, such er miracles in, in one phrase or two. Even one phrase, the, it was em, em, repeated. It was repeated all over again, and there is no conqueror except God, all over the place. And er, it's not what the, what the phrase said, but it's how amazing that one could u…er could er decorate an entire palace from merely one phrase.
Q What did it express to you about the Islamic ideas that created a prace like, place like that, and used words in those ways? That way, rather.
A Well it took me to the olden days, when I thought em, it was…they, people lived in harmony. They lived for beauty and um although they, they had lots of em, em, of course they, they went into wars er even among themselves, they were fighting er among themselves sometimes. But at the same time, they didn't neglect er knowledge, and they, they really wanted to discover the world. Er, they wanted to discover the world. Er they wanted to er, they discovered algebra, geometry um er, er…em sa…er science er, um, er…(discussion). Er medicine em, er, astronomy, and they were the first people who, who um er, invented and, and er, ways to, to locate the stars and etc, etc.
Q Did you, standing in the Alhambra, feel a connection with the Muslim past, as a Muslim there?
A Well actually not as a Muslim, to be honest. But, but as an Arab. Um, because I, I felt um in a way that Oh, we, we, we had this amazing past, and why this past stopped. Why can't we continue? And I felt sorry that er, for ourselves em…even as for me as an Arab that er we, we stopped at a certain time and not looking even backwards to w…to what we did only in poetry er, or in er, lamenting the past. Like every night er, every novelist, every po…er poet would write about the past, er in, in er, in Andalucia. And I remember um, one do…er one em, professor wrote about em, er, about how many em, how many er Arab, contemporary Arab writers now and poets er, write about Al…er Alhambra or Andalucia. And she couldn't believe that we are still living in the past. So I didn't feel this at all, that I, I should be living in the past. But the question was why didn't we continue? And er why is it, why are we living now er alive which is like em, er, between em, er sky and, and, and earth were, were not living reality. I mean we were not, we were not living like they lived on earth now. Er some of, some of, some of us now think that er, er maybe the good life it would be er after, after life. I mean y'know after, not, not…on this existing, existing life and…
Q You said in the title to your article, you said 'I sat down and wept in the Alhambra.' Why?
A Well I took the, actually I took the title from Elizabeth Mart. I don't know if you've read her book Lamenting er Lost Love? Em I, 'By central, Grand Central station I sat down and wept.' Well because I…as an Arab, I felt I can do anything. I mean nowadays I'm just thinking of the past and how er awesome it was, and how sublime it was. And er, and, and to reach what we are reaching now um is, is, is very sad. I mean on er, on all um the fronts, we are losing. We are losing culture, we are losing nations and um, we are ruled by dictators and er, and there is also a um, a great misunderstanding. Er, er in the West, they don't really know us, and there is a great gap, and er, between us and the West and er, and it is a very sad situation.

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That raises the other big questions that are being asked about Islamic history today. What went wrong, and why? When did the balance of success tip westwards, towards the Christian world?

The Christian re-conquest of Spain was effectively completed when the combined armies of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella took Granada in 1492 - and if you like neat symbolic coincidences you will no doubt be struck by the fact that that year also saw the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

But the question I have posed about the rise of the great Islamic civilisations is every bit as relevant to their decline; do the causes lie within Islam itself. Robert Irwin.

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A I've been thinking about this for over 20 years and I've come to no definite answer. Em…er probably the reason it is difficult to answer is it's not one single thing. Em, some people blame the Crusades, but I think that's, that's…unlikely. Er the Crusades were very a peripheral phenomenon and a small bit of Palestine's era that was not a major cultural centre anyway. It may have had something to do with the influx of large numbers of Turks er, military men who really rather take over in the Eastern Islamic lands, and who were perhaps not so sympathetic to original thinking. It's hard to know. Er it seems related to what's known as the Sunni Revival, which was the revival of Orthodox Islam.
I think one of the problems Islamic regimes have had, particularly faced with the Christian powers in the Mediterranean, is lack of resources, in the sense of lack of hydraulic power, lack of large reserves of wood, of coal, of copper. All these things make a difference. In the long run, after the Middle Ages, the discovery of America will also tilt things in favour of Christian, of Spain and Holland and England - and against Turkey and Egypt and so forth. But there's also…something within Islam I think. I think the Sunni revival em…in many ways was a good thing, and it, it led to all sorts of advances in scholarship. But it led also to a kind of clamping down on free thought and experimental thinking. I…perhaps we shall have occasion to talk about ibn-Rushd, the, or Averroes as he's known in the West - the 12th century Arab philosopher. And he's the last Arab philosopher of major significance. And how he was defeated, or perceived to have been defeated in polemical debate by Al-Khazali - a very orthodox Muslim as well as a Sufi and er…a kind of narrowing of vision happens around…well around the 11th, 12th centuries. That seems to be part of it. Em, there's a turning away from a loss of interesting Greek philosophy, which there'd previously been an enormous amount of interest in Greek philosophy and Greek science. And it, it seems to be part of this more rigorous 'We don't need anything except the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet to guide us in life. We, we don't need all this Greek wisdom and this Persian literature, and this Cyriac learning. Let, let's stay with the true faith.'

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There is a concept in Islam called Ijtihad. It means independent reasoning, and it's traditionally used in Islamic law when other sources, such as the Koran, are silent. Around the 10th century Sunni scholarship became so well developed that many - though not all - commentators, felt that the gates of ijtihad should be closed and ruled that people must in future rely on the decisions of past authorities. Rana Kabbani.

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Well the…most um striking chapter that er freezes Islam I think, is the colonial chapter, where you find that er the penetration of western armies into the great Muslim cities causes people to retrench physically, and it causes them to retrench intellectually and religiously as well. And er they become far more er obscurantist, and far more sort of inward-looking, and far less able to be flexible with their own religious and cultural heritage than they would've been, had they been free and had they been not dominated by what was then er, er, a much more powerful em, and much more um (sigh) er…y'know controlling West.

… But also there was the closing of the door of Ishtehad. There was the closing of the ability to er look at scripture and the traditions of the Prophet in any but a very obscurantist and repressive way. And er, that trend continues in many societies within Islam today, so that the, the kind of um courageous creativity that Islamic societies had when they were powerful declined in periods when they felt them selves um, being threatened. (p.11-12)

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Dr Azzam Tamimi director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought

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Azzam Tamimi
There is this misconception that the doors of Ishtihad were once closed. People will tell you, … 'The problem with the Muslims is that they closed the door of Ishtihad' - which means that they stopped thinking - which is not true. Nobody has the powers to close something which God has given to us as a, as a choice. The very interesting thing about Islam is that inherent in the Koran itself is encouragement to think freely. To debate, to discuss, to question. For 13 years, Koranic revelation was all about using one's reason. Later on, that becomes a dilemma, because what are the bounds? What are the limits? Are there limits for reason? And this is what Al Kazari for instance, a great philosopher of Islam who dealt a fatal blow to philosophy in the eastern lands - he died in the year 505 er of er, the Islamic calendar, 1111 of the Gregorian calendar - er decided that the problem with the Muslim philosophers, the Hellenistic philosophers as they call them, is that they gave reason, they, they gave reason the full freedom. And he proved to them that reason can go wrong.
Q Because if you look around the Islamic world today, you would say, you would not say which is, there are ma…very many places in that, in which that spirit of inquiry is encouraged to flourish.
A Indeed, and that's because of politics. Politics and governments who are despotic are not interested in free inquiry, are not interested in free-thinking, because free-thinking produces critique. Critique can be dangerous to their power. (p.7-9)

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Dr Tamimi is not alone in seeking a road map for the future of Islam by looking to the great days of its past. Abdal Hakim Murad of the Cambridge faculty of divinity.

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A Islam has always been (laughs) a broad church. It speaks with many voices. There's no Muslim Vatican to impose an orthodox line. Sometimes that's er helpful, sometimes of course it results in chaos. At the moment I find that there's tremendous er desire for new thinking, for the re-valorising of orthodoxy, for moving beyond orthodoxy, for rediscovering certain Medieval possibilities that were subsequently er suffocated by the consensus of the scholars. I don't think that Islam has been intellectually more lively er than it is at present, for at least a thousand years. The problem is, how d'you persuade the furious, oppressed, alienated, politically disenfranchised youths to follow some kind of irenic, pluralistic, negotiating possibility in Islam, if that simply doesn't speak to their condition. The problem is psychological - it's not theological. (p26)

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In southern Spain it is impossible to avoid the version of history in which the story of Islam and Christianity is a story conflict and conquest.

After the Catholic "reconquista" the Moors were forced to convert - those who refused were expelled from Spain in 1609. And in the city of Cordoba there is an astonishing architectural affirmation of what the Christian victory meant. Slap-bang in the middle of the city's great mosque, Cordoba's Catholic masters built themselves a cathedral.

It is a very peculiar place to visit; when you walk through the dazzling perspectives of the mosque's arches your imagination takes you to Damascus or Baghdad - then there, right at the heart of it, stands a great lump of Catholic Spain, complete with organ, choir stalls and martyred saints.

But even today Catholics call the area mosque and perhaps the memory of Spain's Islamic heritage hasn't died all together. But even today the place is a source of religious tension. Mansur Escudero is a Spanish convert to Islam. He lives in Cordoba, and in the Mezquita, the huge courtyard that surrounds the mosque, he told me about his campaign to overturn the ban on Muslims praying there.

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If I go now inside and I try to…to pray just er two p…prostrations which is a, um sign of um, em respect to the place that usually the Muslims do when they go into a mosque, er the police will come and will stop me to do it.
Q Tell me about your efforts to get that changed.
A Er for the last 20 years we have been er asking to different bishops that er are here in Cordoba to…to allow the Muslims to pray. Em, we are not er asking for em the whole mosque, or the whole mm, cathedral mosque. Er we are asking just to er allow to the visitors that they, they are allowed to, they, they come into Cordoba and the mosque is the first place, one of the first place together with the Alhambra that are er…visited by em, em tourists, em to allow to, to pray even in a small corner. We are not asking for the whole thing and er, even the, maybe not every day, but the Friday prayers, which is the, the main day in the week that all the Muslims come together for prayer, to allow to do that, and er we ask to the bishop in a very mm…polite way that the, that it's not er, any…mm, will cause any damage to the, to the place or to the image of the, the church. On the contrary, it will give a image of er tolerance and er…but em, the bishop always say that the, the matter is in the hands of the Vatican. On the 5th of er March er mm, there was a meeting in the Vatican er, er between em, er the Islamic Cult Society, which is one of the biggest er mm…the biggest in fact er, association with the work with more than 400 er mm, mm…societies er included in, on it. And every 2 years er they meet er with expert of the Vatican - The Vatican er…Pontificial Council For Inter-religi…Inter-religious er Dialogue - and in this year I was invited from Spain, as a representative of Spain. And I thought it was a good occasion to make this proposal of er, of…mm consider that the mosque of Cordoba, or the mosque cathedral of Cordoba to become ecumenical temple.
Q What did the Vatican say? (Cough)
A Well the, the Pontificial er Council, they took notice of it. They said that their mm…their mission is to advi…er to advise the Pope, er and that usually the Pope mm, mm doesn't enter into the, the decision of the bishops, only in, in doctrinal matters, but they will er…transmit to the Pope er our petition. And I ensured that er something will come to the bishop and er we ask for our meeting with him. We ask for an interview, where we can er, er explain our position which is er, as I said before, is em…is yes um an ecumenical er proposal er which we think is necessary in this time of confrontation and between er people of different religions. And for that reason and er several reason, it will be a very clear sign for the hule…er the whole humankind em that this particular place, so linked to the history in, where in the past Muslims and Christians, they pray together. If we again can er become er we can er again to do the same, I think will be a very, very good sample for the humankind of er and er understanding and coming together of er the 2 main religions.

Q What does it mean to you this place, as a Muslim?
A Well it's a mmm…it's an expression of a, a time er where Islam really was er mmm...practised in, in a er way that we consider is the correct way. Where er Muslims em, em, mm propitiate er mm the freedom of the other religions, where they protect and, and I said that other em Christian and Jews er they practise in a completely free way. Where Islam er allowed us well freedom of er, er thought em and allowed to rise em, er mm…mm…people with knowledge like Iben Arabi, like Iben Alara…Alareef, like so many, many er people of knowledge em…that was er mm, what may em gave the rise to monuments. Er we can't, not er consider er these stones, beautiful stones, that they em, er, were built er, em, without people that had a knowledge that made this to happen. The same in the Arts, in the…in, in the signs em, that is er the true Islam, when er people of knowledge er rise for a society, that allows a complete freedom of, of, of, of a, of, of thought and er, and expression.
Q And do you feel as a Spanish Muslim, a sense of direct connection with that Islamic past in this country?
A With the spirit - not with the stones. I don't feel connected with er…(greens?) or stone, but I feel connected with the consciousness and with the spirit of our mm, big saints, our big sufis, our big masters and I…that is something that cannot be er abolished. Something that cannot be destroy like the stones, like the monuments the…the wisdom of the masters still remains in the hearts of the Muslims of today. (p.5-6)

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The stones of the Alhambra are rather more than just stones. This is sometimes said to be the most beautiful complex of buildings in the world. But for all its pretensions to speak of high ideas and a great civilisation, it was built on borrowed time. The glory days of the Islamic empire had already passed by the time the Nasrid rulers were picnicking in the grounds, were Robert Irwin and I said goodbye to their palace.

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Q Well we're sitting here in the General Ifay Gardens with…(interruption). We're sitting here in the General Ifay Gardens - in fact in the General Ifay Palace in the centre of those gardens, with this… (Interruption). Sitting here in the General Ifay Gardens - in fact in the General Ifay Palace, which is in the centre of the gardens - with this long canal leading up to the building at the far end, and these arches of fountains all the way along it, and behind us an absolutely stunning view of the Alhambra itself. Um, very geometric gardens, Robert - very scented, heavily scented - er and very cool. But not the gardens as they would've been quite in the Moorish times?
A No em…there are gardens and gardens. This is a, obviously a palace garden. It's an enclosed garden. I mean in Latin you'd call it a 'hortus conclusus'. Em and…in almost all these palace gardens, you have this central channel or, or large, central, rectangular pool. This General Ifay patio of the waterway has preserved its original form. Whether there were these projectile fountains there in Muslim times or not is controversial. In general, Muslims preferred water from fountains to just ripple over the edge of the basin, rather than sending jets of water upwards. So some people think this is a innovation of the Christian Catholic monarchs after 1492. However, I have read an account of a visitor who came to these gardens only a few years after 1492, and he describes projectile fountains. I think it's quite likely therefore that they were installed by the Nasrid Muslim monarchs. Em, the other thing to be said about these gardens is that they were remarkably well-preserved until a fire in 1958, when everything had to be dug up and restored, and they found the original irrigation system in perfect working order. And such is the vagaries of restoration in this place, that they, they ripped it apart. Em, bang it goes. Em, the other kind of garden you get, and most of the General Ifay outside this enclosed courtyard would've been - this other kind of garden is actually a working estate, where er what you're getting er is um, a place for growing fruit and vegetables to supply the palace. Er, very much the garden is a, a, a utilitarian thing. (Sigh) One other thing should say though, is there probably were spaces for pleasure. Muslims when they planted gardens tended not to go for big banks of flowers in the way y'know, the Victorians or even Gertrude Jekyll, er they, they, they liked to have grassy lawns with a variety of flowers speckling the green grass at intervals and these were the ideal picnic spots. Er the picnics would um, were a very big feature of Nasrid Muslim culture in the 14th century and er you get a huge amount of poetry written specifically about picnics, the pleasure of picnics, flowers, drinking wine in the open air, the beauty of the boys or the girls serving the wine. But picnics, picnics all the time - and y'know, there are hundreds of poems in, written in Muslim Spain, commemorating this particular pleasure.
Q Is it possible to talk about a Muslim philosophy of, of, of gardening?
A Ooh I don't know - I mean what one could say is that there, there are 2 common words for 'garden' in Arabic. One is 'junna' - er that means 'garden', but it also means 'paradise', so every time you walk into a garden, there's that overtone of paradise. The other word is 'raud' or 'riyadh' and that means 'garden' but it also means 'cemetery' - so simultaneously, walking into a garden may summon up thoughts of death and of the afterlife. Em as for a philosophy of gardening - I don't know - there are quite a lot of um…agricult…well not 'quite a lot' - but a few agricultural manuals have survived from Medieval Spain written in Arabic, but they're fairly utilitarian documents. They, they don't, they don't go into philosophical depth very much.

Q So clearly the whole complex is extraordinarily sophisticated and speaks of a very high level of civilisation. How would the rulers here have thought of themselves in relation to the rest of the Muslim world?
A Nervously. Em (laughs) at any one time their, their neighbour may be the Fatimid Caliph who, in Cairo, who belongs to a different branch of Islam - the Shia branch - or they're feeling threatened by the Meronid monarchs of Morocco in the 14th century. The Nasrid monarchs, throughout the history of the Alhambra, are negotiating their way, seeking an alliance with say Aragon, or no - with Castile - against Aragon, and against the Meronid monarchy or seeking the alliance of the Meronid monarchy against both Castile and Aragon - an endless business of power play. They, they're never quite powerful enough to stand alone. They, they do rely on the sport of others to survive.

Q But presumably they thought of themselves very much as part of the same civilisation which em, spreads or begins er in Baghdad and Basra and in fact even further east than that at this stage?
A Oh yes. Em and ev…actually I - what's the word - yes I mean I think if we're talking about culture, I think perhaps a lot of people living in, in Granada and even earlier in…the, the greater culture of Cordoba, suffered from what the Australians call 'cultural cringe'. Em they're, they're very anxious about what's happening in the East and the latest fashions in music and poetry and philosophy - and keen to latch on as fast as possible. And, and conscious that a lot of the time, they're not quite where it's happening, but that the major philosophers and the mystics and so forth are usually in Egypt and Syria, Iraq, Iran, Samarkand, Bokhara and so forth.

Q So even though today this looks physically like a high point of Islamic civilisation, you're saying it was actually, it was, it was rather a, a, a backwater almost, it was on the edge of the Empire? (Discussion) So even though today this looks to us like something of a high point of Islamic civilisation, at the time they saw themselves as a bit of a backwater really?
A In the 14th and 15th centuries, you're seeing the sunset glories of Moorish Spain. They're, they, they must've had a sense their time was up. They're relying v…very much on defensive fortifications - castles scattered throughout whatever remains of Granada and Granada's own fortifications - they don't have large armies. And culturally, they're looking back to better times in Cordoba - when things really were great. (Laughs) If you were in Cordoba in the 11th century, you're looking back if you were an Omayyad prince, to the times when the Omayyads ruled in Syria, when times were really great. Em, but certainly - no resources are much more, much reduced in 14th century um Granada compared with er 10th century Cordoba. Er and the strange thing is that we actually know a lot more about who did what and who wrote what, and who thought what in 10th century Cordoba, or in 11th century Cordoba, than we do about who said and did what in 14th and 15th century Granada. There are very few written sources. Now you can take that 2 ways. Er you could say 'Well when the Christians came in after 1492, they, they burnt every Arab manuscript they could lay their hands on.' And there must be some truth in that. But only some truth - it doesn't explain why we still know so much about Cordoba in the earlier period. I actually think less was being written, less was being thought, er people were rather busy looking after their economic affairs and so on. It was hard times - and one shouldn't forget the 14th century, the mid-14th century is the time of the Black Death - and Moorish Granada suffered as badly as anywhere else from that.

Q It is an irony isn't it, that the best preserved Muslim palace in the world is actually in Christian Europe?
A It is bizarre. Here in Moorish Spain, you've got this one palace - it's the only Medieval Islamic palace to be substantially surviving. Em, now the reason this is the case is most curious. It's because it was captured by the Christian kings. And Ferdinand and Isabella were very keen on the 'Reconquista', and to conquer in the name of Christianity the last Muslim lands. But they also liked Muslim culture rather a lot. They liked wearing Muslim clothes, they liked walking about barefoot, they, they liked Moorish architecture. They thought the Alhambra was marvellous and so the first thing they do when they occupy the place is not vandalise it - they call in Muslim craftsmen to repair it. And their grandson Charles the 5th is similarly enthusiastic. When he comes here on his honeymoon he, he goes bananas about the place, em and because he's so keen on it, he actually damages it a bit. Er, for example - the Hammam - the, the baths of the palace are non-immersive baths. They're, they're used for doing the ritual ablutions. Er you, you, you just splash the water over yourself if you're doing those ritual ablutions - you don't plunge in a great basin. But Charles of course liked a good, good wallow in a proper bath. Y'know he has a proper immersion bath - the kind of bathtub we're used to - plonked in the middle of the Moorish baths. And he, he does other things, like build his own palace on the edge of the Court of the Myrtles, which is a bit disruptive.

Q Does that make the history of the place a rather ambivalent issue for Muslims today?
A Em…it's become a symbol to some extent, it's a symbol of…Arab culture's failure I think it has to be said. A failure to sustain the remarkable scientific, philosophical and literary achievements that it had managed in the Middle Ages, until perhaps the say the 12th or 13th century. It's also become a symbol for many, particularly Indian Muslims and Palestinians. A symbol of the territories that Islam has lost - er Islam's political and military failure in recent centuries. This is a 'tira…terra iridenta' - somewa...somewhere where, which the Muslims must strive to regain. And er a kind of dream of a lost land, which they once ruled.

Q So a sense of the, the temporary nature of things…
A Yes
Q …is, is almost built into the stones?
A It is. Er it's not almost built into the stones - it's actually carved into the stone, y'know. You can read it er, it's part of the decoration of the Alhambra is this calligraphy, telling you that God alone is what endures.

Edward - closing PTC
Just outside Granada is a hill known as the Sigh of the Moor and the legend is that from here the last Muslim ruler of Southern Spain watched the fall of his city. When he burst into tears his mother rebuked him with the worlds "You do well to weep like a woman for what you have failed to defend like a man" and with that they more or less disappeared from history. The questions they left behind about the collapse of their civilisation are far more than curiosities of the historian. Indeed since September 11th, 2001 and with the current experiment in Middle Eastern politics in Iraq, Islam's relationship with the West and Western ideas as become arguably the single most important issue in contemporary politics. That's what we'll be discussing in the last of these programmes next week when we'll be in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation.