There are some places where the history is just sitting there right in front of your face – and The Aljafería Palace was just such a place. Thanks to the generosity of The Spanish Tile Manufacturer’s Association (ASCER) and Tile of Spain, I was able to take a private tour of The Aljafería Palace while in Zaragoza, Spain.
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The Aljafería Palace is a fortified medieval Islamic palace built during the second half of the 11th century in the Moorish taifa of Zaragoza of Al-Andalus, which is now present day Zaragoza, Spain. (A taifa was an independent Muslim-ruled principality, usually an emirate or petty kingdom.) Early in the 8th century (711 A.D.) a group made up of Arab and Black African tribes invaded and conquered most of what is now called Spain. In the English language, we call these invaders the Moors, though that’s not a term they used for themselves. They called their conquered territory Al-Andalus, and this group of conqueror’s remained on the Iberian peninsula for nearly 800 years.
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Starting in the 1200s, a coalition of Christian kings drove the Moors from Spain in a 300 year long campaign called the Reconquista. As Moorish territory fell to the Christian kings of Spain, the Moors who stayed behind were allowed to continue to practice their religion. The Spanish called the Moors who remained in these newly conquered territories ‘Mudéjares’. The word itself is a Medieval Spanish reworking of an Arabic term for “the ones who stayed.” Mudéjar is also the name of the architectural style from this period. Mudéjar is widely accepted as a hybrid of Moorish, Gothic and Romanesque styles.
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The Aljaferia became the residence of the Christian kings of the Kingdom of Aragon after the Reconquista and as such, it was the focal point for the outward spread of the Mudéjar Architecture of Aragon. This residence was later turned into the Palace of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella I of Castille. The only reason I know any of this information is because we had a private guide walking us through the Palace and she pointed out that it would have been this very courtyard that Christopher Columbus walked through when he came to plead for financial support so that he could go on his expedition; the very voyages that led him across the Atlantic ocean and ultimately to the American continents in the Western Hemisphere.
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