La Ghalib illa Allah (No Victor but God)

"Wa La Ghalib illa Allah," which means, "There is no Conqueror (Victor) except Allah." king Abu Abdullah (Boabdil) was called by his people as, "Al-Ghalib" (The Conqueror). Yet, when recognizing his imminent defeat, he exclaimed otherwise proclaiming that none other than God was the Greatest. Hence, "There is no Conqueror except God," became the motto of his descendents.


Irving, Washington. Tales of the Alhambra. Spain, 1832.

the employment of symmetrical tessellation

The employment of symmetrical tessellation is an important feature of its abstract decoration. Tessellation is the covering or tiling of an entire plane with non-overlapping shapes. Regular tessellation makes use of one shape of tile; semi-regular uses more than one. In 'wallpaper' symmetry, the pattern is repeated in all directions, up and down and sideways. In 'frieze' symmetry the pattern runs in one direction only. In 'rosette' symmetry the design motif is reflected or rotated, but without further repetition. The mathematician George Pólya has proved that there are nine basic frieze patterns and seventeen basic types of wallpaper pattern. All seventeen are to be found in Islamic art. The most obvious application of tessellation in the Alhambra is in the tile work of the various dados, where repetitive pattern is used to rest the eye. There is a kind of playfulness in this kind of pattern generation - and particularly in the way that it is often impossible to determine what is foreground and what is background. This playfulness attracted the Dutch artist who is most famous for his paradoxes, M.C. Escher. He claimed to feel an affinity for the Moors even before visiting the Alhambra. He first went there in 1926 and then again in 1936. However, though he admired Moorish tessellation techniques, he thought it a pity that they did not employ figurative imagery in their patterning. This is, of course, what Escher is famous for - making patterns based on interlocking fishes and birds, or black demons and white angels. In the course of the last century or so the study of tessellation has become an important field of mathematics in its own right, something which gives force to the following observation by the painter Tom Phillips: 'Just as art is hidden everywhere in ornament, so science also finds many of its formulations already inherent in ornamental practice. The implications of map theory, game theory, topology, the fractals of chaos theory, game theory, topology, the fractals of chaos theory, have all lurked in ornament, awaiting their elevation to science.' The Alhambra is a stone book in more than one sense, for not only are its walls decorated with religious and poetical texts, but those texts are framed by geometrical designs that are, to all intents and purposes, demonstrations of mathematical theorems.

Robert Irwin

The Alhambra. 2004. p.118-121

a masterpiece of mathematics

Correctly viewed, the Alhambra, like many other Islamic monuments, is as much a masterpiece of mathematics as it is of art. The mathematics is latent in the proportions of the building and its visual effect is all the more potent for its not being immediately obvious to the eye. It is not necessary to understand all of the mathematics of the Alhambra..., but what must strike the eye is that, at every level, the designers of the building worked with complexity. The complexity and detail of the design of the Alhambra defy easy reading. One is not expected to master that complexity and detail, but to drown in them. Like modern mathematicians, the medieval Arab architects were engaged in exploring infinity.


Robert Irwin, The Alhambra. 2004. p.112, 113

the decorative lazo of eight

...the decorative lazo of eight (eight-pointed star) was... based on the ratio of 1 to the square root of 2. The lazo of eight is a particularly important element in the geometric designs of the ceramic dados in the Hall of the Ambassadors. That particular lazo was effectively the result of rotating two squares. Much use was made of elaborations of ratios based on the square root of 2.


Robert Irwin, The Alhambra. 2004. p.112

brings the forces of nature into play

The Alhambra brings the forces of nature into play at every turn: water in movement - trickling, running, cascading, spurting - or still, in tranquil expanses: carefully barbered trees and bushes; sunken flower beds; sudden glimpses of mountains or gardens framed in a casement, or, more ambitiously, miradors and belvederes cunningly placed to exploit sight lines over an entire landscape; and above all light. The Alhambra studiously manipulates contrasts of light and dark, with bent entrances, shafts of sunlight angled into shadowy interiors, dim passageways suddenly opening into a courtyard open to the blazing sun, and light reflected from placid ponds or walls clad in glistening tiles.


Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Art and Architecture. 1998 as found in Robert Irwin, The Alhambra. 2004. p.56