Aljafería Palace

The Aljafería Palace (in Arabic: قصر الجعفرية‎, tr. Qaṣr al-Jaʿfariyah, derived from one of the names of the king who ordered it to be built, Abú Jaáfar al-Muqtádir) is a fortified palace built in Zaragoza in the second half of the century XI on the initiative of al-Muqtadir as the residence of the Hudi kings of Saraqusta. This pleasure palace (then called Qasr al-Surur or 'Palace of Joy') reflects the splendor achieved by the Taifa kingdom in the period of its maximum political and cultural heyday.

Its importance lies in the fact that it is the only preserved testimony of a great building of Spanish-Muslim art from the time of the taifas. So, if a magnificent example of the Caliphate of Córdoba, its mosque (X century), and another of the singing of Islamic culture in al-Andalus, from the XIV century, the Alhambra in Granada, should be included in the triad of Spanish-Muslim architecture, the Aljafería Palace in Zaragoza (XI century) as an example of the achievements of Taifa art, intermediate period of independent kingdoms prior to the arrival of the Almoravids. The "Mudejar remains of the Aljafería Palace" were individually declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986 as part of the "Mudejar Architecture of Aragon" complex.

The solutions adopted in the ornamentation of the Aljafería palace, such as the use of mixtilinear arches and "S" salmeres, the extension of the openwork ataurique on large surfaces or the progressive schematization and abstraction of the plant-based plasterwork, decisively influenced Almoravid and Almohad art in both the Maghreb and the Iberian Peninsula. Likewise, the transition of decoration towards more geometric motifs is at the base of Nasrid art.

After the conquest of Zaragoza in 1118 by Alfonso I the Battler, it became the residence of the Christian kings of Aragon, with which the Aljafería became the main focus of dissemination of Aragonese Mudejar. It was used as a royal residence by Pedro IV the Ceremonious (1319-1387) and later, on the main floor, the renovation was carried out that converted these rooms into the palace of the Catholic Monarchs in 1492. In 1593 it underwent another renovation that would convert it into a military fortress, first according to Renaissance designs (which today can be seen in its surroundings, moat and gardens) and later as quartering for military regiments. It suffered continuous renovations and great damage, especially with the Sieges of Zaragoza during the War of Independence until it was finally restored in the second half of the century XX and currently houses the Cortes of Aragon.

In its origin, the construction was made outside the walls of the Roman wall, on the plain of the saría or place where the Muslims carried out military displays known as La Almozara. With urban expansion over the years, the building has remained within the city. A small garden environment has been respected around it.

The Troubadour Tower

The oldest building in the Aljafería is the so-called "Tower of the Troubadour", which received this name from the romantic drama by Antonio García Gutiérrez, El trovador, from 1836. This drama was converted in libretto for Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il trovatore, from 1853.

It is a defensive tower, with a quadrangular plan and five floors, dating from the end of the IX century (according to Barnabas Cabañero Subiza, from the second half of the century X), in the period governed by the first Tuyibí, Muhammad Alanqar, who It was named by Muhammad I, independent emir of Córdoba. The tower maintains vestiges of the start of the thick walls of alabaster ashlar masonry in its lower part, and continued with others of simple gypsum and lime concrete formwork, somewhat thinner as they gained height.

The exterior does not reflect the internal five-story division and appears as an enormous solid prism barely broken by loophole openings. Entry inside was through a small high door that could only be accessed using a portable ladder. Its initial function was, from all these indications, eminently military.

The first floor preserves the construction structure of the IX century, which houses two naves and six sections separated by two cruciform pillars from which lowered horseshoe arches emerge. Despite their simplicity, they make up a balanced room, which rhythms the ceiling in the style of the caliphal mosques and which could have been used as bathrooms.

The second floor repeats the same spatial scheme as the previous one, and remains of a Muslim factory from the 11th century can be seen in the brick canvases, which indicates that the second floor was possibly rebuilt at the same time as the palace during the time of Al-Muqtadir. On the third floor, whose structure would also be from the 11th century, with also horseshoe arches, geometric motifs appear painted on the ceiling Mudejar where you can read the names of Aeneas, Amor and Venus, and which possibly date from the 14th century.

Something similar occurs with the appearance of the last two floors, of Mudejar style, and whose construction would be due to the construction of the annexed palace of Pedro IV, which is connected to the troubadour tower thanks to a corridor, and would be configured as well as keep. The arches of these floors already reflect their Christian structure, as they are slightly pointed arches, and they support roofs that are not vaulted, but rather flat wooden structures.

Its function in the 9th and 10th centuries was as a watchtower and defensive bastion. It was surrounded by a moat. It was later integrated by the Banu Hud in the construction of the Aljafería castle-palace, becoming one of the towers of the defensive framework of the outer northern canvas. After the Spanish reconquest, it continued to be used as a keep and in 1486 it became a dungeon for the Inquisition. It was also used as a prison tower in the 18th and 19th centuries, as demonstrated by the numerous graffiti inscribed there by prisoners.

The Taifa Palace

The construction of the palace - mostly carried out between 1065 and 1081 - was ordered by Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Sulayman al-Muqtadir Billah, known by his honorific title of Al-Muqtadir ('the Powerful'), second monarch of the Banu Hud dynasty, as a symbol of the power achieved by the Taifa of Zaragoza in the second half of the century XI. The king himself called his palace Qasr al-Surur ('Palace of Joy') and the throne room over which he presided at receptions and embassies, Majlis al -Dahab('Golden Hall') as witnessed in the following verses of the monarch himself:

Oh Palace of Joy, O Golden Hall!

Thanks to you, I came to the top of my wishes.

And even if in my kingdom I had nothing else,

For me you are all I could long for.

The name of Aljafería is documented for the first time in a text by Al-Yazzar as-Saraqusti (active between 1085 and 1100) - which also transmits the name of the architect of the Taifal palace, the Slav Al-Halifa Zuhayr - and another from Ibn Idari from 1109, as a derivation of the prenoun of Al-Muqtadir, Abu Ja'far, and from "Ya'far", "Al-Yafariyya", which evolved to "Aliafaria" and from there to " Aljafería.

The general layout of the palace complex adopts the archetype of the Umayyad castles of the Syrian and Jordanian desert of the first half of the 8th century , (such as that of Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, Qusair Mushatta, Jirbat al-Mafyar and, already from the first Abbasid stage, the palace of Ujaidir) which were square in plan and ultra-semicircular towers in the panels, with a tripartite central space, which leaves three rectangular spaces of which the central one houses a patio with pools and, at the northern and southern ends of it, the palatial halls and the rooms for daily life.

In the Aljafería, homage is paid to this model of castle-palace, whose noble area is located in the central segment of its square floor plan, although the alignment of the sides of that floor plan is irregular. It is the central rectangle that houses the palatial rooms, organized around a patio with cisterns in front of the north and south porticos into which the royal rooms and halls flow.

At the north and south ends are the porches and living quarters, and in the case of the Aljafería, the most important of these sectors is the north, which was originally equipped with a second floor and had greater depth, in addition to being preceded by an open and profusely decorated columned wall, which extended in two arms through two pavilions on its flanks and which served as a theatrical portico to the throne room (the golden hall of Al-Muqtadir's verses) located at the background. This produced a game of heights and various cubic volumes that began with the perpendicular corridors at the ends, was highlighted by the presence of the height of the second floor and ended with the troubadour tower that offered its volume in the background to the gaze of a spectator located in the patio. All of this, also reflected in the cistern, enhanced the royal area, which is corroborated by the presence at the eastern end of the northern wall of a small private mosque with a mihrab.

In the center of the northern wall of the interior of the Golden Hall there was a blind arch - where the king stood - in whose thread a very traditional geometric pattern was arranged, imitating the latticework of the façade of the mihrab of the Mosque of Córdoba, a building which one sought to emulate. In this way, from the patio, it appeared half-hidden by the column patterns of both the arches leading to the Golden Hall and those of the immediate portico, which gave a lattice-like appearance, an illusion of depth, which admired the visitor and lent splendor to the figure of the monarch.

To remember the appearance of the palace at the end of the XI century, we must imagine that all the vegetal, geometric and epigraphic reliefs They were polychrome in tones in which red and blue predominated for the backgrounds and gold for the reliefs, which, together with the alabaster plinths with epigraphic decoration and the white marble floors, gave the whole an appearance of great magnificence.

The various vicissitudes suffered by the Aljafería have caused a large part of the stuccos that They made up the decoration and, with the construction of the palace of the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, the entire second floor, which broke the ends of the taifal arches. In the current restoration, the original atauriques can be seen in darker color and in smooth white finishes the plaster reconstruction of the decoration of the arches, whose structure, however, remains unscathed.

The decoration of the walls of the Golden Hall has disappeared for the most part, although remains of its decoration are preserved in the Museum of Zaragoza and in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. Francisco Íñiguez began its restoration, replacing the decorations that existed in their places of origin and extracting complete casts from the arches of the south portico.

These were the functions and appearance of the Hudi palace of the 11th century. The most important parts of the building as they are today are detailed below.

North side rooms

The most important set of rooms of the Hudi-era palace is built on the northern wall, as it includes the Throne Room or Golden Room and the small private mosque, located on the eastern side of the access porch that serves as an anteroom to the oratory. Inside it houses a mihrab in the southeast corner, whose niche, therefore, is oriented in the direction of Mecca, as is the case in all the mosques except that of Córdoba.

The floors of the royal rooms were made of marble and an alabaster plinth ran along them. The capitals were made of alabaster, except for some reused marble from the Caliphal period. These rooms were surrounded by a band of epigraphic decoration with Kufic characters that reproduced Koranic suras that alluded to the symbolic meaning of the ornamentation. The surahs that correspond to these inscriptions have been deduced from the surviving fragments.

In two of these calligraphic reliefs the name of Al-Muqtadir can be found, which is why the construction of the palace has been dated, at least in the first phase, between 1065 and 1080. One of them literally says "This [the Aljafería] ordered it to be done by Ahmed al-Muqtadir Billáh.

The Golden Hall

The Golden Hall had at its east and west ends two rooms that were private bedrooms possibly for royal use. Today the bedroom on the western flank has been lost, which was used as a royal bedroom and was also used by the Aragonese kings until the 14th century.

The majority of the atauriques plasterwork, which covered the walls of these rooms with decorative panels carved in plaster, as well as an alabaster plinth two and a half meters high and the white marble floors of the original palace, have been lost. The remains that have been preserved, both in museums and the few found in this royal hall, however, allow us to reconstruct the appearance of this polychrome decoration, which, in its day, must have been splendid.

The ceilings, wooden ceiling tiles, reproduced the firmament, and the entire room was an image of the cosmos, filled with symbols of the power that the monarch of Zaragoza exercised over the celestial universe, who thus appeared as the heir of the caliphs.

Access to the Golden Room is through a canvas with three openings. A very large central one, made up of five double marble columns with very stylized Islamic alabaster capitals that support four intersecting mixtilinear arches, between which, in height, other simpler horseshoe arches are located.

The entrance porch to the Golden Hall

Towards the south, there is another room of similar size that opens onto the patio through a porch with large multi-lobed arches. Once again there is a tripartite space, and its east and west ends extend perpendicularly with two side galleries that are accessed through wide multi-lobed arches and which end at the end of their arms in two pointed arches, also multi-lobed, whose alfiz is decorated with complex lacework and reliefs of atauriques.

It should be noted that this entire structure seeks an appearance of solemnity and majesty that the shallow depth of these rooms would not give to a spectator entering the king's hall. Furthermore, it must be taken into account that all the plasterwork ornamentation of the palace was polychrome in blue and red tones in the backgrounds and gold in the atauriques. Among the filigrees is the representation of a bird, an unusual zoomorphic figuration in Islamic art that could represent a dove, a pheasant or a symbol of the king as a winged being.

The traces of intersecting mixtilinear arches are characteristic of this palace and occur for the first time in La Aljafería, from where they will spread to future Islamic buildings.

On the eastern side of the portico there is a sacred space, the mosque, which is accessed through a doorway inspired by Caliphal art and which is described below.

The mosque and the oratory

At the eastern end of the entrance portico to the Golden Hall, there is a small mosque or private oratory for the use of the monarch and his courtiers. It is accessed through a doorway that ends in a horseshoe arch inspired by the Mosque of Córdoba but with S-shaped salmeres, a novelty that will imitate Almoravid and Nasrid art. This arch is supported by two columns with highly geometric leaf capitals, in line with the Granada art creations of muqarna solutions. Its alfiz is profusely ornamented with plant decoration and above it there is a frieze of intersecting semicircular arches.

Already inside the oratory there is a small space with a square plan but with chamfered corners, which turns it into a false octagonal plan. In the southeastern sector, facing Mecca, the mihrab niche is located. The front of the mihrab is made up of a very traditional horseshoe arch, with Cordoba shapes and alternating threaded voussoirs, some decorated with vegetal reliefs and others smooth (although originally they were adorned with pictorial decoration), which recall the thread of the mihrab of the Mosque of Córdoba, although what there were rich materials (Byzantine-style mosaic tiles), in Zaragoza - with less pomp and budget than the caliphate Córdoba - are plaster stuccos and polychrome typical of Moorish alarifazgo, decoration that has been lost almost entirely in the Palace. Continuing with the arch of the façade, an alfiz frames its rear surface, in whose albanegas two gallon rosettes appear recessed, as does the dome inside the mihrab.

The rest of the walls of the mosque are decorated with linked mixtilinear blind arches and decorated on the entire surface with vegetal atauriques of caliphal inspiration. These arches are supported by columns topped with slender basket capitals. A plinth of square marble slabs covers the lower part of the mosque's walls.

All of this is finished off in elevation with a splendid theory of intersecting multi-lobed arches, which, in this case, are not completely blind, since those in the chamfered corners now allow the angles of the square-plan structure to be seen. This gallery is the only one that preserves remains of the pictorial decoration of the 11th century, whose motifs were rescued by Francisco Íñiguez Almech after removing the whitewash with which they were covered after the Aljafería was transformed into a chapel. Unfortunately, this restorer, laudable for having saved the monument from ruin, worked at a time with different criteria than the current ones, since he intended to restore all the elements to their original appearance. To do this, he repainted the traces of Islamic remains with acrylic paint, which makes this action irreversible and, consequently, we will never see the original pigment, although very faded.

The dome of the mosque was not preserved, since that is the height at which the palace of the Catholic Monarchs was built; However, the characteristic octagonal plan suggests that the solution followed to the letter those existing in the mass of the mosque of Córdoba, that is, a dome of semicircular arches that intertwine forming an octagon in the center. Francisco Íñiguez's covering proposal is, however, in this case, reversible, since it is a removable plaster dome. In 2006, Bernabé Cabañero Subiza, C. Lasa Gracia and J. L. Mateo Lázaro postulated that "the ribs of the vault [...] must have the section of horseshoe arches forming an eight-pointed star scheme with a dome domed in the center, like those existing in the two side domes of the transept of the mosque of Córdoba.

The Patio of Santa Isabel

This is the open and landscaped space that unified the entire Taifal palace. The north and south porticos flowed into it, and probably, rooms and outbuildings located to the east and west of this central patio.

Its name comes from the birth in the Aljafería of the Infanta Isabel of Aragón, who was queen of Portugal in 1282. The original pool on the south has been preserved, while the one on the northern front, from the 14th century, has been covered with a floor of wood. The restoration attempted to give the patio its original splendor, and to achieve this, a floor of marble slabs was installed in the corridors that surround the orange and flower garden.

The arcade that can be seen looking towards the south portico is restored by emptying the original arches that are deposited in the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid and the Museum of Zaragoza. They represent the greatest daring and distance due to their innovation with respect to the caliphal models of the arches on the north side.

According to Christian Ewert, who has studied the arches of the Aljafería for fifteen years, the more the ornamentation of the arches is related to noble areas (Golden Hall and Mosque), the more respect they have for the Córdoban tradition from which they originate.

South side rooms

Completing the tour of the palace from the 11th century, you reach the south portico, which consists of an archway in its southern flank that gives access to a portico with two side rooms.

This portico was the anteroom of a large south hall that would have the same tripartite layout as that existing on the north side, and of which only the access archway of mixtilinear arches with geometric decoration remains. Perhaps in this southern sector the greatest daring in terms of arches occurs, through the interweaving of lobed, mixtilinear forms, and the inclusion of small reliefs of shafts and capitals with an exclusively ornamental function.

The complexity of the lacework, atauriques and carvings leads to a baroque aesthetic, which constitutes a prelude to the filigree of the art of the Alhambra and which is one of the most beautiful of all Andalusian art.

The palace of Peter IV the Ceremonious

After the capture of Zaragoza by Alfonso I the Battler in 1118, the Aljafería was enabled as the palace of the kings of Aragon and as a church, not being substantially modified until the 18th century XIV with the performance of Peter IV the Ceremonious.

This king expanded the palace premises in 1336 and ordered the construction of the church of San Martín in the entrance courtyard to the fortress. At this time, the use of the Aljafería as the starting point of the route that led to the Seo is documented, where the Aragonese monarchs were solemnly crowned and swore the privileges.

The Church of San Martín

The church of San Martín takes advantage of the walls of the northwest corner of the wall, to the point that one of its towers was used as a sacristy and gave its name to the patio that gives access to the Taifal enclosure.

The factory, in the Gothic-Mudejar style, consists of two naves with three sections each, originally facing east and supported by two pillars with semi-columns attached to the middle of the faces of the pillar, whose section is remembered in the quadrilobes that house the coat of arms of the King of Aragon in the albanegas of the cover, which dates back to the first decade of the 15th century and which we will stop at later.

The vaults of these naves, with simple ribbing, are housed on front arches and pointed perpiaños, while the diagonals are semicircular. At the corners of the vaults there are rosettes with the coats of arms of the Aragonese monarchy. Of its decoration, only fragments of the pictorial covering and some mixtilinear grated arches directly inspired by the Muslim palace remain.

Notable on the exterior is the previously mentioned Mudejar brick doorway, built in the time of Martin I the Human and open in the last section of the south nave.

This doorway is articulated by a very low carpanel arch, sheltered by another larger pointed arch. Framing both, a double alfiz decorated with studded motifs forming rhombus panels.

In the albanegas there are two quadrilobed medallions that house shields with the image of the insignia of the King of Aragon. In the resulting tympanum between the arches there is a band of intersecting mixtilinear blind arches, which again refer to the series of the Hudi palace. This strip is interrupted by a box that houses a recently incorporated relief.

The church was remodeled in the 18th century, adding a nave before it and therefore covering the Mudejar façade described above. The pillars and walls were renovated and plastered in the neoclassical style. The entire reform was eliminated during the restorations by Francisco Íñiguez, although from the existing photographic documentation, it is known that there was a slender tower that now appears with a crenellated finish, inspired by the appearance of the Mudejar church, and in the century XVIII culminated with a curious bulbous spire.

The Mudejar palace

This is not an independent palace, but rather an extension of the Muslim palace that was still in use. Pedro IV tried to provide larger rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms to the Aljafería, since the taifal bedrooms had become too small for the use of the Ceremonious.

These new rooms are grouped on the northern sector of the Andalusian palace, at different height levels. This new Mudejar factory was extraordinarily respectful of the pre-existing construction, both in plan and elevation, and was made up of three large rectangular rooms covered by extraordinary aljarfes or Mudejar wooden ceilings.

Also from this period is the western archway of pointed arches in the Patio de Santa Isabel, intradosed in lobed arches, and a small alcove with a square floor plan and covered with an octagonal wooden dome and a curious small entrance door in a pointed arch. lobed intrados circumscribed in a very fine alfiz, whose spandrel is adorned with ataurique. This door leads to a triple loggia of semicircular arches. The alcove is located in the building block above the mosque.

The palace of the Catholic Monarchs

In the last years of the XV century, the Catholic Monarchs ordered the construction of a palace for royal use on the north wing of the enclosure Andalusian, configuring a second floor superimposed on that of the existing palace. The building broke the upper parts of the taifal rooms, where the beams that would support the new palace were inserted.

The works are dated between 1488 and 1495 and Moorish master builders continued to participate in them, such as Faraig and Mahoma de Gali, who, as happened with Pedro IV (Yucef and Mohamat Bellito) maintained the tradition of the builders of the Mudejar in the Aljafería.

The palace is accessed by climbing the noble staircase, a monumental construction made up of two wide sections with parapets of openwork geometric plasterwork illuminated by angular half-point windows with fine decoration of leaves and stems of Gothic roots and Mudejar influences, finished in crochet on the keystone of the arches.

The ceiling, grandiose, as in the rest of the palatial rooms, is covered with superb transverse vaults arranged between the girders, and are decorated with tempera paint with iconographic motifs related to the Catholic Monarchs: the yoke and the Arrows alternate with boxes of grisaille decoration of grotesques and candelieri, which announces the typical decoration of the Renaissance.

The staircase gives access to a corridor on the first floor that connects with the palace rooms themselves. It opens to a gallery of torso-shaft columns that rest on footings with anthropomorphic reliefs at their ends. To support this viewpoint and the rest of the new rooms, it was necessary to section the upper areas of the Taifal halls from the XI century and arrange in front of the north porch five powerful octagonal pillars that, together with some pointed arches behind them, form a new portico that unites the two aforementioned perpendicular Andalusian pavilions.

The main entrance to the throne room stands out: it has a three-lobed lowered arch, garnished with a five-lobed tympanum, in the center of which the shield of the monarchy of the Catholic Monarchs appears represented, in which the coats of arms of the kingdoms of Castile, León, Aragon, Sicily and Granada, supported by two lion lieutenants. The rest of the decorative field is finished with a delicate openwork vegetal ornamentation, which reappears in the continuous capitals of the jambs. The entire façade is made of hardened plaster, which is the predominant visible material in the interiors of the Aljafería, as the Mudejar craftsmen perpetuate the materials and techniques common in Islam.

On the same wall, two large windows with a triple mixtilinear arch with openwork lattices on their keystones escort the entrance, thanks to which the interior space of the royal rooms is illuminated.

Once the gallery space has been visited, several rooms are arranged that precede the great Throne Room, which are called "rooms of the lost steps." These are three small rooms with a square floor plan connected to each other by large openwork windows with lattices that overlook the courtyard of San Martín, and which served as waiting anterooms for those who were going to be received in audience by the kings.

Nowadays only two are visible, since the third was closed when the dome of the mosque was replaced. Its roof was moved to an annex next to the throne room.

One of the most valuable elements of these rooms are their floors, which were originally square tiles and hexagonal trusses of colored glazed ceramic, forming whimsical borders. They were made in the historic potteries of Muel (Zaragoza) at the end of the XV century. The preserved fragments have been used to restore the floor in its entirety with ceramics that imitate the shape and layout of the old flooring, although not its quality of glazed reflections.

The other notable element is its lofty Mudejar-Catholic kings-style roofs, made up of three magnificent taujeles made by Aragonese Mudejar carpenters. These ceilings present geometric grids of wood subsequently carved, painted and gilded with gold leaf, between whose moldings they display the well-known heraldic motifs of the Catholic Monarchs: the yoke, the arrows and the Gordian knot together with the classic motto "Tanto monta" (for undoing the Gordian knot, both cutting it and untying it, according to the well-known anecdote attributed to Alexander the Great), as well as a good number of leaf litter rosettes topped with bright pine cones.

The throne room

More complex and difficult to describe is the magnificence and sumptuousness of the ceiling that covers the Throne Room. Its dimensions are very considerable (20 meters long by 8 meters wide) and its coffered ceiling is supported by thick beams and sleepers that are decorated with laces that at the intersections form eight-pointed stars, while generating thirty large and deep square coffers..

Inside these coffers are octagons with a central rosette of curly leaf litter that ends in large hanging pine cones that symbolize fertility and immortality. This ceiling was reflected in the floor, which reproduces the thirty squares with their respective inscribed octagons.

Under the coffered ceiling runs an airy walkable gallery of ogee arches with openwork parapets from which guests could watch the royal ceremonies. Finally, this entire structure is supported by an arrocabe with navel moldings carved with vegetal and zoomorphic themes (cardina, branches, vine fruits, winged dragons, fantastic animals...), and, on the frieze that surrounds the entire perimeter From the living room, a legend in Gothic calligraphy appears that reads:

Ferdinandus, Hispaniarum, Siciliae, Sardiniae, Corsicae, Balearumque rex, principum optimus, prudens, strenuus, pius, constans, iustus, felix, et Helisabeth regina, religione et animi escalaine supra mulierem, insigni coniutis, auxiliante Christo, victatorios MCCCCLXXXXII.

The translation of this inscription is:

Fernando, king of Spain, Sicily, Corsica and Balearics, the best of the princes, prudent, courageous, pious, constant, just, happy, and Isabel, queen, superior to every woman for her piety and greatness of spirit, insigned victorious husbands with the help of Christ, after liberating Andalusia from Moors, expelled the old and fierce enemy, ordered to build this work the year of the Salvation of 1492.

Modern and contemporary era

At the beginning of 1486, the area of the Patio de San Martín was designated as the headquarters of the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition and rooms adjacent to the patio were set up to house the officials of this organization. This is probably the origin of the Torre del Trovador being used as a prison.

The new function (which would last until the initial years of the XVIII century) triggered an event that would culminate in a project of reform undertaken under the mandate of Philip II by which it would henceforth become a military base. In 1591, in the events known as Alteraciones de Zaragoza, the persecuted secretary of King Philip II, Antonio Pérez, took advantage of the Privilege of Demonstration contemplated by the jurisdiction of Aragon in order to elude the imperial troops. However, the Court of the Inquisition had jurisdiction over all the jurisdictions of the kingdoms, and, for this reason, he was confined in the dungeons of the inquisitorial headquarters of the Aljafería, which caused an uprising of the people in the face of what they considered a violation of the foral right, and they went to the assault of the Aljafería to rescue him. After the forceful action of the royal army, the revolt was put down, and Philip II decided to consolidate the Aljafería as a fortified citadel under his authority to prevent similar revolts.

The design of the work, which consisted of a "modern" military building, was entrusted to the Sienese military engineer, Tiburzio Spannocchi. He built a set of rooms attached to the south and east walls that hid the ultra-semicircular towers inside, although on the east façade it did not affect those flanking the entrance door and from these onwards. Surrounding the entire building, a crenellated wall was built that left a space for a walkway inside and that ended at its four corners in four pentagonal bastions, the beginnings of which can be seen today. The entire complex was surrounded by a twenty-meter-wide moat, re-excavated in 1982 at the initiative of the architect Ángel Peropadre Muniesa, which was bridged by two drawbridges on the eastern and northern flanks. The appearance of this new plant is reflected in the plan of the Aljafería as we know it after the last restoration completed in 1998.

The Spannocchi Aljafería remained without substantial changes until 1705, when due to the War of the Spanish Succession it was the accommodation of two companies of French troops, which led to an increase in the parapets of the lower wall of the moat carried out by the engineer military Dezveheforz.^[who?]

But the decisive transformation as a barracks occurred in 1772 at the initiative of Charles III, in which all the façades were remodeled to the way the western one is currently presented, and which converted the interior spaces into quarters for soldiers and officers. who were staying in the building. In the western third of the palace, a large parade ground was configured into which the rooms of the different companies flow, made with simplicity and functionality, following the rationalist spirit of the second half of the 18th century and the practical purpose for which the built areas were used. so. The only thing left pending was the addition in 1862 of four neo-Gothic towers, of which those located in the northwest and southwest corner have survived to this day.

It was precisely in the middle of the 19th century when Mariano Nougués Secall raised the alarm about the deterioration of the remains. Andalusians and Mudejars of the palace in his 1845 report entitled Description and history of the Aljafería castle, a rigorous study in which he urged the preservation of this valuable historical-artistic complex. Even Queen Elizabeth II contributed funds for the restoration, and a commission was created in 1848 to undertake it; But in 1862 the Aljafería passed from the property of the Royal Heritage into the hands of the Ministry of War, which aborted its restoration and aggravated the damage caused.

The deterioration continued until in 1947 the architect Francisco Íñiguez Almech undertook, practically alone, the task of its comprehensive restoration, in which he was occupied until his death in 1982.

In the 1960s it was used as a military barracks, and the decoration was covered with plaster.

In 1984, the parliamentary commission created to search for a definitive headquarters for the Cortes of Aragon recommended locating the regional parliament in the Aljafería palace and the Zaragoza City Council (owner of the building) agreed to give part of the complex for this purpose free of charge. a term of 99 years. In this way, the restoration operations gained new momentum with the actions of Ángel Peropadre, Juan Antonio Souto (in archaeological work), and, starting in 1985, Luis Franco Lahoz and Mariano Pemán Gavín, who carried out the final project. restoration of the Aljafería for the location of the headquarters of the Cortes of Aragon. Once the works were completed, the Aljafería was inaugurated as a historical-artistic monument in 1998 by Prince Felipe de Borbón.

Bibliography used

• Borrás GualisGonzalo, “The Islamic City”, in Guillermo Fatás (dir.), Historic-artistic Guide to Zaragoza (3rd ed. rev. and amp.), Zaragoza, Ayto. de Zaragoza, 1991, pp. 71-100. ISBN 978-84-86807-76-4 Cfr. also the chapter of Biel Ibáñez, María Pilar, "New News about the Palace of the Aljafery" with the news and the data updated until 2008, in Guillermo Fatás (dir.), Historic-artistic Guide to Zaragoza, 4th ed. revised and expanded, Zaragoza, Ayto. de Zaragoza, 2008, pp. 711-727. ISBN 978-84-7820-948-4
• Cabañero Subiza, Bernabé (dir.) et al., The Aljaferia, vol. I, Zaragoza, Cortes de Aragón, 1998. ISBN 978-84-86794-93-4
• Cabañero SubizaBarnabas and Carmelo de Lasa, The Golden Hall of the Aljafería: formal reconstitution and symbolic interpretation, Zaragoza, Institute of Islamic Studies and the Near East, 2004. ISBN 978-84-95736-34-5
• Exposition Sebastian, Manuel, José Luis Pano Gracia and M.a Isabel Sepúlveda Sauras, The Aljafería de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Cortes de Aragón, 2006 (6.a ed.). ISBN 978-84-86794-13-2