Integrating Aesthetic and Politics: The Mawlid Celebration in the Alhambra

The book closes with a study of the only extant Nasrid account of the Alhambra, Ibn al-Khaṭïb's text on the mawlid, the commemoration of the birth of the Prophet. The chapter begins with a comparative analysis of mawlid celebrations in other medieval Muslim courts focusing on the role of processions and threshold spaces, such as discussed in chapter 2. Ibn al-Khaṭïb also describes a royal tent, now lost, but refrained here, in light of chapter 4, as a case of textile architecture. The key to the analysis of the text, then, is the inter-medial relationship between the temporary tent and the permanent buildings as a ceremonial setting. This temporal dimension was thematized in the "poems of the hours" recited to measure the time of the event, elucidated here in connection with the poetic figures studied in chapter 3; as an instance of the relationship between static and kinetic elements introduced in chapter 1 ; and, further, with respect to the political and ideological dimensions of the ceremonial. Ibn al-Khaṭïb's account thus testifies to the inter-medial conception of space: an integrated aesthetic experience of architecture, poetry and textiles in the court ceremonial of the Alhambra.