Mudéjar (Christian/Jewish-Arabic Synthesis)
Artesonado, Yesería, Alicatado (Azulejos)
Alcázar (Seville), El Tránsito (Toledo)
Mudéjar Architecture of Aragon
1. The Mudéjar Architectural Synthesis
The term Mudéjar (from the Arabic مُدَجَّن mudajjan, meaning "those permitted to remain") designates the unique intercultural architectural style that arose in Iberia from the 12th through 16th centuries. Following the Christian Reconquista of cities like Toledo (1085), Cordoba (1236), and Seville (1248), Christian monarchs and Jewish patrons commissioned Muslim master builders, stuccoists, and carpenters to construct palaces, synagogues, churches, and civic towers using Arabic decorative geometry.
Artesonado (*Armaduras de Lazo*)
Magnificent coffered timber ceilings built by master carpenters (*carpinteros de lo blanco*). Built from interlocking polygonal cedar beams without iron nails, forming inverted trough-shaped vaults (*aljarfes*) covered in geometric star rosettes.
Yesería (Carved Stucco Arabesques)
Intricately sculpted gypsum plaster reliefs covering walls and arch spandrels with interlaced floral arabesques (*ataurique*), sebka lattice screens, and bilingual epigraphic friezes.
Alicatado & Azulejos (Tilework)
Glazed polychrome ceramic tile panels lining the lower wainscoting (*zócalos*) of rooms. Ceramicists cut individually fired monochrome tiles into geometric polygons with pincers to assemble multi-colored star grids.
2. Masterpiece Case Studies: Toledo and Seville
Sinagoga del Tránsito (Toledo, 1357 CE)
Commissioned by Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia, Jewish treasurer to King Pedro of Castile. The prayer hall features breathtaking Mudéjar yesería uniting Hebrew Psalms (in elegant square Sephardic script) with Arabic vegetal scrolls and the royal Castilian lions and castles.
Santa María la Blanca (Toledo, 1180 CE)
Originally the Ibn Shoshan Synagogue. It features 32 octagonal brick pillars covered in plaster supporting horseshoe arches with pinecone-sculpted capitals, built by Moorish craftsmen for the Toledan Jewish community.
Palacio de Pedro I, Real Alcázar (Seville, 1364 CE)
Built by King Pedro I utilizing craftsmen from Seville, Toledo, and Granada's Nasrid court. The Courtyard of the Maidens (*Patio de las Doncellas*) features delicate polylobed sebka arches resting on marble columns.
All course illustrations are original works created for The House of Geometry.