Cynthia Robinson, Cornell University “How to See the World: Metaphor, Symbol and Illumination in Nasrid Visual Culture”

Cynthia Robinson, Cornell University “How to See the World: Metaphor, Symbol and Illumination in Nasrid Visual Culture”

In scholarship of the past few decades, symbol and metaphor as couched in poetry, rhymed prose and sacred texts, have been sow to provide productive lenses though which to reconstruct the phenomenology of viewers’ experiences of numerous medieval Islamic built environments. My own previous work included deep exploration of these themes in both fitna/ Taifa (11th c) and Almoravid (late 11th -12th c) contexts. My present project brings these concerns into Nasrid and post- Nasrid contexts of Granada, where metaphor’s task might be said to have morphed from one of transformation to one of embodiment, of assisting audiences in comprehending the ”true” nature and essence of what they see. This paper will focus on two key case studies: the first, a lighting display confected for the (only and quite lavish) celebration of the mawlid orchestrated by Muhammad V in December of 1362, within the precincts of the Alhambra; the second, an inscription containing the famous “Light Verse” known to have forms part of the program of ornament commissioned for Granada’s Madrasa Yusufiyya in the 1340s.  Neither object of investigation survives physically— texts provide our only windows onto them, and will serve as our departure point for their reconstruction and interpretation.

Co-sponsored by the Departments of History of Art, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Spanish and Portuguese at Penn, and the Middle East Center