Alhambra

A fortress, probably Visigothic, stood on the Sabika hill in the ninth century. The first reference to the Qal'at al-Hamra comes from the fighting between Arabs and Muladíes under 'Abdallah ibn Muhammad (888–912), when documents describe the red castle as small, its walls incapable of deterring an army. The name means 'the red one', usually explained by walls of rammed earth reddened by iron oxide in the clay.

After the Caliphate of Córdoba collapsed in 1009 the Zirids established the Taifa of Granada; the fortress on Sabika later formed the foundations of the Alhambra's Alcazaba. Under the Zirids the kingdom's most powerful figure was the Jewish administrator Samuel ha-Nagid, or Isma'il ibn Nagrilla, who built a palace on the hill, possibly where the present palaces stand; nothing of it remains.

Muhammad I, Ibn al-Ahmar, the first Nasrid emir, settled in Granada in 1238 and began the Alhambra that same year. An Arabic manuscript records that he marked out the foundations and that the ramparts were finished, with water brought up from the river, before the year was out. Only some fortification walls survive from his time, chiefly the Alcazaba. The Sultan's Canal, drawing water from the mountains to the east, solidified its identity as a palace-city rather than a defensive and ascetic structure.

Muhammad III (1302–1309) built the Partal Palace, the oldest Nasrid palace still standing. Isma'il I (1314–1325) began the Comares Palace and the Rawda, the dynastic mausoleum. Yusuf I (1333–1354) added the Hall of Ambassadors and the Puerta de la Justicia. Muhammad V's reign (1354–1391, with interruptions) marked the apogee of Nasrid architecture: he built the Palace of the Lions. Little major building followed beyond the Torre de las Infantas under Muhammad VII (1392–1408).

Muhammad XI, the last Nasrid sultan, surrendered the Emirate of Granada in January 1492 without the Alhambra being attacked, after the Catholic Monarchs took the surrounding territory in overwhelming numbers. The Alhambra became property of the Spanish Crown, and the monarchs stayed in Granada until 25 May 1492. On 31 March they signed the decree ordering the expulsion of every Jew in Spain who refused to convert. Christopher Columbus, who had witnessed the surrender, presented his plans for an Atlantic expedition in the Hall of Ambassadors, and on 17 April they signed his contract.

The governorship went to the Tendilla family: Íñigo López de Mendoza y Quiñones, second Count of Tendilla, the first Spanish governor, spent almost 24 years reworking the fortifications against gunpowder artillery. Charles V visited in 1526 and decided to make the Alhambra a royal residence: parts of the Nasrid palaces became royal apartments between 1528 and 1537, and a section of the Comares Palace was demolished for Pedro Machuca's Renaissance palace, begun in 1527 and left unfinished after 1637.

In 1717–1718 Philip V confiscated the family's Alhambra properties and dismissed the Marquis of Mondéjar, in retaliation for his opposition in the War of the Spanish Succession; their departure began the site's most severe period of decline. Napoleon's army occupied Granada from 1810 to 1812 and held the Alhambra as a fortified position; on evacuating, the French tried to dynamite it to stop it serving as one again, blowing up eight towers before a Spanish soldier, José García, disabled the remaining fuses. An earthquake did further damage in 1821.

Restoration began in 1828 under José Contreras, whose son Rafael and grandson Mariano followed; the family directed conservation to 1907. They worked to a theory of stylistic restoration, adding elements they judged to be in an 'Arabic style', among them the Persian-looking spherical domes fitted to the Court of the Lions in 1858–1859, which had nothing to do with Nasrid architecture. Washington Irving lived in Granada in 1830, and his Tales of the Alhambra of 1832 spurred international interest.

The government that deposed Isabella II in 1868 seized the monarchy's properties, and in 1870 the Alhambra was declared a National Monument. Leopoldo Torres Balbás, chief architect from 1923 to 1936, reversed some Contreras additions and excavated lost Nasrid structures such as the Palacio del Partal Alto. In 1984 responsibility passed to the Regional Government of Andalusia and the Alhambra and Generalife were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Managed by the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife, the complex drew 2,615,188 visitors in 2016.