GARDENS, LANDSCAPE AND VISION IN THE PALACE OF ISLAMIC SPAIN

Islamic gardens, with their waterways and beds of plants and trees, are generally regarded as an earthly reflection of paradise. D. Fairchild Ruggles offers a new interpretation, contending that the palace garden was primarily an environmental, economic, and polit ical construct. She discusses three aspects of medieval Islamic Spain: the landscape and agricultural transformation documented in A rabic scientific literature, the formation of the garden and its symbolism from the eighth through the fifteenth centuries, and the role of th...[Read more]