In the 1770s Muhammad al-Miknasi visited the palace of Pedro I of Seville, built in the 1360s. ‘The house was beautiful’, he noted, ‘but unusual because it was very much like the residence of the Muslim kings’. In this paper I will consider the palace’s relationship to earlier structures on the site, and to the near-contemporary Alhambra in Granada. In light of recent work on the epigraphy and ornament of the Alhambra, I consider the aesthetic, functional and political choices that informed so-called mudéjar architecture in medieval Iberia.
Image caption: The façade of Pedro I’s Palace in Seville, built 1360s. Photo: Tom Nickson
