Experience, enjoy, read and see the Alhambra in a single volume … Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife and publishers Edilux have recently issued a new, extended, revised edition of Reading the Alhambra: A visual guide to the Alhambra through its inscriptions. The book is the fruit of research carried out by José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, lecturer in History of Art at the University of Granada. It is an approach aimed at giving a better understanding of the uses and functions, forms and meanings of the different areas of the palace, all resulting from a refined and elevated concept of poetry as an instrument and means of perpetuation of the political and spiritual power of the Nasrid monarchs.
The 2nd edition of Reading the Alhambra contains 900 photos, drawings and three-dimensional recreations, along with 16 maps, and is issued with the DVD Sentir la Alhambra, in 6 languages, containing recitals in Arabic of poems, verses from the Koran, scrolling calligraphic inscriptions and an original sound track.
To celebrate the Granada Book Fair, PAG and Edilux are giving away a copy of Sentir la Alhambra to all those who bought the first edition of the book. To pick up your DVD, simply present your copy of the book at the Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife or Edilux stands at the Book Fair, Plaza de la Fuente de las Batallas, Granada.
Puerta Vílchez compares in his work epigraphic inscriptions at the Alhambra with literary sources, particularly the incomplete Dīwān manuscript, by Ibn Zamrak, compiled by the poet-king Yusuf III and held in the Muhammad Tawfiq al-Nayfar Collection, edited in 1997.