Paintings, engravings and drawings, as well as a wide and detailed text information, have allowed a quite reliable restoration of the plan of the mosque of aljama of Granada, besides Arab chronics, Christian texts from the 15th to the 18th century and graphic representations of the mosque aljama of Granada from the 15th century and the plan of 1705 used by professor Antonio Fernández-Puertas, of the department of Art History of the University of Granada in his research work “The mosque of aljama of Granada”, published in the n. 53 of the journal “Miscelánea de Estudios Árabes y Hebraicos” edited by the UGR.
After the Muslim invasion pf the peninsula, during the Omeya emirate and caliphate, Medina Elvira still was the capital city of the province of Elvira until it was destructed by the Berbers in 1010, when the population moved and founded the present city of Granada.
According to professor Antonio Fernández Puertas, “the mosque was built by the Ziris in the plain, when the city extended outside the precincts of the Old Alcazaba (castle), located in the South hillside of the hill of the Albaycín, a place where the emigrants of Medina Elvira en settled at first. Other mosques must have been built before, but during the kingdom of Badis ibn Habas (1038-1073) the city must have extended to the banks of the river Darro, the left one occupied by the Jewish quarter and the right one by Moslems and Mozarabs”.
The subteranean aljibe is the only remain of the mosque that still subsists. It is partially under the Lonja (market building) and the square, bordering the Royal Chapel. It measures 8,45 by 6,45 metres and it is divided into three naves by six brick pillars that support the groin vaults.
Professor and researcher Fernández-Puertas dates the aljibe “in the Ziri period because it was built deep in the proximity of the wall of the 11th century mosque and if it would have been built in the Nazari age it would have threatened the building of the aljama from the foundations.”
