Grenada - Old City October 25 and some of downtown

We got to our hotel late on October 24 (from the airport) and woke up to a cool morning (although our hotel room was hot because the a/c wasn't working and we couldn't get the windows open). The coolness was partly because Grenada is about 2000' above sea level.

The first image shows George and Ann at an overlook. The Alhambra is on the left on the ridge. The new city is in the background. In the very back are some mountains. The highest parts of these mountains were snow covered (the peak of the Sierra Nevada, which means 'mountains of snow' in Spanish, is about 11,000 feet).

 We began a walk through the old city which included the old Jewish district which later became occupied by the higher income gypsies according to our guide (assuming I understood her). 

The gypsies didn't come to Spain until about 100 years after the Jews and Moslems were expelled from Spain in 1492 and 1502 respectively.  Soon after the gypsies arrived they became subjected to the Inquisition and quite a few had property confiscated and a few were even executed.

The second image shows a house that keeps its show plates on the exterior walls of the house.

The third image is, per our guide, an entrance to property that once belonged to a Jewish family.



The 4th image show some in our group looking at another house which was thought to have been part of the Jewish quarter. In the background is a hill which is where the poorer of the gypsy population lived, many in cave-like dwellings.

The fifth image shows a street sign. 'Callejon' is street and 'Mentidero" means liar. So basically, it means 'Liar's Lane'.
 

The sixth image is another of the narrow streets in the old city.

 The  seventh image is at a little plaza where we stopped to buy some Cokes and rest a few minutes.

This plaza was, at one time the center of the Jewish Quarter (before 1066 when there was a massacre of Jews by moslems and maybe several times after the Jewish Quarter was repopulated).  The plaza has had a number of new tiles placed but is still the same plaza functionally.

The 8th image shows the gate by which we left the 'old city'. It is part of the city walls built by the Moors.

The 9th image shows Ann and, to her right, another of our tour, on a plaza overlooking a valley. We actually walked down many, many steps into that valley to get to part of the new city.

The 10th image is on the way down. Some of our group are in the image but what I really wanted to get in the picture is the beautiful lavender plant on the wall.

The 11th image is a very near the downtown new city. It is a narrow street and, interestingly, the drainage is in the middle of the street rather than the curb.  A fair number of older streets in both Spain and Portugal were like this.

The 12th image is the Isabel Catolica square in the downtown of Granada. It has Columbus asking Isabel for funds for the first voyage.  In 1492, Isabel and Ferdinand had a palace in Granada and that, per most sources, is where the deal between Isabel and Columbus was made.

The 13th image is near the Isabel Catolica square but it has a Jewish theme. The statue honors Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon who was a physician and, more importantly, a translator and the founder of a translation institution in the 12th century. The actual institution operated in France since Judah and the others had to leave Granada sometime after about 1150 due to the Almohades persecution. The Almohades were a warlike and fanatical Muslim sect who had overthrown a warlike but slightly less fanatical sect, the Almoravides. The Almoravides had been invited to Iberia by the Granada caliph to help fight the Christians 60 years earlier.  The Almoravides eventually ousted the caliph who had invited them and set up their own regime and then the Almohades did likewise to the Almoravides. 

The translators created Hebrew and Latin versions of important philosophical works, for example, 'Beliefs and Opinions' a work of Saadia Gaon (10th century) and the' Kuzari', a mid 12th century work of Judah ha Levi (both were originally in arabic).  Translators subsequent to Judah created Latin versions of Arabic commentaries on Aristotle's Logic, Galen's De motu musculorum (the movement of muscles) and other important classical works. The work of a translator in those days involved quite a bit of commentary as well as pure translation so the translators had to acquire a high level of subject matter literacy as well as language skills to do their work.