You are standing before the most monumental gate of the Alhambra. Its foundation inscription dates it to 1348, in the time of Sultan Yusuf I, and calls it Bab al-Sharia, a name usually translated as the Gate of the Esplanade. Behind its great arch, a bent passage forced you to turn several times.

1The hand and the key

Look up at the keystone of the outer arch: there is an open hand carved on a marble plaque. Further in, above the second arch, there is a key. Historians read them as symbols: the hand is linked to protection against the evil eye and to the precepts of Islam; the key, to faith and the power to open and close.

According to the tradition Washington Irving recorded, the day the hand reaches down and grasps the key, the Alhambra will fall.

2Boabdil’s farewell

To the east, the wall holds the Gate of the Seven Floors. A tradition, also spread by Irving, says that Boabdil left through it on 2 January 1492 and asked that no one ever pass through it again, so it was walled up. Another places his last lament on a pass south of the city, the Moor’s Sigh, where his mother allegedly scolded him for weeping like a woman over what he could not defend like a man. Those words appear in writing decades later, in texts by Bishop Antonio de Guevara, and no account from 1492 confirms them.

Next to the gate, the Fountain of Charles V, designed in the sixteenth century with the involvement of Pedro Machuca, still runs with water. Among the nearby trees stand the remains of the Bib-Rambla Gate, which you will understand at the end of this route.

3What to look for

  • The hand on the keystone of the outer arch.
  • The Fountain of Charles V, with its carved masks.
  • The gun loops of the round bastion, built for artillery.
Hand carved on a marble plaque at the keystone of the arch of the Gate of Justice
The hand on the Gate of Justice, at the heart of the prophecy Irving recorded.

Documented

The gate’s inscription dates it to 1348, under Yusuf I; the hand and the key are original reliefs from the Nasrid construction.

Oral tradition

The prophecy of the hand and the key, Boabdil’s departure through the Gate of the Seven Floors and his mother’s words are traditions with no documentary confirmation from the time.

Sources and credits

Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, entry on the Gate of Justice (alhambra-patronato.es); Washington Irving, The Alhambra (1832); Leonardo Villena, El último suspiro de Boabdil (on the origin of the words attributed to Aixa).

Photos:

  • Tower of the Alhambra’s Gate of Justice with its great arch and the Fountain of Charles V on the right: Palickap, CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • Hand carved on a marble plaque at the keystone of the arch of the Gate of Justice: Martampmm, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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