Modern Spain is an unashamedly Catholic, European country. A great – if not the great – European superpower of the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries AD, a united Spain was a formidable foe for her enemies, notably England and France. But it was not always so. When the Germanic-speaking Buri, Suevi, Vandals and Alans entered the Roman province of Hispania in AD 409, they heralded centuries of disunity and fragmentation. The Iberian Peninsula was divided into petty kingdoms, which eventually coalesced around the Visigothic ruler Recared, who in AD 589 converted to Christianity. In AD 711, a new ruling force emerged to unite Spain, this time not from Europe, but from North Africa, and by extension, the Middle East. A little under a century earlier, the Prophet Muhammad had died; in his wake, the Muslim world was led by Caliphs ruling as they believed Muhammad would have ruled. This meant active and energetic expansion. The Umayyad Caliphate had conquered most of North Africa by AD 711, and when the local governor of the area now encompassing Morocco, Tariq ibn Ziyad, led a raiding party of 1,500 men into southern Spain, he caught the Visigoths by surprise. Encouraged by his success, the Umayyads sent reinforcements, and by AD 719, Islamic Spain – Al Andalus, as it was known – stretched from Coruña in the northwest to Barcelona in the southeast. The Spanish Christian population gradually fought back against the Muslim conquerors; the first Christian victory at the Battle of Covadonga in AD 722 was not, however, a deciding blow. La Reconquista, the ‘reconquest’ of Spain from the Muslims, was not completed until the glorious monarchs Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, defeated the Nasarid Kingdom of Grenada in AD 1492.

Even after the Muslims were ejected from Spain, the remarkable influence of the Islamic world continued unabated. The Islamic world produced some of the greatest pottery, in particular, of the Middle Ages. The potters of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618 – AD 907) in China traded their wares extensively across the Silk Road, and through to the Middle East. Their remarkable skill with glaze was eventually replicated by the Muslim recipients of the wares, whose potters sought to emulate the expensive imported wares. The brightness of the colours was unparalleled by anything produced in Europe. Blue glaze, especially, derived from cobalt, was unheard of outside of China before then. These skills were transferred from the Middle East throughout the Islamic World, all the way to Spain. This was the beginning of the so-called Hispano-Moresque wares. Opaque white tin-glazes and lustre-wares became especially associated with the Hispano-Moresque style, but the decorative repertoire was expanded to include themes which might be attractive to their European neighbours.

One of the most remarkable uses to which Hispano-Moresque potters put their glazes was the decorative tiles which they used to adorn palaces, mosques and even churches. The most famous such palace was the Alhambra, the great fortress of the Kingdom of Granada. Begun in AD 1238, the Alhambra was something of a mystical place in Spanish lore. In the imagination of the Christians in northern Spain, it became something of a Shangri-La or El Dorado. When the Muslims were expelled from Grenada, Ferdinand and Isabella took up residency in the Alhambra, altering it to Christian tastes, and revealing to the world the remarkable tile-work for which it became so famous. These nine tiles, created in Toledo, reflect this fascination with the Alhambra, and with the Muslim Period in Spain. Using skills honed by Islamic potters from the Tenth Century AD onwards, they are a vibrant link to Al Andalus. The tiles bear a traditional Islamic pattern: the eight-pointed star, known as the girih pattern, is able to be infinitely tessellated, and therefore suggests something about the infinite universe beyond our comprehension. The girih is made from two squares. Overlapping and at an angle, which is supposed to bring to mind the chapter divisions of the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book. The geometric patterns radiating from the girih are filled with vibrant block colour: golden yellow, deep blue, turquoise, and a burgundy red. These colours formed the core of the Islamic repertoire. Along with black and white, red, green (represented by the turquoise), yellow, and blue, represent the earliest Arab caliphates. Yellow, for example, which features so prominently here, was the colour of the Umayyads who first conquered Spain.