ABSTRACT

Islamic gardens have been built all across the world throughout the ages, with features inspired
from the Holy Qur’an. The features create a sense of space which is neither of this world nor of
the Heavens but of somewhere in between. The Barzakh has been mentioned in the Qur’an as a
limiter, separator between two things. Our study will focus on this concept as to the formation of
this space of the Barzakh in the Islamic Gardens.

This notion was first introduced by the Mystic Sufi Scholar Ibn al-’Arabī, which has since talked
about by many other scholar both in the east and especially in the west, by the likes of Louis
Marin in his notion of the Neutral and Michel Foucault in Heterotopia.

Due to the enormity and variety of Islamic gardens present in the world, The Courtyard Gardens
of Alhambra will be studied in depth through the lens of the Barzakh, as to what are
characteristics of a Barzakh-ian space and how it changes us whilst in its context.

THE AIM

This research seeks to encourage an interdisciplinary and multiple-faceted approach to space

through the emphasis on Islamic gardens. This study provides an original contribution to the
spatial research expressed in the arc by adding a theoretical talk about the Sufi idea of Barzakh
(the intermediate and associated space) among the premodern Islamic mystical Ibn al-’Arabī and
contemporary West theorists concerned with space, movement and aesthetics, such as Louis
Marin, Henri Lefebvre, Tim Ingold and Martin Seel. Emphasizing the role of Barzakh in the
interplay between appearance and context, this study also draws attention to the dialogue.

In this dialogue Ibn al-’Arabī explores and analyses the idea of the Barzakh he developed in
Ontology, Epistemology and Hermeneutics, to identify a wisdom theory that relies on the
convergence of experience and imagination. In the real, creative and virtual realms of the
Alhambra courtyard gardens, the unity of sense and appearance, offered by the intermediary
quality of a Barzakh is further illustrated. Looking at the Alhambra palaces and gardens, they
establish their own vocabulary in reference to Ibn al-’Arabī’s Barzakh. They demonstrate their
outer and internal gestures and promote a poetic and artistic encounter between the spectators
and the public. These gardens, considered as a Barzakh, set room in motion. This research tells
us that we are able to reach these gardens through a sensory interaction with their architectural
components, based on the example of mediaeval Islamic genres, such as riḥla and Ajā‟ib,

In addition to stressing the spatial virtues of Barzakh, this study presents a challenge to the
reliance on context and hermeneutical perception as well as its sensational and inventive
characteristics. This research therefore implies that a position that falls together as a Barzakh has
an epistemological meaning because it enables an individual to exist creatively in the universe,
leaving the academic monopoly of space as only a medium for representation. The Barzakh,
then, operates at once reverentially and poetically between the self and the universe,
interpretation and the aesthetic consciousness.
Using Barzakh as a methodical class of space will help to resolve the opposition between the
poetics and politics of space in an ongoing debate. Space known as a Barzakh gives us the
possibility to separate ourselves from a subject and object, from internal and external physical
and emotive dichotomy. This study therefore charts an epistemological, creative and aesthetic
path through the courtyard gardens of Islam through the lenses of Ibn al-’Arabī’s Barzakh.

METHODOLOGY

It can be argued that this epistemological qualification of waḥdat al wujūd forms the basis of the
dialectical rhythms of Ibn al-Arabī’s writings. It is in the dynamic unfolding of the essence of
waḥdat al wujūd that Ibn al-Arabī’s writings assume a dialectical methodology, which Salman
Bashier explains as having a notion of actuality that signifies the ceaseless unfolding of reality
and its emergence into ever higher levels of unity.2

R. W. J. Austin states that Ibn al-’Arabī reveals that harmony itself is not innovative and that
there is no implication of being or evolving within it. It is also true of duality because, where there
is no working relationship between the two, they are only two separate bodies, sterile and
opposing. These two entities requires a connecting concept, which applies to all entities, to be in a
relationship. This is also a third thing, born of their marriage and their separating attributes.
Austin states that the familiar triplicity of known-known knowledge incorporates the receptive
objectivity of the known and the active subject matter of the knowledge to create the concept of
knowledge itself.3

Therefore, truth accepts both the unity of singularity and of plurality, but also admits that these
two concepts may only become complex and imaginative embodiments of truth through
synthesis.

In his wujūd clarification, Chittick observes that Ibn al-’Arabī underlines the meaning of wujūd
in several different contexts while incorporating complexities constantly to his initial concepts.
Thus, Ibn al-Arabbi points out that wa bisa dat al wujūd is not an easy wording. Rather, the
argument is that the theory of waḥdat al wujūd constantly reforms and reframes to reshape the
imagination of his reader. Within each new background Ibn al-’Arabī articulated his intimate
association with phenomena based on the different texts from the Qur'an, hadith and kalam,
religion, cosmology and the Arabian language, and from other sources. He expressed the
intimate relationship between these phenomena.4

Chittick says that Ibn al-’Arabī should be recognised as a pioneer for the dialectical thinking. Ibn
al-’Arabī doesn't attempt to draw a conclusion or construct a single structure of philosophy; his
writings often take on a formal form, and often contradict his previous structural formulations.
The main goal of his writings is a perception of truth, so his communication turns to logic, theory,
and theology, Quran and Hadith exegesis, and poetry.5

This focus on crossing the framework of Ibn al-’Arabī’s dialectical methodology, the constant
step between absence and presence, searching and discovering. This analytical theory provides
foundation for collective innovation as a genuinely systemic approach, unlocks new horizons and
reinforces established potential. Therefore, we follow a dialectic way of thought in this study.
This does not only stress the value of collective imagination within comparative religious
philosophy; this way of thought also helps me, through interdisciplinary research methods, to
investigate memories, meanings, beliefs and emotions. Reading and studying other theory books,
gardens and aesthetics, I create new ideas which enable me to structure the Barzakh as a
multifocal lens for viewing spaces, like the Alhambra Gardens.
Therefore, writing this study in a prevailing environment of scepticism, in which the political is
always emphasised over the literary, my aim is to prove that spatial practises can play an
important part, taking into consideration the aesthetics of presentation. Richard Kearney states
that poetics entail the three roles of rising (colere), building (edificare) and making people live in
the fullness of one's being (producere).6

Taking advantage of the opportunities offered by a dialectical methodology, I will attempt my

own poetics by nurturing, designing and creating an argument which highlights the creative and
epistemological opportunities inherent in the concept of Barzakh through what Joseph Frank
calls lyrical organisation.7

The lyrical organisation puts an interpretation of an idea into play to the reader. This play
highlights unique subjects much like the musical symphony, which relies on rhythm and creative
coordination. Lyrical organisation, however, enables me to take an innovative role and imprint
my own imprint on the study of Barzakh and its creation in the courtyard gardens of Alhambra.

In conjunction with the leadership of Ibn al-’Arabī, I suggest a study which is implicitly traced as
a demonstration to demonstrate how the Barzakh makes for sensual, creative and emotional
spatial experiences. This research evolves in a layered manner in the nature of multivalence. In
order to articulate my own case and create analytical and heuristic methods for mapping my
Barzakh's spaces, I use multiple analysis techniques. Since these techniques are applicable to
individual chapters, they will be further addressed throughout the chapter.

Although we are mindful of the discrepancies technically between these theorists not only from a
history or an age but also from the historical and structural standpoints, since this study crosses
borders between different disciplines with many voices. I want to state clearly at the beginning
that I am not inexperienced borrowing in using such an interdisciplinary approach. Rather, the
approach is based very much upon a value-oriented perspective, in order to complement and
maintain the discourse, through the various voices. From an epistemological standpoint, these
scientists become important in that their voices contribute to my case and incorporate theoretical
capacity from different areas so as to take into account the dynamism of the Barzakh adequately.
Each chapter is based on the last chapter in an authentic thematic approach, not in the sense that
one building block suits perfectly on the other but as a mapping or tracing process. Each chapter
in the following builds on essential connexions and concrete experiences in order to generate
new configurations and visualizations, eventually resulting in an overarching presentation of
Barzakh as an unseen space.

INTRODUCTION

The reference to an architectural space containing within itself a world, which as a result of its in
between quality is open to intersubjective experience and intellectual reflection, foregrounds the
importance of defining a spatial category that transcends boundaries between meaning and
presence. This challenge is the driving force of this thesis.

The critical apparatus of this study focuses on understanding the Barzakh as a liminal, in-
between, neutral, or third space, whereby it becomes a space of power, growth and creativity. In
this thesis we focus on a theory of knowledge rooted in an aesthetic experience of place, such as
the courtyard gardens Islamic era. The key to my argument lies in understanding how the space
of the Barzakh simultaneously becomes an interpretative space opening the world up to multiple
understandings and a physically experienced presence.

From this point of view, this thesis is an interdisciplinary venture that draws from various
academic fields in order to establish an argument for a practice of place that is ultimately rooted
in movement, experience and performance.

Firstly, running like a rich vein throughout my theoretical engagement with the Barzakh is an in-
depth and sustained dialogue with the Sufi philosopher, Ibn al-’Arabī (A.H. 560-638/A.D. 1165-
1240). Ibn al-’Arabī, as William Chittick observes, presents us with the possibilities of
preserving rationality while simultaneously transcending it and acts as a beacon for those looking
for an exit from the impasses of modern and postmodern thought. For Ibn al-’Arabī, the Barzakh,
as imagination, is granted ontological status; it becomes the world of the imagination.
William C. Chittick is the most important commentator on Ibn al-„Arabī’. His translations of and
commentary on the Futūḥāt, or better known as The Meccan Revelations, provides the reader
with an in-depth and clear-cut study of this great Sufi scholar. In The Sufi Path of Knowledge:
Ibn al-„Arabī’s Metaphysics of Imagination, Chittick also presents his readers with a thorough
background on previous scholars ‘occupation with Ibn al-’Arabī.

Two vitally important studies, specifically on Ibn al-„Arabī’ s world of the imagination, the
Barzakh, is that of Henry Corbin‘s Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sūfism of
Ibn „Arabī and Salman H. Bashier‘s Ibn al- Arabī’s Barzakh: The Concepts of the Limit and the
Relationship between God and the World. One of Henry Corbin‘s main concerns is the
degradation of the Imagination into fantasy. Fantasy, according to Corbin, disallows the
intermediate level between empirically verifiable reality and unreality and becomes only an
exercise of thought without foundation in nature. From the Sufism of Ibn al-„Arabī’, he builds an
argument around the idea that the Godhead possesses the power of Imagination whereby the
universe was created by an imagining God. Thus, there exists between the universe of pure spirit
and the sensible world an intermediate world… this is the world over which the Imagination
holds sway; that in it the Imagination produces effects so real they can mold the imagining
subject

William Chittick subtly refers to Henry Corbin‘s concern with his own philosophical project,
whereby the lines between Corbin‘s thoughts and Ibn al-’Arabī ‘s sometimes become blurred.8
Perhaps running the same risk, my study tries to isolate Ibn al-’Arabī ‘s use of the Barzakh,
while paying less attention to other pertinent backgrounds, the theological, social or
biographical. Aspects of these backgrounds, as pointed out by Chittick, are conceivably more
successfully covered by other analysts of Ibn al-’Arabī.

Salman H. Bashier‘s excellent book manages to draw together Islamic and Western thought in
an attempt to provide as he, himself, states: ―a critical examination of rational philosophical
thought in general. Focusing on Ibn al-„Arabī’ concept of the Limit, he discusses the
relationship between God and the world in an effort to promote a universal methodology of
knowledge. For this end, and especially relevant to my own discussion of the Barzakh, Bashier
highlights the ontological aspect of the Barzakh, found in the notion of the Third Thing. This is
the intermediate reality of the Limit, which is essentially the essence of each thing as it meets the
two limited things, between which it differentiates, with two faces that are one.

Secondly, by deconstructing Ibn al-„Arabī’s Barzakh and mapping its characteristics on the
courtyard gardens of the Alhambra, I will show that the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra can
change from ordinary spaces into sacred space. The courtyard gardens, as a space of the Barzakh
can, within a specific cultural context, become ―meaning‖ spaces that allows for a mystical
interpretation of the garden‘s features. Through an aesthetic experience of the presence of the
Barzakh, these courtyard gardens synthesise bodily perception and meaning to induce an
unsettling moment of epiphanic disclosure.

It should be pointed out, however, that terms such as space, place, experience, imagination and
transcendence come with their own theoretical considerations. My use of these terms does not
aim to delineate a particular theoretical scheme or advocate a specific theoretical school. They
are consulted and employed in an attempt to identify and frame my own commentary on how the
Barzakh opens fields of discovery that can be explored. Employed as interpretative tools, these
terms come together, forming a bricolage, so to speak, for this particular purpose alone,
however, not without sometimes challenging some conventional theoretical perspectives.

Thus, taking my cue from the often quoted observation by Michel Foucault that the present
epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are
in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed

Therefore, the first question we shall address will be the juxtaposition of the Barzakh and
concepts of space in order to argue for a spatial perspective on the Barzakh. By understanding
the Barzakh within the parameters of such an interpretative topology, a model open to
investigation is created. Within this model it will be possible to broach questions of space,
experience and aesthetics in order to find answers capable of defusing the often divisive
epistemological conceptions of current academic positions on these matters. Contributing to this
argument are the theories of Michel Foucault on heterotopia, Henri Lefebvre on the production
of space and Louis Marin on the neutral. By situating the Barzakh as an answer to the question
of whether there is a space that can transcend given dualities, I am exploring the possibility of a
space that holds within itself the ability to negotiate between the existent and imaginary, which
draws into itself that which is and that which is not. As heterotopic and neutral space, the
Barzakh informs a practice of space, recognises imagination as the meaning of Being..

Keeping the above quote in mind, the second issue we will address is the fact that the Barzakh as
a space of the imagination is never static and inert

Turning to theories of aesthetic perception, we will move from the more general discussion of
the Barzakh to a more specific discussion of the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra as spaces of
the Barzakh.

On the one hand, these gardens are part of the physical architecture of the Alhambra, which is
imbued with specific meanings and representations, exclusively pertinent to Islam. On the other
hand, the physical presence of these gardens has a universal appeal, which does not depend on
any specific intellectual content or religious enculturation. Rather, the gardens ‘ a p p e a l is
found in the immediate emotional response they provoke. This argument, then, will be the heart
of my thesis, whereby we focus attention on how the architectural spaces of the courtyard
gardens of the Alhambra become, in the experience of the beholder, places filled with meaning
and sensual presence.

Thus, although this research builds on previous work, especially work focused on overcoming
existent dualities between embodiment and representation, it does not argue for more emphasis
on either bodily experience or on interpretation. Rather, this thesis focuses attention on how a
specific place can be both bodily experience and imaginative interpretation and when recognised
as such can result in an epiphanic journey of discovery.

Through applying the lens of the Barzakh to these examples, I argue for a perception of space
that allows for a transcendent experiential dimension that is neither a specific increase in insight
and knowledge, nor a beneficial, pious affection, but discovering afresh, as if taken by surprise,
an uncanny dimension of reality, an uncircumscribed realm to which one feels open. We argue
that the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra present themselves as spaces of the Barzakh, which
allows for an aesthetical, relational and emotional encounter, not removed from interpretation,
but as a synchronization of both interpretation and presence.

The space of the Barzakh allows us to engage both the physical and imaginative dimensions of
the Alhambra. With an emphasis on both a physical and imaginative encounter with the
courtyard gardens of the Alhambra, this thesis emphasises a tangible relationship between
subject and object. Through this relationship, knowledge of being-in-the-world transforms from
being merely world-interpretation into world-participation. I am, thus, interested in showing that
the Barzakh entails an epistemology rooted in the act of revelation and concealment, presence
and absence. From this position it is possible to claim that spaces become sacred not because of
any specific hermeneutical approach or from a specific search for deeper meanings. Rather,
these spaces are experienced as sacred because of the establishment of a relationship between
interpretation and presence in a perceptual, aesthetic and performative encounter that ultimately
elicits an emotional response.

CHAPTER 1: MAPPING THE BARZAKH

In Les rites de passage Arnold van Gennep was the first to make use of the concept of the
liminal in social anthropology. He claimed that between preliminal rites of separation and
postliminal rites of integration, there was a third category, that of the liminal. In his arguments
people in this third category were no longer part of the first category, but had not yet moved on
to the second. They were in a process of transition, in limbo, so to say, between the two phases
of their lives 8

Building on this idea of the liminal, Victor Turner used the phrase ―betwixt and between.‖
Quoting the German mystic Jacob Boehme‘s well known statement, ―In Yea and Nay all things
consist, he determined that liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive
structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm
of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise. 9

Jacob Boehme‘s quote and Victor Turner‘s subsequent observation recalls the often recounted
meeting that took place between the young Ibn al-„Arabī’ and the well-known philosopher Ibn-
Rushd. During this encounter Ibn al-’Arabī was eagerly questioned about his spiritual
experiences and afterwards he described the meeting as follows:
Already here Ibn al-’Arabī hinted at a concept he would fully develop in his writings, the idea of
an in-between space that can break through the binary thought processes that gives us a world
divided into opposites.

Our interest in this thesis lies with the intersection of space, perception and imagination and how
the topography of the Islamic gardens can be interpreted as a space, an emotive space at once
real and unreal, subjective and objective, physical and mental. Previously we have referred to a
dialectical methodology as a pattern of deliberate and calculated procedures with the intention of
arriving at a collective result. We have called this method layering, whereby we will present the
reader with an idea, space as the Barzakh, and while keeping this idea in mind will add to it
multiple levels of associated ideas in order to extrapolate its hidden qualities and layers of
meaning. Our aim is to bring to the reader‘s attention the multi-faceted concept I envision in the
notion of the Barzakh

Following this method, this chapter can be seen as formulating and reflecting upon those
concepts that will allow me to read the gardens of the Alhambra as a text open to interpretation
on the one hand, but also on the other, a space which allows for a physical and sensuous aesthetic
experience of its specific qualities, which in the process unlocks different modes of knowledge
production.

Working within this methodology, we will firstly identify and develop Ibn al-„Arabī’s s notion
of the Barzakh. After an initial definition of the term Barzakh, we will focus on Ibn al-’Arabī ‘s
use of the Barzakh as a liminal space, especially its paradoxical nature as explained by Salman
Bashier. Taking this methodological point of departure, it will be possible to assimilate the idea
of the Barzakh as the space between, assigning to it a Thirdspace epistemology rooted in the idea
of being and becoming 11

This chapter is not an attempt to analyze or critique these theories. Rather, it is the drawing up of
a new map, but one that follows on the routes of others in order to find new routes to embark
upon. For maps, as Gilles Deleuze wrote, are superimposed in such a way that each map finds
itself modified in the following map, rather than finding its origin in the preceding one: from one
map to the next. . . . Every map is a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds
and enclosures 13
Taking our cue from them we will attempt to map a space betwixt and between,‖ as a
space of perception, movement and transition, a space that opens up vision, and as such, a space
that can re-focus knowledge formation and perhaps, paradoxically, become a place of
transcendence 14

In Les rites de passage Arnold van Gennep was the first to make use of the concept of the
liminal in social anthropology. He claimed that between preliminal rites of separation and
postliminal rites of integration, there was a third category, that of the liminal. In his arguments
people in this third category were no longer part of the first category, but had not yet moved on
to the second. They were in a process of transition, in limbo, so to say, between the two phases
of their lives 15

Building on this idea of the liminal, Victor Turner used the phrase: betwixt and between.‖
Quoting the German mystic Jacob Boehme‘s well known statement, ―In Yea and Nay all things
consist, he determined that liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive
structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm
of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise.16

Jacob Boehme‘s quote and Victor Turner‘s subsequent observation recalls the often recounted
meeting that took place between the young Ibn al-„Arabī’ and the well-known philosopher Ibn-
Rushd. During this encounter Ibn al-„Arabī’ was eagerly questioned about his spiritual
experiences and afterwards he described the meeting as follows

Already here Ibn al-„Arabī’ hinted at a concept he would fully develop in his writings, the idea
of an in-between space that can break through the binary thought processes that gives us a world
divided into opposites.

Our interest in this thesis lies with the intersection of space, perception and imagination and how
the topography of the Islamic gardens can be interpreted as a space, an emotive space at once
real and unreal, subjective and objective, physical and mental. Previously we have referred to a
dialectical methodology as a pattern of deliberate and calculated procedures with the intention of
arriving at a collective result. We have called this method layering, whereby we will present the
reader with an idea, space as the Barzakh, and while keeping this idea in mind will add to it
multiple levels of associated ideas in order to extrapolate its hidden qualities and layers of
meaning. Our aim is to bring to the reader‘s attention the multi-faceted concept we envision in
the notion of the Barzakh

Following this method, this chapter can be seen as formulating and reflecting upon those
concepts that will allow me to read the gardens of the Alhambra as a text open to interpretation
on the one hand, but also on the other, a space which allows for a physical and sensuous aesthetic
experience of its specific qualities, which in the process unlocks different modes of knowledge
production.

Working within this methodology, we will firstly identify and develop Ibn al-„Arabī’s notion of
the Barzakh. After an initial definition of the term Barzakh, I will focus on Ibn al-„Arabī’s use of
the Barzakh as a liminal space, especially its paradoxical nature as explained by Salman Bashier.
Taking this methodological point of departure, it will be possible to assimilate the idea of the
Barzakh as the space between, assigning to it a Thirdspace epistemology rooted in the idea of
being and becoming.18

This chapter is not an attempt to analyse or critique these theories. Rather, it is the drawing up of
a new map, but one that follows on the routes of others in order to find new routes to embark
upon. For maps, as Gilles Deleuze wrote, are superimposed in such a way that each map finds
itself modified in the following map, rather than finding its origin in the preceding one: from one
map to the next. . . . Every map is a redistribution of impasses and breakthroughs, of thresholds
and enclosures 20

Taking our cue from them we will attempt to map a space betwixt and between,‖ as a
space of perception, movement and transition, a space that opens up vision, and as such, a space
that can re-focus knowledge formation and perhaps, paradoxically, become a place of
transcendence 21

Paying closer attention to these terms defining Barzakh it will be noticed that there are subtle
differences in meaning. Take, for example, the etymology of the word interval, which comes
from the Latin intervallum (space between, interval, distance, interval of time, pause, difference;
literally, space between two palisades or walls), thus, inter (between) and vallum (palisade, wall).
Compare that to the etymology and meaning of the word obstruction, from the Latin

Barzakh carries an ambiguity in its nature, allowing them as not to mix up and separating the two
at the same time. It acts dually, indicating a third thing between two entities, obstructing and
differentiating them, whilst not disclosing itself. This duality becomes the foundation for Ibn
al-’Arabī’s comprehension of the Barzakh.

The Barzakh's role as differentiator among two entities with opposite features is explained by
Salman Bashier. Although the Barzakh distinguishes between the two, it does not only prevent
the two entities from mixing but also unites them. He goes on to say that the Barzakh has a
synthetic activity that is paradoxical. The Barzakh must be a third thing that is separated by both
as differentiator between two things. But it must also be linked to both things as a provider of
their unity 25

Another scholar who debates on the Barzakh’s duality in Titus Burckhardt.

The Barzakh is clearly considered to have a different unit or partition, as seen from outside.
However, he suggested that if you want to apply the "no-otherness theory." Burckhardt continues
by stating that, considering the ontological state of the Barzakh, it is only from the perspective
that the distinction is obvious 'from the outside,' although he is the real mediator between the two
entities from 'from above.' Therefore, the Barzakh is just separation since it is itself the starting
point of a different view, which seems to be a "limit" in its eyes. Burckhardt again comments on
the duality of the Barzakh

The Barzakh acts as a buffer between two contradicting beings but it moreover brings them to
unity and solidarity; hence becoming each other’s limit

When we think of the Barzakh in terms of a Limit, it should showcase its main trait, functioning
as a boundary, or barrier either in the start or in the end. For Ibn al-’Arabī’s, however, the
Barzakh as limit is not only the essence of all things; it is where all things participate in as well.
27

In Impasse of the Angels, Stefania Pandolfo explains that in Ibn al-’Arabī’s thought the concept
of the Barzakh summarises the condition of all existence, which in itself is understood as being-
in-between. The Barzakh is both limit and an entre- deux, the entre-deux of the limit: something
that stands between two things, both separating and joining them, combining the attributes of
both. 28

Salman Bashier proposes that Ibn al-’Arabī’s definition is speculative at best, as the Barzakh is
the key to defining the possible. To perceive the essence of defining is to understand the
definition of Barzakh, which distinguishes between two entities. In order to understand defining,
the separation in entities, the separating factor becomes perceivable as one in unison.
Differentiation is the root cause with which we perceive and identify the world and it is through
differentiation we are able to see the boundaries and limits. Without limits nothing would be
possible, it would become one with no other. Ibn al-’Arabī explains as follows

The presence of a paradoxical element is central to this distinguishing behaviour that

differentiates one thing from another. It is paradoxical, since everything is characterized by the
way it is isolated from all relationships. However, it remains the most unifying of relations in this
distinction.

In Ibn al-’Arabī’s thoughts, in order to define oneself, one must differentiate oneself from all
relation of the other. In doing so it expresses itself to the other. It absorbs the other into itself as
to not let the paradox occur whilst differentiating from the other and disconnecting from it. For
this to happen one must unite with the other and this results in complete immersion into the
other. Things lose their identity when they identify themselves and in this process become
something completely other than what they are. Bashier sums it up as

The paradoxical relationship of existence and non-existence needs a medium to facilitate their
defining, the Barzakh establishes this by being a limit to them. For Ibn al-’Arabī’s, things are not
about being existent or non-existent, but that things are real and not real.
To explain the contradicting nature of the Barzakh, Ibn al-’Arabī’s draws on the Mirror as his
muse

The Barzakh contains epistemological value as it has the ability that no knowledge or identity
would have been formed. This knowledge is based upon the vague representation of Limit. The
Barzakh constitutes real and unreal whilst maintaining their identity.

Going beyond the rational, we transcend in a new, unexplored territory of imaginative thinking,
integration of the rational and the creative gives birth to new domains of being-ness.

We have studied Ibn al-’Arabī’s Barzakh as a limit which transmits existence to thing via
contextual relations. For Ibn al-’Arabī’s, Limit is the nucleus for understanding the nature of
things, whether they be existent or non-existent, as only in Limit that these opposites unite, rather
than being one or the other. Here the Limit transcends the rational.

The Barzakh, as a barrier, can be interpreted in terms of a special location. The Barzakh connects
with both within and outside at the same time, so that the Barzakh becomes liminal by its spatial
relation with the two sites.

Another way to understand the Barzakh is in the form of a Threshold, a place with exceptional
functions. It relates to both the inside and outside jointly. It can be proclaimed that this spatial
interaction between inside and outside makes the Barzakh Liminal

Our interest with the Gardens leads us to another one of Ibn al-’Arabī’s analogies, the Courtyard.
The courtyard for Ibn al-’Arabī’s becomes an ideal model for a liminal site as it captures the
spirit of the Barzakh in an immaculate way.in his book Futuhat, he dedicated a poem to this
phenomenon.

Ebrahim Moosa discusses the importance of Courtyard, as a threshold, in Al-Ghazali’s words.

Highlighting Al-Ghazali‘s phrase
Dihlīz is argued by Moosa, as being Arabized and meaning simply, the space between the door
and the house. Whilst according to Moosa the Dihlīz is liminal, signaling to not only a space in
between two items, as inside and outside, but an entry from outside and then another one into the
inside. Although stationary and bounded in place, the Dihlīz offers a plethora of perspectives and
insights

When viewed from the inside, it becomes the outside and when viewed from the outside it
becomes the inside. Moosa claims that the Dihlīz is an imaginative space inextricably, formed by
intervention and experience, rather than being part of the inside or the outside.

Moosa’s explanation of the Dihlīz’s in-betweeness emphasizes the fundamental characteristics of

a courtyard, in a physical context as well as an imaginative tool for propounding space.

The courtyard presents a perfect case for Barzakh in spatial topographical terms. It is both the
inside and the outside simultaneously as it bridges them both

55

55

Courtyard gardens radiate a great sense of place, the walls and the buildings, heighten the
openness of the courtyard garden to the sky above. This phenomenon causes the focus inward,
usually to a central element, a fountain in most cases, the light play is highlighted with the ever
morphing spaces governed by the weather, seasons and time. In doing so they become
microcosms of macrocosms.
Extrapolating Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka‘s discussion on the role of visible and invisible
interplay in creating sensory perception. The argument of the courtyard as a locus for sensory
perception employs an interplay in visible and invisible. Tymieniecka says that sensory
perception is the base form of Being and a great part of life. She argues that sensory perception,
which is caused by the interplay of the visible and the invisible sides of an object, partly
converge, at some moments, in to each other. It is this interplay of convergence that an object
can be defined. When the two realms converge, the visible and the invisible, not only do they call
for the other but in a sense help each other’s apprehension. Apprehension is an intuitive and
intellectual act, done to form intellective structure of what is experienced. It is in this
apprehension, that we can say an entity as both being present in absence and absent in presence.

In the words of Merleau-Ponty:

As we shall argue the double movement and paradox of the presence and absence is the
courtyard’s most distinguishing trait and also the elemental aspect of Ibn al-’Arabī’s Barzakh.
An in-between space for the internal and external to meet and create a new reality.

Concluding, Tymieniecka claims that imagination coupled with apprehension contributes our
perception of the world.

She writes

Whilst commentating on the art of Painting, Merleau-Ponty talks on the imaginary, contributing
more to Tymieniecka’s insights and especially to our talk on the Barzakh. Merleau-Ponty states,
visualizing about something as an imagery gives off a negative connotation as it is thought as a
copy or second thing. However it is as such, while on the other hand, it remains as itself.

Imaginary at any instance is both nearer and further from the actual. Being a part of our mental
makeup it remains close to the actual but is further cause imaginary is a likeness only to the body
because it doesn’t give the same context of things present at the actual, afterwards, but slivers of
visions. For Merleau-Ponty this leads to the discovery of an inner gaze, third eye, which we
argue is needed in order to recognize the quality of Barzakh.
Both Merleau-Ponty and Tymieniecka amalgamate imagination and real in depicting of an
experience of the opposites that result in making something visible. Deleuze explains this in
“map of dream voyages and landscape”.

In the perspective, the courtyard gardens chart a space filled with both, presence and the
imagination at the same time. Rob Aben and Saskia de Wit write that

The courtyard being a real physical space, molded by the imagination, the same imagination,
which Ibn al-’Arabī’s states is essentially the intermediate reality, intrinsically vague, neither
being one or the other, but both at the same time, a Barzakh.

Barzakh is the reason for the clarity of all existence as it helps us understand defining and
limitation as the root of existence, a being cannot be a being without having a context, leading to
imaginative and creative knowledge. As William Chittick writes

The same thoughts are portrayed by Stefania Pandolfo when she writes

Limit and Threshold can be used to describe the Barzakh, as it splits, which seems to be One into
the actual two.

Edward Soja’s question for an epistemological, ontological and theoretical rebalancing of

spatiality can be answered by the role of the Barzakh as a disrupter.

It is through the Barzakh that we can open ourselves up to a special kind of seeing in which the
visible and the invisible are unveiled. The Barzakh, understood as such, is a continued birth.53

Till now we have discussed Barzakh and its importance as an intermediary space of an
ontological Thirdspace. This argument was a necessity as it formulates groundwork for Islamic
gardens being real and unreal simultaneously, capable of juxtaposing numerous imagined
itineraries

HETROTOPIA:

The development if the concept of the Barzakh, is to direct the attention to an alternate
epistemology, which doesn’t concentrate on the duality of a subject, separated from the objective
world and with separation, overpowers and subdues everything else. On the contrary, the
arguments have shown, in an experience of any perception, a person brings his own memories,
thoughts and ideas into the mix.

This is an epistemology which, foregrounds the linkage of the different modes of being in our
world; an epistemology which acknowledges the inner and outer horizons of a person’s
situatedness. This space, real and unreal, place and non-place, of in-between is distant form the
Barzakh, which was glorified by Ibn al-’Arabī’s’s use of Mirror and having a contradictory spirit

To argue whether Islamic courtyard gardens fall under the category of the In-Between, we have
to evaluate these gardens as an auxiliary mode of ordering, thus as a matter of fact, a heterotopia.

Although Foucault‘s heterotopia has over the years received a great deal of significant attention,
mostly by focussing on it as a socially constructed counter-site of resistance against the dominant
order, as heterotopian spaces, challenges these preconceptions of heterotopia, even though it
finds resonance in Foucault‘s own analogy of the mirror

Foucault’s mirror is a placeless, unreal and virtual place in which one can see themselves but
can’t be in it physically. At the same time it is real, as a neutralizing space which shows us
absence from the place we are in, but reflects our image where we physically are. The analogies
of Ibn al-’Arabī’s and Michael Foucault, both make the mirror concrete, yet dream-like space,
which acts as an intermediary between subject and object

Heterotopia illustrates an In-Between, intermediary and a liminal space between subject and
object, yet both the subject is engaged by its context, resulting in the perception becoming
spatially organized and its identity being negated continuously. Giuliana Bruno comment on the
Mirror analogy of Foucault, she comments that a mirror as a center between utopia and
heterotopia us a collectively varied experience and this becomes a site of self-promotion. She
explains:

Thus for this thesis, heterotopia is not considered in the realm of marginality, resistance or
transgression, but as a threshold space, as an In-Between space, with the other being defined and
apprehended and the self-understood via a tactile understudy of the spatial topography
In Merleau Ponty’s words, describing the contradiction between the real and unreal under the
context of a heterotopic spaced courtyard gardens,

THE NEUTRAL

Barzakh or the mirror, is also the space which Louis Marin states his notion of Neutral comes in
play. The concept of the Neutral is derived by deconstructing Thomas More’s Utopia. The focus
of Marin’s study us the difference between No-place and Good place, in More’s Utopia.

For Marin, the neutral is the gap between true and false, it is the third term that opens up a space
where contraries are both denied and conserved. Marin claims that the notion of the neutral aims
at any fracture of totality through the contradiction that places the parts of the totality at a
distance from themselves

Neutral is the space between true and false, black and white for Marin, A third term where
contraries are conserved as well as derived. Thus the neutral becomes a contradicting space,
positioned in between opposites, but in reality creating a new space which mediates opposites in
coming together. The courtyard gardens can be a part of Utopics of Neutral, as contradicting a
space. A figurative space which supplants a subject in time and space from space. As a space the
neutral can be defined as being in a

The neutral allows us to shift from one to another contrary, as its role is of a mediator between
the two. It is a mediator, because of its nature, as it cannot become one or the other

Marin attributes a spatial quality to the Neutral, for he argues that the neutral enters between yes
and no:

Ibn Al Arabi’s Barzakh and Louis Marin’s neutral share the same characteristics of gap and
boundary. Both are defined as limits that are irrevocably paradoxical. They possess ontological
status as they are both the Third thing, which they acquire with being In-Between.

It is, however, Marin‘s article, frontiers of Utopia: Past and Present, that encapsulates, the
essence of the neutral in terms of a space that brings together and separates at the same time.67
Thomas More’s Utopia is paradoxical by nature, is argued by Marin as he claims the term
OUTOPIA negates the place it very much so is naming. Translating it from the Greek gives us
the meaning No-Place, not an imaginary place or a place that doesn’t exist. Utopia creates
otherness and in this it can become the name of Neutral. A liminal space, limited and limitless
for in Marin’s word

Important to point out here, especially since it also plays a role in understanding that Islamic
gardens are neutral spaces, is that for Marin, utopia is the discourse of the neutral.69

The neutral gives voice to a figurative space existing between contradictions. This voice a part of
the discourse by which a Utopian outlook is projected upon the geography and topography of
distinct spaces. Through spatial practice and with values of motifs, these space become invested
in, which Marin dubs utopics. This results in a spatial play of the discourse by which some
places not only embody certain ideas but also interpret those ideas in their geography. Marin
argues that thinking about Utopia in spatial terms is speculating space in terms of paradoxical
nature of limit, for these spaces are real physical existent spaces with a social context and on the
other hand they provide us with imaginative encounters and experiences, which result in the birth
of new spaces both real and unreal.

Henri Lefebvre, a Marxist sociologist and a compatriot of Marin, comments on the ideas of the
neutral space and Utopia. He unveils three new concepts in his vocabulary for defining urban
spaces, Isotropy, Heterotopy and Utopia. Isotopy is the space which surrounds a space and gives
the place context, so that it may remain the same space, i.e. neighbourhood, alongside the
sameness is a place which differentiates itself by its heterotopy, which situates itself in respect to
the initial space. The difference can range anywhere from a contrast to a complete contradiction t
each other. The relationship between the two should be understood adaptively, as these spaces
are always in relation, never do they isolate.

Lefebvre, however, points out that between these places there exist a neutral element, which is
found at the conjunctions of the juxtaposed places, such as a street, square or garden. 71

Adding to these two physical places, Lefebvre states, there is an elsewhere also, a no-where,
non-place, which has no place but seeks a place for itself. He argues that any point on a vertical
plane can transform to a dimension of elsewhereness, a place depicted by the absence presence,
of the half real and half fictional thought. It is a paradoxical space, since in the real urban space,
the elsewhere is nowhere yet everywhere.

Lefebvre claims, U-topics are seemed to be incorporated in neutral spaces, like parks and
gardens. These places make the elsewhere visible, sensible and genuine.

Kevin Hetherington also makes the same point, he claims neutral shows a place with similarities
to that of a limit, but at the same time a place of limit experience encountered in Utopian
Moments.
The realm of the neutral is a realm of ordering as it becomes a space where difference is not only
encountered, but also ordered. It is a space of alternate ordering, which makes it a heterotopia.
Here heterotopias become places where ideas and practices of the good life come into being.74

As a domain of relational order, a heterotopia, Marin's interpretation of the neutral is similar to

the Barzakh of Ibn al-’Arabī’s. It is a space between the two, which can also be known as a
minute space as well. As it acts as a breach and as a way, its liminality is therefore found not
only in its interdependence but also in a way which indicates a change, movement from "the
same" toward the other. This very act of describing the other leads, for Ibn al-’Arabī’s, to its
dissolution and nonexistence and to its existence at once, or non-existence.

In addition, the neutral provides information, similar to a Barzakh, since, as stated above, the
Barzakh serves as a defining limit, as the bridge between real and false. This concept of the limit,
the neutral, which denotes what occurs between the two, is pure contradiction while letting the
other in, and, thus, does not allow a negation or a statement of the "other" to be argued as true or
false. This becomes the place where new knowledge can be created by an assimilation of
opposites, while maintaining the own truth. The neutral, as Barzakh says

Hugh Silverman offers a new point of view, but also insists on a utopian debate. He argues that a
Utopian (good spot, which is no-where too), discourse was built against a discourse that was
dystopian (a spot of misery and dishonesty). One will find heterotopias between them, in the here
and now. Silverman describes heterotopias as a multitude of positions in "here and now"
everywhere. However, Silverman argues that it needs an interpretive topology to classify the
models as utopian, dystopian or heterotopian. The analysis of places includes a topographical
analysis of certain locations and not only of the history of these locations, but also of their
characteristics and ultimately of their perception. 77

Silverman comes to the conclusion after deconstructing More's utopia in similar terms to Marin
that utopia is an ideology in which an idea, a universal truth, is an ideology in which people can
know something they can reach but not, and not here, through their practice of proper dialectics.

Even if modern teleology versions take different forms, utopia always brings comfort, gladness
and harmony, and involves always the telos of a journey, in which people must go beyond daily
life, in order to achieve it. Utopian discourse, therefore, takes people away by offering them an
idea of how their lives can be

However, according to Silverman, such fictions of good happy and harmonious place could
become an epistemological or discursive reality that a person can experience physically and
interpretatively in certain well-defined and well-designed places. Either a utopian model or a
dystopian model is used to develop the special characteristics of these sites (such as Silverman's
Nazi Germany). Sites may be neutral as well, but utopia or dystopia can also be found in this
neutrality. These sites are considered by Silverman to be "limit text," which means that these
topoi are structured in such a way that a person can go through them both pre-determinedly and
over time. Furthermore, as Silverman notes, people often live and build them in their minds
when walking through these spaces. The spaces we create when walking through are our
perception or reading of real ongoing, progressive and/or dystopian subjects
Silverman 's argument that our conceptions of these spaces are created and updated. These are
the foundation of our relationships and our information architecture. This can enrich heterotopias
in our environment's texts. These heterotopic texts are the metaphors of our history and find in
our parks and public spaces for instance. They must be read and understood since they are the
context within which we live.

It can be argued that the claims of Silverman open an essentially intermediate space. These
spaces such as the garden, parks , museums and monuments are located in the juncture of various
areas and become liminal spaces into which people have to go, while being careful to understand
their sign systems, in order to recognize them and to position them within their wider social
context. Heterotopias have traces of Marin's neutrality, although they are often decided from a
utopian background that at once makes them very real but not real. This is a clear liminal room.
What Silverman describes is actually space production. In Henri Lefebvre’s words

According to Lefebvre, generated space requires a process of meaning since it can be decoded
and read. These codes are not standard codes; they are unique, and therefore known to these
particular people, and are formed at certain historical times. As a result of this space created is of
a dialectical nature and part of the connection and interaction between subjects, space and their
environment, making space mentally, physically and socially as such.

Our interpretation of the neutral is however a little different from what Marin used in "Utopian
frontiers: past and present." It's obvious that the words, heterotopia and neutrality, suggest a
speech on space that offers an alternative relational epistemology. This speech concentrates on
the concept of an intermediate space, a small space that offers numerous significations and
opportunities for its agents
If any degree of flexibility can be permitted, we believe that Marin opens up a space in his
neutral presentation that can not only form part of space debate, but that in fact gives us a space
that can engage his visitor in a haptic experience of perception in this world and now.

The neutral perception space is then returned to Ibn al-’Arabī’s and Foucault, the mirror room, a
Barzakh, where the focal point is now to perceive inconsistencies and to track visual effects – the
presence of light and shadow, profundity or movement. The neutral encourages an outsider to
look and perceive.

In a recent liminalité series, Bjørn Thomassen warns about the liminality of Liminal Landscapes:
Travel, Perception and Space, and about the liminality of the interstitial in postmodern and post-
structuralist discourse. Liminal spaces were actual, conceived or imagined attractive spaces to
break free from normal. On the verge or on the boundaries, the Liminal landscapes are located.
However, the liminal spaces are not peripheral spaces, but transitional spaces, since their
liminality means that the border line remains. The boundaries of these spaces are, according to
Thomasson, not only there, however, they have to be continuously challenged and these limits
are provided their spatial reality in their confrontation. 80
Thomassen believes that the idea of liminality has revived, with almost everything being talked
about. Accordingly, any interplay or interplay means an interpretation of the liminality that is
important or has any implications beyond the original application of its area. Liminality is used
to suggest widespread ideas of mixed or fluid societies in anthropology. Liminality is also used
to analyse a number of minority communities, for example transsexuality and transgender. In
comparison, ethnic groups are known to take the liminal social and spatial roles.81

The approach is always to write from the intermediate in postmodern and postcolonial literature
and current prose. The lower portion is an interstitial position between permanent identity, which
means that liminality constitutes the chance of cultural hybridity which differentiates without the
hierarchy that is assumed or placed.82

Thus, the general inclination is to place miniature favourably as a point of view for reading ,
writing and reflecting otherness as well as for voicing diversity. 83

Thomas concludes, ultimately, that today's liminality is more an indicator of small encounters,
moments and unfolding in sculpture, theatre, writing, enjoyment and tourism in imagination and
ambiguity. The Liminal is a deviation from normality, a playful experience that lacks the main
aspect of liminality, that of transformation. Liminality has been characterised by a growing
ambivalent mentality within contemporary thinking. There is the apprehension of liminal
encounters as being actually identities that change events, on the one hand, and of some sort of
liminalism on the other. 84

Over all, there's a chance that the liminal will be regulated and decided as usual in certain unused
or non-spaces.

Thomassen emphasises the importance of agency, where thinking and knowledge work together
to address the issue of liminality, which is just a messy, unspoken part of imagination.
Thomassen claims that the Liminal encounters have an identifiable shape and paradigm and even
more so, a transition from the self to the world and from nature to the self takes place within
every minor experience .. The smallest encounters, therefore, allow the beauty and order of the
universe to be accepted as a requirement for a sensible way of life and thought. These minute
encounters put a person in contact with nature, with elegance and, most importantly, encourage a
person to see and appreciate what is exceptional. 85
We looked in this chapter at the possibility of mapping a space that can mediate between actual
and imaginary objects, reality and non-existence, the physical and mental, space that is neither
one nor the other, nor the two at the same time. This is a very small area and we found such a
room in the Barzakh of Ibn al-’Arabī’s and in the neutral space of Louis Marin.

Along this particular route of the mapping we have come upon ideas of the liminal, heterotopic
and third spaces, but particularly our journey through the space creation by Henri Lefebvre,
whereby space becomes a crossroads network and still serves as an intermediate or mediator.

However, my mapping of the Barzakh’s spatiality is nothing than a tracing of the characteristics
of Barzakh in the ideas of other interactions and interrelationship spaces. I have instead pulled
together different ideas and influences through this mapping and moved the focus to a haptic,
experiential and creative gathering. The theory behind the mapping process itself implies a body
meeting, an experience not only in space with the globe, but also in map space.

In the words of Deleuze and Guattari:

The Barzakh is traced to the surface of a mirror as a true as well as a virtual space. The Barzakh
is everything imaginable and its very essence lies between the being and the nothingness.
Unlimited nothingness lies like a mirror in this same place before unlimited being..

Here the Barzakh space assumes the neutral features as Marin described. It is a method, output
and results, which gives the Other shape and pattern in a movement which not only brings
awareness of the Other but also of the self. The neutral is not only the arbitrating agent between
two opposing relationships.

Awareness of self in creation of a haptical experience of Barzakh is often maped at the

double surface of a mirror. A map that finally takes us back to Lefebvre that says

In the words of Lefebvre the connexion between me and me and my body and the consciousness
of my body is also exposed by this mirror. The mirror provides us with the most unifying but
often disjunctive link between form and content; forms have a solid truth that is yet unreal; they
conveniently dispose or contain their contents, but these contents maintain a strong energy.89
Lefebvre, ultimately, suggests that the mirror is so simultaneously an entity and an object that all
others are evanescent and fascinating in nature. Within and through the reflection, the
characteristics of other objects are drawn together in reference to their spatial environment; the
mirror is a space entity that talks of space. The space of the Barzakh can be seen in a Lefebvre
mirror; it does not only have an irreducible power as an imaginary space, but also as a field of
vision. This provides a map on the intersection of real and imaginary with a surface play. The
Barzakh is an interim plan which provides alternate lenses to see and view the courtyard gardens
of the Alhambra as an intermediate space in and between the two lenses.

CHAPTER 2: THE COURTYARD GARDEN

The courtyard garden
We have advocated an alternative way to see certain areas, like the courtyard gardens of the
Islamic era, in the previous Chapter and turned to the Barzakh of Ibn al-’Arabī’s and Louis
Marin's neutral. Both words describe a middle space that has the capacity to function as a limit as
its key characteristic. Both concepts involve a third ontological space, which divides two things
simultaneously without becoming one or the other.

Furthermore, the space of the neutral is seen not to be a static, inert vacuum, but to open itself to
encounters not merely between objects in space, or only between various spaces or realities, but
also inside space, space and objects.

Another point which became apparent was that the Barzakh has an epistemological value,
because the Barzakh is able to become a room where knowledge is generated and gained by
bringing together two paradoxical realities, real and unreal, or rational and imaginative. Thus the
Barzakh may be claimed to be the common horizon, both the real and the unreal. In its very
essence, then, Barzakh is creative, because everything is defined and given existence through it.

Henri Lefebvre and his explanation on the "spatial architecture" of the mirror were also
mentioned in the previous chapter which stressed the dual surface of the mirror in its grasp of
reality. Here the mirror becomes the unifying factor and the divider of the image and form
simultaneously. While the mirror is a visual repetition of an object in space, Lefebvre underlines
that this reflection is identical and different simultaneously. The reflection of the mirror is
essentially an interaction between presence and distinction, whereby a symmetrical
representation of the reflected environment is produced, thus creating a physical (object- or
body-space) as well as a virtual (object / body-reflected-space) spatiality dependent on
delimitation.

In Henri Lefebvre’s remarks, in particular about this and the following chapters, what is
important is that such statements illustrate the dual existence of neutral locations.

These neutral spaces, such as the garden, serve a mediating or intermediary role. This role is the
result of these spaces ability to contain opacities, bodies and objects, centres of efferent
actions and effervescent energies, as well as hidden even impenetrable places, areas of
viscosity and black holes. Simultaneously, these spaces offer its visitor or occupant, sequences,
sets

However, Lefebvre insists that the subject is not a passive actor, when navigating this dual
spatiality, but fully participates in the visual sense processes. For Lefebvre, mirroring this is a
better part of the relationship between the real world and the subject embodied in that universe
than just providing a consistent reflection of images. It is the bond developed around the subject
and object that are embedded in the physicality of the universe and at the same time stresses the
interaction of this origin with a transcendent space entity.

The significance of this mirroring act is the opportunity to convey a dynamic physical and
social world to us. It's here where the physical and material world is connected to abstract and
imaginative worlds.

Taking the points of Lefebvre into account, the Barzakh field and the courtyard gardens. The
Barzakh, like the space of the mirror, acts as a connection between the physical landscape, the
patio gardens and their picture in the thinking and literature. By gazing at the mirror or space of a
Barzakh one is able, at the same time, to become conscious, while also able to read the light of
the meanings reflected in the gardens, of the space and physical existence of the garden areas
Here, we presuppose that the mirror thus, the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra, is real, the
space in the mirror imaginary, and the locus of the imagination is the Ego. 94
By looking and feeling the gardens, people may envision or reconstruct their own vision of the
actual gardens, even though they are still affected by social structures

However, the space of the Barzakh reveals itself in a double reflexion by this reflective effect.
When a living person compares the mirror space as a Barzakh and thus feels a Barzakh as an
imaginary image, the effect is actual. Here the self, as a space entity, recognizes the presence of
the Barzakh as something actual in the courtyard gardens, something that is obvious.

On the one hand, landscape and garden are thus often designed as a microcosm of property, or
space created, to use the term of Lefebvre. It gives us a sense that can be decoded and
understood, even though it is restricted to those who have knowledge of their language and
codes.

In all cultures, James Dickie says gardening is a very popular symbol of life. However, each
culture creates a garden iconography that is constructed out of a collective memory or, in Jungian
terms, an ideal that guarantees the resonant meaning of this image through history. These
descriptively powerful images of gardens are part of space development that can fuse
architectural space and worldview into a garden space that is open to interpretation in a certain
sense and through lenses of a particular spatial imagination.96

Like Barzakh, Islamic gardening are physical, mental and social spaces which can be read and
become fluid and versatile in this reading. However, it is evident that the complex relationship
between subject and object arises in the reading of these gardens. Even if the interaction is
characterized by a particular form of setting or social context, movement and perception, the
gardens are an intrinsic part of the understanding process.

While the relationship is defined by a special typology or culture, moving and perceiving, the
garden is an intrinsic part of the process of perception. However, the source, the environment,
the political functions and the symbolic significance of the Islamic Garden are far from evident
in this chapter. Instead, this chapter deals with mapping the Barzakh room. It is a process of
highlighting the physical characteristics of the courtyard gardens, which expresses an image of
the universe that one may decode and read in the reflection of the general characteristics of a
court garden.
The medieval Spanish philosopher Ibn Bajah (Avempace) (d. 1138) once said that

It is an accepted fact that gardens are by definition little paradises on earth; they are associated
with order and pleasure in a hostile and chaotic world.100

Rob Aben and Saskia de Wit maintain that garden is places in which nature, by means of water,
shade and plants, is simultaneously excluded. It is also the adjacent garden or courtyard of the
garden, giving authenticity to a certain area by its own form. The adjacent garden brings the
hostile world together outside and within the sanctuary. They explain:

The observation of Ibn Bajah that knowledge is the result of a shape orientation probably finds
its most appropriate location in the courtyard garden. The courtyard garden combines landscape
and architecture by interpreting and refurbishing nature, and by explicit architectural forms
creates a visual representation of nature. These architectural forms represent not only nature
visually, but also enable individuals to focus in space, time and society

The world is made understandable through the architectural forms of the courtyard, which allow
people to interact with their surroundings, according to Aben and De Wit's arguments. Three
types of orientation are highlighted: cosmic, temporal and territorial. Cosmic orientation is
according to them a primitive experience of the earth and the courtyard, the high and lower,
vertical and horizontal, light and dark, is provided by the opposition between heaven and earth.
This junction between sky and garden plays an important role in creating a concrete axis between
sky and earth. The path of the sun and that of the moon and stars gives a direction and direction.
The time rhythms of the seasons and day and night allow time to be oriented, because it gives the
same space a completely different experience. The visible topography, the simultaneous presence
of the distance and the vicinity, the duality of the center and of the periphery, and inside and
outside. In conclusion, Aben and Wit say that:

The enclosed garden is an architectural element in one respect, but it is also a garden. Aben and
de Wit point out it's a garden that shows the landscape. They identify three ways in which the
surrounding garden is revealed: the visualization, the supplement and the symbolization. Gardens
reflect the landscape through trees, flowers and water, but these aspects are often minimized in
the courtyard garden. This minimalism strengthens the courtyard’s complimentary aspect. The
openness and expansion of the outside landscape is strongly relieved through vacuum and
enclosure. The scenery is symbolic not only present in the courtyard garden but also becomes a
symbol of the landscape outside of the courtyard garden itself.

While the enclosed garden is considered to be a microcosm of the larger macrocosm, it is not in
isolation, but is similar to that of a limited function, it is situated beyond its walls relative to the
landscape. While the garden is an entire unit, it is always considered a garden space in relation to
the countryside and the walls surrounding it. The mutual relationship of patio and garden
landscape is highlighted by the application of architectural forms that give meaning to the notion
of freedom and constraint by their spatial design and visual structure.103

The courtyard garden gives us a glimpse of the future in which two competing concepts are
unified and presented in one existential vacuum. The nature and architecture are finite yet
endless, permanent and yet ever-changeable, both within and outside.

The courtyard garden is Marin‘s neutral and it fulfils the role of what Malcolm Quantrill
identifies as the Zwischenraum, the space between 104

In this sense, the designs and forms of the courtyard gardens are not just the representations of
truth and the myth

The courtyard garden, as a neutral, in-between space produces its own “genius loci” or spirit of
place. Within the natural environment of the garden there is a certain presence which extends
into the realm of the imagination. This presence involves, according to Quantrill, a meeting and
merging of spirit with existence. In the courtyard garden a person‘s concrete and existential
awareness of place becomes enhanced by a spiritual or abstract awareness provoked by her/his
orientation towards specific forms. This awareness implies that along with the visual aspect to
the garden, there is also a deeper, inner structure, connected to a person‘s subconscious. Here
cultural memories and ideas provide a specific context to the perceived spaces of the courtyard
105
THE COURTYARD GARDEN WITHIN A MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC FRAMEWORK
Samer Akkach expresses a view similar to Malcolm Quantrill‘s environmental framework by
stating that

Turning his concern to a pre-modern Islamic awareness, Akkach argues that under such a sense,
the universe was conceived of and defined by arithmetic, numbers and the alphabet as being
finite, bounded and astronomically definable. Placing the universe in such a sense led to a way of
thinking which efficiently incorporated the cosmos' spatiality with architecturally or
geographically relevant spaces. This integration has helped individuals to communicate fluently
without the need for formal mediation. However, Akkach points out that the accuracy of this
choice in isotrope-quality geometry suggests a more distinctly premoderne than the Islamic
spatial resilience across geo-cultural, temporal and typological boundaries. This development
shows that spatial sensitivities appear to be an unusual phenomenon while they can be
understood by their sense of order and spatial structure

Akkach distinguishes a condensed composition and a continuous composition in the spatial

structure of such spaces. A focused composition involves all shapes grouped around a fixed
center, which represents a static configuration of the spatial structure of the three-dimensional
cross. The key characteristic of the linear composition is repeating that transmits a sense of
movement and versatility. However, these linear spatial features do not shift away from the
spatial features underlying condensed compositions, since they are always in the order of
quadrature and of the central and axial structure. From the analog point of view, the concentric
composition forms the base of the linear composition just like the point where the line stretches
and silences the movement 's condition. While there are many differences, in secular and
religious buildings this type is widely accepted. This shows a propensity to symmetrically
arrange space around a central point in the pre-modern courtyard gardens. In addition, a
dimensional cross that may or cannot be align able with the cardinal dots appears to be found in
one way or another. The outcome is most commonly a courtyard with a central function, such as
a stream or fountain and four vaulted doors. Specific spaces are united pictorially and
experientially within this spatial structure 107

According to Jonas Lehrman

The courtyard is not an empty space, but demonstrates a complex spatial order where motion and
inertia are concurrently emphasized. The contradiction of order and chaos, harmony and
perplexity is overcome by its representational structure and the courtyard garden is a symbol of
social order, moral harmony and human transcendence.

Nader Ardalan is another theorist who suggests who architecture has a sense of place. Similar to
Akkach, the garden can be interpreted as a given space that contains a complete representation of
this universe inside itself. This room becomes a constructive design structure, which encourages
order and peace in the spectator and expresses it to the senses by figures, form, color and
architecture. However, he adds to the argument in the sense that he points out there exists two
categories of gardening, each with their own attached sense of place, mirroring a specific view of
experiencing being in the world
Such claims demonstrate, symbolically and as a metaphor for an emphasis on absolute truth, that
the perception of the courtyard garden was a well-known way of thinking in medieval Islamic
cultures. While the Gardens were intended to wear nature to have nourishment, they should have
a language surrounding them that had significance for anyone that might understand to perceive
their meanings. The garden was situated within a certain structure. Those garden spaces were
consequently dominated by two categories: the image garden in literature and the actual area of
the planned garden. However, in her description of the Roman Garden, Katharine T. von
Stackelberg points to, these alternate conceptions, the literary and the physical, were not merely
a practical arrangement of one then the other; rather, they should be perceived as a

ARABIC LEXICOLOGY OF LANDSCAPE AND GARDEN

In order to be able to perceive and appreciate the landscape, it is important to remember the
importance assigned to an individual's interpretation of the landscape. This insistence on
perception is also important for landscape of the Arabic phrase, mandẓar. “The Hans Wehr
Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic defines mandẓar as sight, view, panorama, outlook and
perspective, an object seen or viewed, scenery, a place commanding a sweeping view, lookout
and mandẓar āmm as general view, landscape, scenery and panorama. The word is also linked to
mindẓār, which means telescope, magnifying glass or mirror. Mandẓar is derived from the verb
naẓara, which means to perceive with the eyes, see, regard, look, gaze, glance, but also envisage,
consider, contemplate, pay attention, put one‘s mind to, direct one‘s attention or observe
attentively. It becomes clear that the Arabic word for landscape denotes both object and subject
and as verb it has the concrete meaning of looking with the eyes, as well as a conceptual
meaning, which is to understand and to evaluate.

The Arabic language, in addition, makes the movement from landscape to a more specific garden
space more fluent, since the words naḍara u, naḍira a and naḍura u mean to be flourishing,
blooming, verdant, fresh, beautiful, bright, brilliant, luminous and radiant. Moreover, naḍra can
either mean bloom, flower and freshness or glamour, splendour, beauty, opulence and wealth.
113

It is an accepted fact that the Islamic world is varied and wide-ranging in its organizing of human
society and as a consequence in its ways of cultivating the earth and gardening methods. What
my lingering upon the Arab lexicology of landscape shows, however, is that landscapes, or more
specifically gardens, share a common thread. A garden is understood as a specific space that a
person perceives and contemplates; it is also closely linked to beauty and even wealth and
power.114

Lamia Latiri claims that the Arabic word for landscape, mandẓar, implies three constant
parameters. Firstly, the garden is a medium for perception, but this perceptual operation does not
rely exclusively on sight but includes other senses as well. Secondly, it involves a perceiving
subject, either an individual or the collective, in whose imagination the representation of
landscape is placed within a framework which attributes a general significance to the elements
contained within. Thirdly, it involves an infinitely varied list of stereotypes or models by which
the isolated elements of the gaze are assessed and valued.115

Although the experience of such a place is dynamic, because landscape is never static, but
subject to weather changes, seasonal changes and even momentary changes in light and sound
and smells, there is always a framework of cultural memory and meanings accompanying it.116

At the same time the Arabic word janna, which also means garden or paradise, comes from a
root meaning to conceal, to veil or become dark..117

The courtyard garden is hidden or obscured beyond the landscape, but at the same time the
landscape is hidden within its shapes and configurations.

Although the idea of paradise, from its conceptions in ancient Mesopotamia and Persia and its
introduction into abrahamic religions, has become a very important architectural definition in
place making in islamic cultures, although it criticizes the limited vision of all Muslim garden as
embodiments of paradise on earth. The notion of paradise gardens was reinforced by Qur‘anic
paradise accounts, suggested that the gardens were linked to reflection and elegance and evolved
into an influential visual metaphor, that of the courtyard garden. To quote Nader Ardalan, “spirit
and matter have reached a perfect union in a visual model of great potency”. Ardalan explains
that in formal religious terms the paradigm deals with the concept of a primordial timeless unity
at the mythic creation of humankind in the Garden of Eden, as well as the place promised for the
righteous on judgement day.

Metaphorically, paradise is that specific place of mind where a person feels at one with the
whole universe. Visually, the paradigm is a geometrically designed walled garden, containing
water channels laid out cross-axially in the four cardinal directions and emanating from a central
fountain, which finds its allegorical description in the Qur‘anic Suras.118

Ardalan concludes that the paradise paradigm in both the Islamic visual model as well as in the
mythic image of humankind merges together a material impression of beauty and a non-material
allusion to the essential order innate in the cosmos.119

However, as we have already pointed out, our focus is on the physical experience of the
courtyard gardens as a Barzakh. Therefore, although drawing on these discussions of spatial
ordering in premodern Islam will enable us to map parallels in the geometrically ordered spaces
of the courtyard gardens, we believe that it is only through vision and perception of the physical
garden‘s presence that a person can discover its hidden realities

CHAPTER 3 THE ALHAMBRA

Our analysis of the Arabic word for landscape has also revealed the important link between
garden, vision, contemplation and beauty. 121

By gazing at these signals, we can only penetrate their meanings and see their appeal through
two eyes, purpose and imagination, but only when we look at the universe.

The courtyard gardens are claim within frames that assume unique interpretations for their
architectural forms. These contexts are based on a specific cosmology, religion and imagination,
all of which talk of a primordial storey. This storey, however, is firmly rooted in a historical and
cultural Islamic environment. The courtyard's shapes are the signs or representations in the
viewer's imagination of these concepts and beliefs. Interpretation of these symbol and type
requires a hermeneutical phase in which the hidden world of abstract concepts and the world of
perceived modes of sensitivity are seen, according to Ibn al-’Arabī.

The intermediary realm of fantasy (« Alam Al-Khayāl ») which is among the most exquisite in
its being and the most full in gendered life in Ibn al-’Arabī 's thoughts is the Barzakh, the
intermediary of both realms.124

The real, clear and intuitive awareness of the responsive universe is put mainly on the
interpretation of its underlying meaning by its forms. The spatial structure of the courtyard
garden reveals an understanding of space based on a central organization of space. In Ibn
al-’Arabī ‘s words:

Vision is an important part of the garden experience in the Islamic gardens. The interplay
between what the eye actually sees and what is inferred is constantly continuous. D. Fairchild
Ruggles believed that in an Islamic sense, technologies like screens and miradors orchestrate the
friction between the promise of visual encounters and the real realisation of such experience.
These systems restrict visibility for a moment and require someone to step ahead and focus his or
her eyes down a line until a visual sweep is carried out side by side. The vision is reinforced by
the action of the eye, which the body uses to negotiate with time and space, in one moment.
Furthermore, not only is the perspective of the nature highlighted, but it becomes a view from a
certain position by the positioning of architecture in the ground. These arrangements set the
direction of the gaze and at the same time dictate the vision, inevitably establishing a junction
between two crossed axes or one of the terminal points of the axis.

The perspectives are normally located high, with the eye gazing down into the garden as if
looking down onto a carpet or out into a landscape. These views have meaning as perception is a
purely regulated experience in which two levels, the actual and the construct, fall. The mirador
has a dual purpose as it not only offers a viewing area, but makes each act of vision at the same
time.126
A position or person as the subject or the spectator is defined here and the other as the displayed
object. In this disparity between subject and object, the frame establishes a connexion by a
disciplining act of interpretation where the subject and the object focus on each other.

It is also important to remember, as far as my point is concerned, that miradors do not only play
an important role in focusing the eyes, but can be viewed as intermediate constructs that merge
the external scenery with the interior court with a sweeping view. James Dickie argues that
miradors are arranged to be the space where architecture hits its climax in the countryside. Power
is released with all views concurrently viewed together.127

In Ibn al-„Arabī’‘s cosmology, water is very important and considered as one of the four pillars
or four elements of nature: earth, water, air and fire.

Chittick states that in Ibn al-fir Arabi, Being can be made manifest by some kind of object, just
like water can take the shape of any receptor onto which the throne of God is situated (Qur'an
11:7)130

Chittick once again points out that the relation between being or wujūd and the people or forms
is often contrasted by Ibn al-’Arabī between water and ice.131

Ibn al-’Arabī’s use of the pool comparison to illustrate that shaped shapes are often skewed and
require explanation to be recognized and interpreted, is especially important to our claims with
regard to the courtyard gardens of Alhambra. The pool is the real body where the beauty and
luster of the spirit water have become turbid and made discerning about the reality impossible. It
is the depth of a pool. It is the depth of the pool.

Water comes into the garden either with motion or with stasis. In the one side, in their quietness
the pools in the garden expose secret layers, which can be pierced only by imagination.
Movement, on the other hand, exposes different truths, and just as forms change in a mirror, as a
human perceives it in another place, moving water alters what is viewed. Ibn al-„Arabī’
explains:

The beholder of those courtyard gardens will be informed of an interaction between artificial and
natural elements which connect architecture with the landscape when entering the Court of
Myrtles and the Court of Lions. The synthesis of inner and outer spaces and the relations
between positive and negative spaces concurrently devastate and expose elements such as water
in the two courtyards.

An broad rectangular pool, measuring 120 by 77 meters, almost entirely fills the Court of the
Court of Myrtles. The pool is enclosed by a thin line of myrtle shrubs east and west. These thin
beds of grass are enclosed in the marble floor with shallow water channels. There is a shallow
basin on either side of the tub, from which the water springs up softly and sinks down into the
pool to trickle into the main pool through the short open channels. Ruggles states that the brief
vertical axes of the bubbling jets contrast with the horizontal layer of silvery water on which the
underlying architecture is reflected. This action and stasis play is often translated into the
courtyard shapes. The circular structures of the reservoirs contrast with the extreme
rectangularity of the greater reservoir and the linear bubbling of the beds. Looking over the
actual shape, as it sinks onto a smooth surface and then shines out in soft ripple, the basin may be
seen to mimic the winding loop of a water drop. 133

According to Grabar, the northern side of the court is the most prominent facade of the court.. He
describes it as follows

It is not only the eye drawn up to the open sky by the house, but also the middle, where the pool
with a mirror surface is a mirage of shape and photo.

The Court of Lions gives the experience a sense of motion and movement, in contrast with the
calmness and still created by the Court of Myrtles. A jardin separated into four equal quadrants
by paved paths is in the rectangular courtyard. The arcade is enclosed by the garden and is
slightly elevated than the garden routes, where kiosks to the east and west ends of the courtyard
are projected. The transfer of water from the interior to the middle of the courtyard, as defined by
Ruggles as a ribbon of fluid water, succeeds in putting together contrasting spaces that merge the
only and the many in only one fluid move.135

It should also be remembered that Ruggles gives the Court of Lions as a position of influence a
secular interpretation. The four-part plan of the garden, Ruggles claims, is an important emblem
of autonomy and a symbol of the old age. At the Alhambra, these characteristics can apply to the
land management patron as it is also the water supply manager. Ruggles argues that the Lindara
Mirror is an important emblem of territory; ownership and sovereign law, like her points
regarding the Mirror in Lindaray as the symbolic instrument for concentrating sovereignty. It
acts as a symbol for property control and land ownership.136

Cynthia Robinson reflects on her poems and ornamentalism, in relation to this perception of the
strength and sovereignty of actual gardens. Robinson suggests that the Alhambra's poetry,
ornamentation and architecture are symbolic, and the Lions' Palace is considered to encompass a
lavish garden. Robinson argues that the room was a cosmos-garden and that the Nazarite public
recognised those elements as architecture is undersoded in terms of allégorie and mimoses.
Lions' Court is structural, between the small garden in which the Mirador of Lindaraja opens up
and Rawdah in the south (where the sovereigns of Nasre were buried) and creates a connexion
between these gardens and, by embodying ideas of divinely bestowed sovereint and immortality,
gives them a spiritual connotation.

Aben and De Wit claimed the courtyard garden had a complex symbolism, in which the axial
cross represented the cosmos as much as the agricultural one, and irrigation represented the
prosperity of the earth and the control of the environment. The courtyard gardens were designed
for the purpose of the patio. The lions of the source represent the winner in whose honour the
courtyard has been designed and its makers' techniques.

It is Nasser Rabbat, however, who catches the essence of the court of the Lions, as his
explanation shows the strong relation between the moveable water and the appearance it
achieves, as it travels at once into and out into the soul of the courtyard. Rabbat stresses water's
function in reflection, saying that a perceptual misunderstanding between liquid and solid is the
prime symbol for the water use of these courtyard gardens. This uncertainty illustrates the
contemplative function of the water. Only through the veils of those paradoxes can a person
realise the ultimate beauty of the water sculpture.137

The entire symmetrical equilibrium is borne across the water sources at the Court of Lions. In the
two rooms, the north-south axis finishes in the fountains, while the long east-western axis is not
inward, but ends short; this makes the axis equal. However, the two similar sunken fountains at
the end of the East and West Porticos are both maintained by the positioning of equilibrium.
Water spills through the sides of these narrow depressed cups, before pouring over graved stone
stairs, to eventually spill into the dodecagonal basin at the base of the 12 lions. The stability of
the axis across these unbreaked channels is not only physical; but also the direction of centripetal
water flux stresses the inner orientation towards the middle of the fountain.

In the lower cylindrical shape of the bowl centre, the well transforms the water flow around as
the water flows out of 8 smaller outlets on the top of the bowl to be absorbed through these two
larger openings. The water flow reverses the flow. This arrangement produces a steady rear and
rear displacement on the surface of the water, only interrupted by the water jet spurted from the
centre. In addition, the twelve fluid arches of sprinkling spray, which emerge from the lions'
mouths into the bowl, are to complete this symphony of water.138

The general impression created by the lion's fountain emphasises the centrifuge water movement,
pointing to an uninterrupted water flow to the middle, and at the same time moving away from
the centre.

In addition, this linear layout of the water channels becomes part of an ongoing arrangement of
space beginning from the Abencerrage Fountain, the Lion's Fountain, Two Sisters Hall and the
Lindaraja Fountain. The Lindaraja Mirador becomes a crucial link between the courtyards, the
Lindaraja Garden and the surrounding countryside. It serves as an internal and external threshold
and at the same time reveals the contrast between palace and the surrounding scenery.

Ruggles' discussion of the Lindaraja Mirador illustrates Ibn Zamrak 's poem that decorates
Lindaraja Mirador 's walls

Ruggles points to the play „ ain "which has the double sense of the eye and spring, coupled by
the insān (pupil) of the poem and the mirador, which confirms the role of the mirador as a
mechanism that builds a structural bond between object and object in the placement of the
spectators and frames the view. Furthermore, the fact that the Lions' Court is not set on the
palace-town walls, but far inside, makes the look from this view from the inside towards the
Court of Lions and from outside towards the distant mountains even more spectacular and
surprising.140

The courtyard is both the sublimation of the cultivated countryside and the place from which to
look at the area, according to Aben and De Wit. In comparison, the scenery is a prospective and
symbol in the courtyard. In a balanced composition the context, shape, geometry and details
come together in which house, patio, and vegetation, both inside and outside, are simultaneously
evident. The drama is provided by a view from the view from the viewpoint of the Mirador, one
from the contained home and the other from the outside.

Though in its quadripartite divided garden with a central fountain, the Court of Lions shows a
crucial typology for 14th-century Islamic palace architecture, the percepter is led on to a journey
of reflection and discovery when seen through the interpretive lens of Ibn al-Aarbi. First of all,
external and internal spaces are combined, thus creating a third space where the distinction
between outside and within disappears. Secondly, the interplay of water and shape further
strengthens this juxtaposition within and outside. Ibn al-’Arabī identifies one of his own
knowledge-acquiring states

Similarly, while one knows that water is simply water in the fountains and bowls of the
Alhambra courtyard gardens, the understanding of these fountains and bowls gives water an
entirely different nature. Reflecting the Comares Tower in the calm, rectangular reservoir, the
tower is turned into a glittering water picture to create a magnificent atmosphere of hushed static.
The Court of Lions action is paradoxically indicated not only by the use of aquatic elements, but
also by positioning the slim and elegant columns on the receiver.143

In addition to that, Robinson believes that projecting symbols on the water produces a condition
of the senses, which overrides the tension between what is true and what isn't. Similarly,
underlining the importance of water in relaxing senses and mind, Ruggles points to the water
features at Myrtles' court offering illusionary representation of the architecture around them, but
when powered by jets and channels, they animate an otherwise inert environment.144

These locations can be viewed only as fantasy, and hence they can acquire perspective and
experience the universe if people look at it with remembrance, thought, intellect, confidence,
understanding, listening and vision.

Looking at light and shadows from both eyes mean an individual (subjective) and empirical
(light and shadow) view. All knowledge is understood, perceptive, contemplative and intuitive,
by imagination, which intermediates sense and mind. It gives life to forms as intermediary, but
only when a person understands the unmanifest potential of all forms that already reside in
absolute truth with his / her mind is true understanding. It is the acceptance of the reality by
perception of every symbol and shape of the universe.

So, on the one hand, the truth of beauty is to be learned, and, on the other, beauty is truth. This
understanding is brought on by illumination for Ibn al-’Arabī because the True is light, the
imaginary darkness, and the universe, which lies in both, a world of lighting. The words of Ibn
al-’Arabī:
As Chittick says, light is epistemological as well as ontological, much like wujūd or being. Light
is to be, to discover and to manifest, but it also is to know. By gaining this awareness a person
will penetrate the meaning of life and realise that all life is a self-revelation of the Real. Ibn al-
firstArabi says there is entry and departure, descend and elevation in this self-divulgation,
motion and quietness, harmony and division, breach and what remains.147

Moreover, the universe or self-revelation is nothing more than fantasy because the imagination
sees the forms and allows them existence, and interprets them

The courtyard garden represents a Barzakh landscape and reflects what is just apparent in
imagined spaces, but it also reflects and reflects. Its architectural type is capable of creating a
space that is formed to have individual meaning through sense awareness, thought, creativity,
memory and reason.

The Alhambra's courtyards encapsulate the teachings of Ibn al-’Arabī, based on the concept of
elegance as well as the idea of reality. For beauty, the identity of all life of being the same as
light erases darkness in the mind of Ibn al-’Arabī. And the proximity rejects the gap.150 Beauty
is an example of the imagination present worldwide, and through an interplay of light and
darkness, it is caught and expressed through the surfaces of the highly decorated pillars, panels
and muqarnas.

In the architecture of the Alhambra's courtyard gardens Dickie points out that the architectural
screens are more or less porous and disrupt the axial progression with a series of retractable
plans, the arches consist of a diaphanous, translucent and an opaque panel. The translucent
screen is preceding the opaque screen and, like an archway or more than one archway, is never
fully opaque. In the Alhambra these screens describe two distinct forms of space, longitudinal
space and cross space, and the dramatic zones become dramatically contrasted. The spectator's
location shifts viewpoint, which creates intersectional views that open and close as a human
passes through space.

Dickie points out that this spatial distinction of displays that disrupt and point the way breaks
down space in appreciable units, but it also enhances a sense of perception as a human walks
through them. The arcades in the Lions' court form a porous screen in which light is filtered into
spaces which connect and unify its disparate elements in a complex unity of form and texture.

The style is meant to touch and trap the eye, be it stucco, carve or tiling. In this stage of
entanglement, the decoration approaches the visitor in the way he traces a blueprint or decrypts a
pattern.152

The tourist thereby engages in the construction from which a distinction is made between the
outside and the within, between the inside and outside and the viewer. The significance of light
in the courtyard architecture is apparent as the sun passes through the clouds. As light is trapped
and broken by the prismatist of muqarnas, the solidity of architecture tends to get less stable
during sun movement. Dickie states why the angle of lights is often oblique in nasrid
architecture. The sun passes about or sections of a pattern on the opposite wall are illuminated.
Moreover, depending on the clouds obscuring the sun, the detail is alternatively inactive or
vivid. This resulted in the architecture not being rigid for a while but still unstable, so the light or
filtered light feature would energise another static mass.153

The same position played by light and water as they facilitated travel to an otherwise stagnant
room. Screen philtres light and muqarnas into light fracturing, thereby breaking up highlights
and concavities. All components restrict and simultaneously connect the spaces surrounding
them, which results in the mixture of the internal and exterior space, leaving all the boundaries
between these spaces unclear. The space is split into two spaces. This in- and outer
interpenetration produces a third space that is both viewed as actual and not real. In this phase
volume disintegrats into phenomenality, then reintegrats as spirit becomes substance and matter
takes shape. Matter is not as stable or permanent, but flexible and cinematic.154

The overarching purpose of these courtyard spaces, according to Grabar, is to deliver illusions in
a relentless endeavour to give the impression that things are not as they seem. Light becomes an
important player in increasing these experiences, notably obvious in the peculiar rhythm of the
light sources of the Court of Lions, which succeeds in generating two opposite but equivalent
perceptions.

Jerrilynn Dodds argues that there is a continuous fluctuation in interactions inside and outside in
the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra. This implicit sense of disorientation from these
architectural areas contradicts the rational aspirations of the spectator. According to Dodds, this
feeling of mystery has become an important part of the ultimate quest for beauty. Only after
considerable reflection the unseen and the visible showed their full strength and, even then, it
was not always comprehensible. The Alhambra palace goers belonged to a tribal community
whose celestial perception was in higher order finding consolation.156

Akkach interprets the imagination of Ibn al-’Arabī as fusing and combining human creativity.
The imagination mediates both visual expression and analysis by drawing together the
meaningful interaction between sensory forms and abstract ideas. It is not only an important
cognitive tool, but also the artistic trigger of any creation. Here, the imaginative essence of
human mind is capable of managing abstract forms and shaping them as an individual wishes.
This imaginative capacity is capable of deconstruction and restoration of new and unrecognised,
meaning-based ways.

This act is not separated from the senses, as individual imagination is inextricably connected to
the sensory universe, as all elementary data filling our imagination are derived through
interaction with the phenomenal world by the senses. Imagination is not effective to construct
ex nihilo in Ibn al-’Arabī 's thoughts. The created object thus still remains in conjunction with
the subject; it is presupposed in the subject's visual experience. The architectural styles should
also be argued for, since they have external and internal meaning. not only are aesthetic but also
metaphorical. There is a link between architecture, literary exegesis and the universe.157

In relation to the interpreter, the courtyard garden blends shape, elegance, and fantasy to create
an aesthetic way to experience, view, and experience the world in its spaces. The essence of the
court garden is its capacity to expose and dissimulate simultaneously. It must be known that an
individual shifts from the apparent outer meaning to a more inner and secret meaning. In Ibn
al-’Arabī 's case, the garden is ultimately an imagination site; it concealed and revealed at the
same time; it is shade and light; and it offers a person the chance to witness life and perceive it
as true and imaginary. In the end, the Alhambra courtyard gardens allow an individual to see
what Ibn al-fun Arabi called a life which is impossible. It transforms into an intrinsically
uncertain intermediate universe. At best we might say it's not the one or the other or both.

True Truth. True Reality. Taking into consideration Ibn al-’Arabī, speaking of experiencing and
revelation whereby everything in the Cosmos is a symbol of God's creative force and can only
be understood in the mercy of the light of God, she suggests that true knowledge is only
disclosing itself, which is put in one's heart. Subtelny explains:
Subtelny points out that this intermediate domain, residing between the meaning world of
generated phenomena and the divine world of unseen reality, constitutes the centre of an
imagined perception by tracing her case back to Ibsin al-'Arabi and his idea of the imaginary
world, or Mundus Imaginalis, as defined by Henry Corbin. It is also called the Barzakh which
can only be accessed via the centre which itself is a Barzakh, balanced with sensory and
intellective awareness. It is the domain of productive or imaginative creativity. In Sufi
mysticism, the heart is known as the seat of the perception and the imagination; on the Sufi path,
one must look at the world from the heart 's eye. True wisdom falls to the person who can see the
virtual garden past its inner reality through the eye of the heart. The phenomenological garden
can be seen as a mirror representing Actual Truth in a mechanism of concealment and discovery
at the same time. The earthly Garden is turned by the visionary universe into a reflection that
represents the mirror of divine truth and ultimately a trace of a trace which, through the ideal
Saint, the exceptional human being, is traced back to its divinity as ontological origin, which
serves as a mediator between the sacred world and the world of matter.160

Conan claimed that the statement of Subtelny based on the magical imagination that reflects truth
and the reflection itself called for a theosophical comprehension of certain corporal functions
(heart, sense of smell and taste, inner vision), of the metaphorical way of thought that it derives
and of poetry theory to be a curtain of concealing and disclosing truths Reality in the
universe.161

For us, subtelny maps offer a practise of space from which a person may reach the Barzakh
universe, by reflection, through the phenomenological qualities of the garden. The gardens are
not only a reality, but also a picture of the universe representing the heart of man. During this
meeting the traveller discovers that the frontiers flutter, which converts the imaginary into the
domain of the real.

We should also agree with the observation made by Henri Lefebvre that it is incorrect to exclude
social space from the field of vision of an individual by simply turning it into an abstract space
or mental space. In abstract terms, the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra as a symbol of
paradise is to forget that a entity, both individual and social, lives in a space that must either
identify themselves or get lost. Lefebvre argues that the decentering of information will only
take place if the body is used as a functional sensory totality.162

Via the lenses of Ibn al-’Arabī, we gazed at spaces in the Alhambra courtyard gardens.
Understanding these gardens as sources of information of several value suggests a society on the
one hand which was not foreign to Ibn al-Arabbi 's classes.163

It shows us, on the other hand, a garden space in relation to its areas and as a result of this
interaction, since, as a social space, the garden never represents merely a passive, plain frame of
activities or a container which will fill it with any significance. Rather, it is space for sensation,
continuously making synesthetic demands on the body, providing its tourists an atmosphere of
carefully arranged emotions, stressing a complex and shifting sense of space. If we agree with
Lefebvre that the sensory can be recovered by restoring the body to space, we can say that the
courtyard gardens of the Alhambra are transcending static systems of sense, for the perception of
the activity of the garden and its rhythms now has importance.164
The courtyard gardens of the Alhambra mirror the experiencing subject, showing a connexions
between shape and meaning so that the individual can witness not only a representation of
himself, but also find meaning in it a third space that connects architecture, body and
consciousness, both imagined and actual. My impression is that the creativity of these courtyard
gardens consists of their being a Barzakh, their being known as a space of neutrality, which
transforms into boundaries which blur realities and what is not so. As such, they are also spaces
of creativity, which make a person creatively put in the world through feeling, memories and
emotions.

Chapter 4: Conclusion

Our main goal was to respond to the normal binaries that we encounter when approaching sites
such as the Alhambra in our daily lives. The Alhambra, beyond the structures of mimesis or
representation, we tried to explain or just to reveal deeper meanings. Rather, we tried to
consider the Islamic gardens in terms of its capacity to create an experience, a presence that can
touch and influence you.

On this journey we encountered a lot of observations and hypotheses, but we found the
instruments required for the Alhambra courtyard gardens within an aesthetic that emphasises a
thorough encounter to experience and apprehender being of the world in the work of a mystic
Sufi of Andalusia from the 13th century, Ibn al – Arabi. Ibn al-'arabi gave us the word ' Barzakh
' to shift away from a dualist context, by focusing on a partnership experience involving both
object and object. The Barzakh describes an intermediate fact that shares the characteristics of
both sides, separating but describing them simultaneously. The Barzakh is also the realm of
fantasy in the minds of Ibn al-’Arabī’s, making creativity, like the Barzakh, the dominant
property of the universe. This intermediate features of the imagination enable one to interpret
and interpret the world as understandable and subjective, absent and true, real and unreal.
However, the most interesting point is that the use by Ibn al-’Arabī of a word Barzakh is not
only that it implies an isthmus or an isthmus distance among two adjacent entities but adds a
certain spatial quality to the expression.

Ibn al-’Arabī’ refers to the Barzakh as a courtyard between two knowledges, or two homesteads

Used as a speech of space, the Barzakh is a heterotopic region as the space found between the
houses. It is a different space, but still part of our living experiences simultaneously. The
Barzakh, although they are situated at the fringe of civilization, describes such minute spaces as
interspaces, such as our parks, gardens or monuments, which are not banned from the outskirts of
living space and are only used in terms of confrontation and resistance. Like the Barzakh, these
spaces are not spaces that are empty or none. Yet they are transitive areas full of motion and
movement by their senses and emotions because of their leniency. The Barzakh becomes the
map in this sense, which reveals the identity of space in which we fly. As a map, the Barzakh
gives us a neutral space, merging the imaginary and the true, where the two sides, which
exchange continually with each other a mobile mirage, become two-fold, or superpose parts of a
single trajectory.166
The Barzakh, as a moving mirror, evolves from a category of space into an aesthetic perception
of space, stressing a clear, immediate and intuitive knowledge. Ibn al-’Arabī’s claims the
Barzakh is at the core of the non-existence movement.
In this witnessing of presence, the cosmos can be experienced fully by a complete human being.
The Barzakh, as used by Ibn al-„Arabī’, is in essence an epiphany for it is the ontological locus for
tashbīh..168

Tashbīh (presence) as the opposite of tanzīh (absence) is revealed in the lifting of the coverings
of the eyesight, which through piercing the veils of reality reveals an intensive moment of
perceptual insight.169

Ibn al-’Arabī’ further suggests that insight is the result of the comingling of light and darkness,
for the form‘s darkness is a shadow, and its light is a radiance upon the mirror of the
proportioned body.170

Furthermore, in this fusion of shadow and light there is an epiphanic disclosure of a face that is
beautiful‖ and with every loveliness grants us cheerfulness and encounter. The Barzakh,
therefore, is a way to understand the world which highlights an aesthetic perception of a reality
that is viewed and interpreted by us through all our senses. The Barzakh is in this respect
dynamic in nature, demonstrating that each locus has its own beauty and belongs to no one else,
and this if the revelation draps beauty and beauty it will remain a new beauty forever in any self-
disclosure, just as it remains forever in a whole new existence.171

On the one side, Barzakh is a spatial idea that helps us to identify a region as a heterotopic, third
position, such as the courtyard gardens of the Alhambra. On the other hand, the Barzakh is again
the epiphany of shape to take the sentence of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht.172

The principle of Barzakh, understood as such, opens up opportunities to future thought about
presence production as an alternate form of information production. The definition of Barzakh in
space emphasises the presence 's development as the convergence of a formally incarnated event-
effect..173

This fusion of shape and event replaces set and static constructs with an all-embracing presence
found in the universe. Jean-Luc Nancy believed the presence itself was a birth. This search to go
beyond mimesis and representativeness. Moreover, it is a birth that falls out from the life and
through it everything occurs.
Jean-Luc Nancy 's vision is a presence that is not a subject, nor is it for itself, only in the fullness
of the continuing appearance of presence and the absence of presence. Only through this
complex interplay can one come to realize the pleasures of presence, the magical recipe par
excellence of Jean-Luc Nancy.175

In shifting the spatiality of presence, we come close to the assertion of Ibn al-’Arabī’s that the
entire universe gives birth immediately and that none but the emergence of beings still exists. In
this endless coming-to-be, time and space disappear into a transient moment as an intermediate
presence. This momentous Barzakh occurrence is most evident in the courtyard gardens of the
Alhambra in comparison between open spaces and confined spaces, action and quiet, and light
and darkness.

As theory for a heterotopic third and neutral vacuum, Barzakh is rich in endless opportunities to
respond to a new philosophy, the philosophy of life, called on by Henry Lefebvre.176

David Harvey writes in his post-word to Lefebvre 's Space Output that "the moment is the
central principle of Lefebvre 's thinking," which Lefebvre interprets as brief and vital feelings,
such as joy, enjoyment, surprise and even an eagerness to a person's everyday engaging with the
world.

These bursts of presence or brief epiphanies of emotional intensities, seen through the eyes of
the Barzakh, underline the complex character of living in the universe. The Barzakh offers a
way of thinking about space that assigns primary importance to immediate sensory perception.
In terms of its presence theory, the Barzakh as a hermeneutical instrument extends current
boundaries, stressing a movement-conditioned and esthetical practice of space. The external and
internal forces mingle in the kinetic and haptic action of walking through the Alhambra
courtyard gardens to create a moment of intensive enjoyment and perspective. The Barzakh 's
ability to provoke, invite, and alter assigns no definitive significance but Barzakh serves to
make the unseen visible. They turn from ordinary gardens into rare and dramatic gatherings.
When we use the Barzakh to visit these gardens, we see them for the first time as we
imaginatively immerse ourselves in an aesthetic meeting at once tactile and emotional.
In this thesis we have argued A individual on a journey of exploration may be known as a
walker. As a ways man, such a person does not only look at the universe, but genuinely opens
up to the world too. I put the Barzakh as an alternate lens in this phase of opening up to the
universe. The courtyard, the sign for the Barzakh, not only symbolically shows an epiphanies
spatially shape indicating that the boundary between light and darkness, enclosure and
transparency.

Through reaffirming the Barzakh as the illumination of creativity from which the eye can
penetrate through utter nonexistence and giving it the shape of life, the Barzakh thus becomes the
room and basis of revelation or opening. Ibn al-’Arabī’s philosophy of Barzakh, from which he
says that there's no escape because it's followed by everything in the fields of information and
delimitations, accompanies the boundary in consideration.178

However, it is possible to further improve the emphasis Ibn al-’Arabī’ puts in passion. Ibn
al-’Arabī’s teaches that nothing gives life because he loves to let it exist. Therefore everyone is
a beloved in wujūd, but there are only loved ones. Therefore, it opens rich opportunities for
more study and contemplation not only because it describes and offers life, but because it is also
an act of affection.

The philosopher Luce Irigaray is already introduced by the essential feature of Barzakh as the
intermediate space, which by the act of love puts the unseen into perspective.179

The view understood as a moveable caress is, according to Irigaray, a love look. Standard vision
is to see without seeing, but if one looks with affection, both senses are invoked so that the real
and the unseen are not separated. Awareness of a topic in the view of Ibn al-’Arabī’ is only
possible due to a relation with the object of knowledge.

Irigaray says that the view of love is a bridge between the real and the unseen. The third aspect
between the object and the subject is the love as a bridge. The transparent can be perforated by
the look of love and the unseen intangible can be revealed. So it's a gaze that builds rather than
tears up, and your, mine and ours are the universe which it creates.181

Thus, the most important connexion to our own discussions about Barzakh is in Irigaray 's
interpretation of the look of love as an act of vision, which includes all meaning. IRIGALY is
more than just symbolic perception, a look from which the visible gets pierced to the invisible;
it's a sensory and a physical experience, at once, and it belongs to the two. The look of love
nourishes and sustains subject and object, for the appearance of love is the only means of
permeating internal distinctions.
In terms of Barzakh, when we think of holy things, the focus is not on a strong and spiritual
experience or on ceremonial narratives that sacralize space. Rather, the Barzakh shows holy
space as profoundly different at once and fundamentally the same. The strength of the Barzakh is
that, at the end of the day, the Barzakh is the fantasy universe. The Barzakh is also the world of
domination in Ibn al-’Arabī’s thinking because it is stronger and stronger than the feeling.
Imagination has the potential and strength to reveal traces of the sensational world. In Ibn
al-’Arabī’s, the creativity of thinking is not a romantic illusion, but an ontological force that
produces everything.182

The Barzakh as a dividing line between reality and non-existence encourages any person with
imagination and the capacity to conceive about things as true and imaginary in terms of poetics
of sacredness. While the Barzakh portrays the objects that are interpreted, its meanings and
characteristics are written down by cultural and personal experiences, traditions and myths. As a
limit, the Barzakh participates in a space strategy, as he divides and describes it, retaining the
power of exclusion and inclusion within himself. The Barzakh does, however, include in itself
everything imaginable.

Thinking of sacred space as a creative and neuter space, encouraging a perceptive occurrence
that instils an inventive journey in appearances, both outside and within, opens up new
possibilities for further research.

Exploring a philosophy of beauty, whereby holy is not isolate to certain circumstances,

locations and practises. In fact, the perception of places like the courtyard gardens of the
Alhambra is taken forth by disclosing what one really felt one had seen and understood,
unforeseen aspects. This very spiritual and inscrutable discovery of beauty, which was instantly
present and non-existent and which led him to compose his following poem, the new light and
darkness, was already known by mediaeval scholars like Ibn al-'s Arabi..

The Barzakh will epistemologically be seen as a map that gives its consumer a choice of routes.
It retains spaces in it, both real and imaginary, one of its most essential features. The Barzakh
gives its users a panoramic view as a navigation aid, by linking and classifying various areas
according to those spatial habits. The map of the Barzakh shows us tangibly the actual, as well
as the real and unreal positions of the map. So the Barzakh is both present and missing on our
trip. In the one side, the spaces of the Barzakh open to the walker for an aesthetic sensual and
corporeal experience. On the other side, these rooms are space models, points of reference that
those who know their codes and signs can appreciate. In addition, a direction that gives us many
entrances to the true and creative can be traced along a route Barzakh.

In this study we proposed an imaginative reading of Barzakh space as a map of Alhambra

courtyard gardens, so they could be seen as existing and non-existent at the same time.
Following the Barzakh diagram, we embarked on an epiphanic journey shaping the unity and
complex strength of kinetic and haptic activity through the garden of the Alhambra. This gives
one a chance to join a world inspired by action and an involved spatial practise in the structure
of the reality of the garden. This map for us not only the room of the Barzakh but also the
unseen and thus shows us moments of dramatic insight.
Moreover, observing this drama does not separate the body or the mind, but immerses the entire
human being through a simultaneous emergence and erasure of new dimensions. We have thus
embarked on a journey following the path of Ibn al-’Arabī’s Barzakh across the Alhambra's
courtyard gardens. In this epiphanic quest we found the unexpected, a space activity, in which
the usual has transformed into the exceptional, through vision and feeling. In an eventful
development of being in the global, the idea of Barzakh is thus an intersubjective and
transforming heuristic technique bringing spatiality, physicality and imagination together.