It's not only the Alhambra that gives Granada its distinct flavor of being not-quite part of Europe. Indecipherable signs in Arabic... tea-rooms serving sweet mint tea (and no alcohol)... head-scarved women in cover-all robes. Sometimes you wonder if you've left Spain behind entirely.

Walk up a ribbon-thin sloping lane called Calderia Nueva in Granada's Albaycin quarter, and it's almost like being in a souk in Fez or Marrakesh. Hole-in-the-wall-shops overflow with all the exotic treasures of North Africa: jewel-bright wraps and cushions... leather footstools... ironwork lamps... hubble-bubble smoking pipes... sticky pastries... Aladdin-style slippers with turned up toes. Thankfully the shopkeepers are not aggressively pushy like their Moroccan counterparts.

After more than 500 years, Arabs have returned from North Africa to Al-Andalus -- the name they give to Spain's Andalucia province. And they've specifically returned to Granada, the country's last Muslim stronghold which fell to the Reconquista forces of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. It ended both a dynasty and a culture that extolled art, poetry, science, music, and architecture.

Given the West's current suspicions about Islam, Granada brings welcome proof that Muslims and Christians can live together in harmony. One real estate agent I spoke with says the city now has around 15,000 Muslim inhabitants. If you visit Mirador San Nicolas with its incredible views across to the Alhambra, you'll notice there's now an Islamic studies center and a brand-new mosque beside the Catholic church.

Apparently Moroccan craftsmen toiled for seven years to produce almost a million colorful tiles to decorate the mosque's interior.

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First Published: Sep 26, 2005