The Alhambra in Granada is a palace-fortress city raised under the Nasrid dynasty, and it carries two powerful themes of Islamic architecture — muqarnas ceilings and the courtyard-and-water system — in their most developed form.

Muqarnas is a three-dimensional geometry that conceals a plain transition: in passing from a square or polygonal space to a dome or vault, the surface is built from the stepped stacking of small pendent cells (resembling honeycomb or stalactites). These cells both make the structural transition and turn the ceiling from a solid mass into an apparently weightless pendent texture that breaks up the light. The muqarnas dome of the Hall of the Abencerrajes shows how a single geometric rule is subdivided into hundreds of cells — mathematics turned directly into building surface.

The second theme is the courtyard. The Alhambra's spaces are organised around open courts, the most famous being the Court of the Lions. Water here is not decorative but an architectural element: thin channels, fountains, and pools link interior to garden, soften the hot climate together with shade, and double the architecture in reflection with their still surfaces. The fountain of the Court of the Lions is a measured hydraulic device fed by graded channels. The Alhambra thus unites structural transition (muqarnas) and environmental design (courtyard + water) in a single refined language.