The columned hall
Eight columns and a domed light-well over a pool.
José Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY 3.0 · Tournasol7 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es · Tournasol7 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es · Tournasol7 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es
**A bathing hall with a dome on eight columns and a light-well in the roof — and the name misleads: the building is Christian, not Islamic** — near the city walls. ⚠ **The correction first**: **it was built around 1194 in Christian Catalonia** — ✅ **not under Islamic rule**; **Girona had not been Muslim-ruled since the 8th century**. ⚠ **The name came later** because the plan is **taken from the Islamic bath**. ✅ **And that is what genuinely matters**: **the building is evidence of technical and cultural transmission** — **Christian builders raised a bath on the Andalusi model**, **because it was the best model known**. ✅ **The changing room (*apodyterium*) is the finest part**: **a pool at the centre ringed by eight columns carrying a small dome with a light-well**.
Eight columns and a domed light-well over a pool.
Light falling from a central opening in the dome.
The heat chambers and heating flues behind.
Carrer Ferran el Catolic, 17004 Girona, Spain
**By translation, trade and travelling craftsmen — and the traffic went both ways and further than is usually supposed.** ✅ **Translation**: ⚠ **Toledo after its fall in 1085 became a vast translation centre** — **Arabic into Latin**; ✅ **so the works of Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, al-Khwarizmi and al-Zahrawi passed over**, **and with them Greek texts that had been lost to Europe and returned through Arabic**. ✅ **Craftsmen**: ⚠ **Muslim builders, joiners and potters went on working in regions that had become Christian** — **these are the *mudéjares***; ✅ **and a whole Mudéjar style arose** — **brick, horseshoe arches and ornamented timber ceilings in Christian churches and palaces**. ✅ **Practical techniques**: **irrigation by channel and waterwheel**, **papermaking** (⚠ **Europe's first paper mill was at Xàtiva in al-Andalus**), **the growing of citrus, rice and cotton**, **and sugar milling**; ⚠ **and the public bath itself**. ✅ **The language testifies**: **hundreds of Spanish words come from Arabic** — ***alcalde* (the judge), *almohada* (the cushion), *aceite* (the oil), *ojalá* (God willing)**. ⚠ **The transmission was not always peaceful** — **much of it happened in the course of conquest and subjection**; ✅ **but it happened**.
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