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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Artemis ... Huntress beneath the Moon

Artemis



Artemis cacciatrice l',

Artemis come la luna,

Enchanté, Mademoiselle, incanta il mio cuore!

Gaze a la luna e mi racconti di eroi, molto tempo fa.

Con il cappio della lirica magia,

Spin leggende del vostro meraviglioso liberazione

E ispirare me come cavaliere errante.

Comando di me, la mia signora e mi obbedire ...

O onore della principessa del reame, dimmi di

Il bene che io possa vincere il premio della vera e servita

Puro segreto bene compiuto.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Haiku

Clouds appear

and bring to men a chance to rest

from looking at the moon.




Harvest moon:

around the pond I wander

and the night is gone.


Basho, Matsuo. (1644-1694).
The name Basho (banana tree) is a sobriquet he adopted around 1681 after moving into a hut with a banana tree alongside. He was called Kinsaku in childhood and Matsuo Munefusa in his later days.

Basho's father was a low-ranking samurai from the Iga Province. To be a samurai, Basho serviced for the local lord Todo Yoshitada (Sengin). Since Yoshitada was fond of writing haikai, Basho began writing poetry under the name Sobo.

During the years, Basho made many travels through Japan, and one of the most famous went to the north, where he wrote Oku No Hosomichi (1694). On his last trip, he died in Osaka, and his last haiku indicates that he was still thinking of traveling and writing poetry as he lay dying:

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Go to this link -
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1970

Autobiography



Go to this link -
The Gulag Archipelago: Volume I Section II
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (and this one)



In this masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn has orchestrated thousands of incidents and individual histories into one narrative of unflagging power and momentum. Written in a tone that encompasses Olympian wrath, bitter calm, savage irony, and sheer comedy, it combines history, autobiography, documentary and political analysis as it examines in its totality the Soviet apparatus of repression from its inception following the October Revolution of 1917.This volume involves us in the innocent victim's arrest and preliminary detention and the stages by which he is transferred across the breadth of the Soviet Union to his ultimate destination: the hard-labor camp.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Look here for the actual pictures of a horror that outweighed anything done to Palestine, the Indian Dalits, Iraq currently, or anything else in recent history.

Go to this link -
GULAG MANY DAYS MANY LIVES - Days and Lives

The Jews' Communism did this and still does unspeakable horrors throughout the world.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Communism and Zionism are the same and they are from the Devil.

Sergei and Rhonda present.

Elizabeth Dilling Stokes was born April 19, 1894. She died May 26, 1966. She was an American Anti-Communist and Anti-Zionist. She was charged with antisemitism and sedition in the Great Sedition Trial of 1944. She defeated those enemies. She is probably the best Anti-Communist and Anti-Zionist writer there is.


The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today
by Elizabeth Dilling

Elizabeth Dilling was a widely known critic of Judaism prior to World War II until her death in 1967. In writing Jewish Religion, Ms. Dilling chose her research materials with care. Her primary source, the Soncino Talmud, was produced by the finest scholars of Judaism. The Rodkinson Talmud was a monumental work endorsed by Rabbi I. M. Wise, a pioneer of Reform Judaism. Rabbi Dr. Louis Finkelstein, author of The Pharisees: The Sociological Background of Their Faith, became president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America shortly after his book was published, where he was remained for more than 30 years. Thus, Ms. Dilling's research spanned the best that Conservative, Orthodox, and Reform Judaism had to offer in the English language. She also drew from the 12-volume Jewish Encyclopedia, which, though a century old, still stands as a monument to Jewish mainstream scholarship; the 10-volume Universal Jewish Encyclopedia from the early 1940's; US Government State Department Records, The American Hebrew periodical, and other publications.

More on Elizabeth Dilling —


Foreword from The Plot Against Christianity

Foreword from The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today


Come and Hear™ is proud to present the full text of The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today, here, on line. In this book, Elizabeth Dilling presents a Christian's critique of the Talmud as it interprets Biblical teachings. The printed book contains hundreds of photocopied exhibits and references into the Soncino Babylonian Talmud and the King James Bible, encyclopedias, State Department papers, periodicals, the Soncino Talmud, and rabbinical writings. We have used the second edition of this scholarly 1963 classic, with scanned images of all her exhibits and hotlinks into the source text of each, wherever they could be located.



The Christmas spirit in Slavic lands lives on, the Communists could not quench it.


From Mrs. Dilling's work.

An excerpt from Chapter One.

Bible scholars are aware that Jesus Christ denounced the Pharisees. He said they nullified all the Commandments of God by their Tradition, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" (Mark 7:13; Matt. 15:6-9, etc.). His invective, in truth, cannot be equalled. All of Matthew 23 is like a whiplash. He likened Pharisaism to a whited sepulchre, indeed beautiful outwardly, but "inside full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness." Christ climaxed one condemnation after another with the expletive, "Hypocrites!" He called the Pharisees children of them that killed the Prophets. He foretold they would go on killing, crucifying and persecuting until the guilt for all the righteous blood shed from Abel on down would be upon them. "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" Christ asked.
Christ is as utterly devastating of Pharisaism in the record of John 8. Although He admitted that His hearers were descendants of Abraham, He said they were, spiritually, of the devil. Christ told them:

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because the truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it (John 8:44).
The Missing Link
"But," says the disinterested Christian, "what has that to do with us today? What a group of Pharisees did two thousand years ago is over and done with!"

However, the missing link in Christian understanding on the subject of "Pharisees" is best supplied by the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (1943):

The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent, without a break, through all the centuries, from the Pharisees. Their leading ideas and methods found expression in a literature of enormous extent, of which a very great deal is still in existence. The Talmud is the largest and most important single piece of that literature … and the study of it is essential for any real understanding of Pharisaism.
Concerning the Pharisees, the 1905 Jewish Encyclopedia says:

With the destruction of the Temple (70 A.D.) the Sadducees disappeared altogether, leaving the regulation of all Jewish affairs in the hands of the Pharisees. Henceforth, Jewish life was regulated by the Pharisees; the whole history of Judaism was reconstructed from the Pharisaic point of view, and a new aspect was given to the Sanhedrin of the past. A new chain of tradition supplanted the older priestly tradition (Abot 1:1). Pharisaism shaped the character of Judaism and the life and thought of the Jew for all the future. (See Exhibit 264 herein.)
Historically speaking, scripture believers had accepted Christ as the Messiah foretold. They were no longer "Jews," but called themselves "Christians." They were persecuted as such by the Pharisees. The word "Pharisee" comes from the word "separated." (See Exhibit 300.)

The Babylonian Talmud, Sole Authority
You may ascertain by turning to top Jewish authorities today that the Babylonian Talmud, the written form of the Tradition of the Pharisees, is the sole authority of the so-called "Jewish" religion, or Judaism.

Rabbi Louis Finklestein was chosen in 1937 by the Kehillas (Jewish communities) of the World as one of the top 120 Jews best representing "a lamp of Judaism" to the World, together with Maxim Litvinov (Finklestein), the Communist Commissar and bank robber terrorist; atheist communist Albert Einstein; those indefatigable Marxist reds, Harold Laski and his friend Felix Frankfurter (U.S. Supreme Court Justice) who shared honors with Rabbi Finklestein and others. Finklestein has long headed the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, with branches in New York and Los Angeles. In his two-volume work "The Pharisees." Rabbi Finklestein writes:

Pharasaism became Talmudism … But the spirit of the ancient Pharisee survives unaltered. When the Jew … studies the Talmud, he is actually repeating the arguments used in the Palestinian academies. From Palestine to Babylonia; from Babylonia to North Africa, Italy. Spain, France and Germany; from these to Poland. Russia and Eastern Europe generally, ancient Pharasaism has wandered. (See Exhibit 1, Exhibit 2, and Exhibit 3 herein.)
In Rabbi Finklestein's history of the Jews, he states:

The Talmud derives its authority from the position held by the ancient academies. (i.e. Pharisee) The teachers of those academies, both of Babylonia and of Palestine. were considered the rightful successors of the older Sanhedrin . . . At the present time, the Jewish people have no living central authority comparable in status to the ancient Sanhedrins or the later academies. Therefore, any decision regarding the Jewish religion must be based on the Talmud as the final resumé of the teaching of those authorities when they existed.
[page 2] (The Jews — Their History, Culture, and Religion , Vol. 4, p. 1332, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1949).
"The Talmud: Heart's Blood of the Jewish Faith," was the heading of a November, 1959, installment of a bestselling book by the Jewish author, Herman Wouk, which ran serially in the New York Herald-Tribune.

To quote:

The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe — whether we are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists — we follow the Talmud. It is our common law.
Why Was It So Often Burned?
Why is the Talmud kept so unknown to non-Jews? Why was there no usable English translation of the Talmud until the Soncino Edition, 1934-48? Why, in European history, when the laws of the Talmud became commonly known, was it burned over and over by order of the Popes, excoriated by Martin Luther, denounced everywhere, and its followers exiled from one country after another down through the centuries?

The Talmud's basic law is that only the Pharisee Jew ranks as a man, or human being. All others rank as animals, "the people who are like an ass — slaves who are considered the property of the master." The attitude resulting from such teachings has been resented by non-Jews in all countries and centuries. Such resentment, however, is always portrayed by Jews as "persecution of the Jews."

Moses, on the contrary, was most insistent upon having one law for the stranger and for the "home-born" and in teaching that the stranger must not be oppressed. (Exodus 12:49; Lev. 24:22, Num. 9:14; 15:15-16, 29, etc.) In fact, he ordered: "Love ye therefore the stranger; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Deu. 10:19) It was only the abominators he warned against.

Babylonian Talmud — The Law
The Babylonian Talmud is the law for so-called Judaism. However, its pornographic, anti-Gentile and anti-Christian doctrines have often caused hostility against it. It may then be argued by some Jews that there is a Palestinian Talmud which is innocuous. Nevertheless, you may look up the fact that Jewish authorities state it was lost for a thousand years, has missing parts and lacks the "Gemara" and other essentials, and is only used as a scholar's curiosity. Note the statement of British Chief Rabbi Hertz in his foreword to the Soncino edition of the Babylonian Talmud (Exhibit 33):

The Palestinian Talmud … was for many centuries almost forgotten by Jewry. Its legal decisions were at no time deemed to possess validity, if opposed by the Babylonian Talmud.
Was Christ Just to Pharisees?
Without some knowledge of the written form of the "Tradition of the Pharisees," the Babylonian Talmud, one is unable to intelligently judge whether Jesus Christ was fair and just in His acid denunciations of Pharisaism, or not. One needs proof, offered by the irrefutable exhibits from Jewish authorities (set forth elsewhere herein) that the Talmud reverses every one of the Ten Commandments, the teachings of Moses and the Prophets, and enshrines their opposites under a "whited sepulchre" which is a disguise for murder and "all uncleanness," as Christ charged. Murder of non-Pharisees is always permitted; theft, sodomy, incest, rape are all permitted. For example, the righteousness of grown men violating baby girls under three is a favorite topic for discussion in book after book of the Talmud.

Talmudic literature is one long paean of praise for the very name Babylon, and all that it means to Babylonian Talmudism today, whereas it is a term of reproach in Old and New Testaments.

Note the Foreword to the first English translation of the Babylonian Talmud by the late Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, J.H. Hertz, who, like Rabbi Finklestein, was one of the 120 Jews chosen in 1937 by the Kehillas of the World as best holding up the "lamp of Judaism:"

The beginnings of Talmudic literature date back to the time of the Babylonian Exile in the Sixth pre-Christian Century … When a thousand years later, the Babylonian Talmud assumed final codified form in the year 500 after the Christian era, the Roman Western Empire had ceased to be. (See Exhibit 30).
Rabbi Hertz extolls the Babylonian Exile, saying: "The Babylonian Exile is a momentous period … During that Exile Israel found itself. It … rediscovered the Torah and made it the rule of life …"

What he really means is that it was discovered how the Torah or Bible could be used as a "whited sepulchre" for Babylonian degeneracy, as even a cursory study will reveal.

One Rabbi Akiba was a First Century Talmud "sage," of whom Moses was even supposedly jealous! (See Exhibit 32). Rabbi Hertz lauds Rabbi Akiba (Exhibit 32):

Akiba was the author of a collection of traditional laws out of which the Mishna actually grew. He was the greatest among the rabbis of his own and of succeeding times … His keen and penetrating intellect enabled him to find a Biblical basis for every provision of the Oral Law.
Still enthusing over the Babylonian derivation of Pharisaism, Rabbi Hertz continues (See Exhibit 34):

When we come to the Babylonian Gemara, we are dealing with what most people understand when they speak or write of the Talmud. Its birthplace, Babylonia, was an autonomous Jewish center for a longer period than any other land; namely from soon after 586 before the Christian era to the year 1040 after the Christian Era — 1626 years. (Exhibit 34)
[page 3] You will note in reproductions of Talmud pages that the word "Gemara" designates the argumentation of the rabbis, the ultimate decision being summarized as the "Mishnah."

Bible Versus Oral Law (Talmud)
The Bible under Talmudic Judaism is considered to be a collection of simple tales fit only for fools, women and children. The Talmud "sages" thus must find new meanings in it by letter and number tricks which reverse the plain meaning and create out of it the permission to do otherwise forbidden crimes and misdeeds. The words of the Bible are continually misused and misquoted for purposes of blasphemy and reversal.

Stealing for themselves the title of "Israelites," the Talmud "sages" teach that "God made a covenant with Israel only for the sake of that which was transmitted orally." (See Exhibit 60) And the Biblical "basis" of this is given as Exodus 34:27. But that verse states, instead: "And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel" — the opposite! (Talmud, Gittin 60b, See Exhibit 204) The Talmudic reversal of Moses' written words are said to have been transmitted "orally," and through Moses himself — believe it or not!

Bearing in mind that the Scribes were the Pharisee teachers of the Law of Moses, carefully distorted to comprise the Talmud, note: "There is greater stringency in respect to the teachings of the Scribes than in respect to the Torah … so that a Biblical law may be transgressed." (Talmud, Sanhedrin 88b, see Exhibit 95).

The Torah in its narrow sense is the Old Testament, and in a still narrower meaning the first five books (Pentateuch) of Moses. In its wider Judaistic use it means the Old Testament as misinterpreted by the Pharisaic Talmud. Always with Judaism the Talmud ranks above the Bible in every way.

Not reproduced here is a Talmud passage from the book of Nedarim (vows) of which Exhibit 170 is the title page. The Soncino edition of the Talmud states (page 107):

As will be seen on 37a, Scripture was generally regarded as the study of children only, adults usually investigating the deeper meaning … From this we see that it was usual to teach the Bible to girls in spite of the Talmudic deduction that daughters need not be educated (Kid. 30a). The opposition of Rabbi Eliezer to teaching the Torah to one's daughter (Sotah 20a "He who teaches his daughter Torah is as though he taught her lewdness.") was probably directed against the teaching of the Oral Law, and the higher branches of study (V. Maimonides Yad. Talmud Torah) … The context shows that the reference is to the higher knowledge of Biblical law.
The Talmud (Sanhedrin 59a, See Exhibit 60), states:

A heathen who studies the Torah deserves death for it is written, Moses commanded us a law for an inheritance; it is our inheritance, not theirs.
Reference is also made to the "Noachian laws" which the non-Jew may study "but not laws which do not pertain to them." Also: " … (the) objection was to the studying of the Oral Law … Rabbi Johanan feared the knowledge of Gentiles in matters of Jurisprudence, as they would use it against the Jews in their opponents' courts." Understandably, since all Talmud laws discriminate against the non-Jew and rank him a virtual animal, these were apt observations.

The Jewish Encyclopedia is still more open about what is in Sanhedrin 59a of the Talmud, above, threatening death for revelation of "Torah" laws to Gentiles: "for such knowledge might have operated against the Jews in their opponents' courts." This observation follows a dissertation on the laws on cheating and getting the best of Gentiles in trade and in court. (See Exhibit 271, left column)


See all of her work here.

The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today by Elizabeth Dilling

Rhonda, você lembra-se?



Não conheço este, parece semelhante.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Haiku

ARABIA EXOTICA

The below is a wonderful site for Arab art.

Click on the name ARABIA EXOTICA, as a link, for the site.


ARABIA EXOTICA


Saturday, April 4, 2009

Zoroaster's Kaaba







Zoroaster's Kaaba

There is no need to have the kind of prejudice to destroy such a thing.

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL & CULTURAL NEWS OF THE IRANIAN WORLD

Kaaba of Zoroaster's Destruction Project Began by Iran's Taliban

01 December 2006

Edited by Shapour Suren-Pahlav

LONDON, (CAIS) -- Iran's Cultural Heritage Guards commander Amir-Abbas Ruhi has announced that the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (CHTO) plans to file a lawsuit against the Islamic Regime's Marvdasht public prosecutor for altering his ruling on halting the railroad construction near the ancient site of Naqsh-e Rostam.

The railroad project had been stopped on the order of the Marvdasht public prosecutor some time ago, but he revised his ruling and the road construction machines began their operations at the site in Fars Province, the Persian service of CHN reported on Friday.

“The function of the Marvdasht Islamic court is full of ambiguities for us. Thus, we plan to sue the Marvdasht prosecutor through the CHTO Legal Office,” Brigadier General Ruhi explained.

“When the prosecutor rules that an operation must be stopped to prevent a crime, he can only rescind the decision if he is convinced that the operation is no longer a crime,” CHTO Legal Office director Omid Ghanami said.

Many actions have been taken to prevent the Islamic regime's destructive machines from working at the site, people have even lain down in front of the bulldozers, but the project workers are continuing the operations, archaeologist Afshin Yazdani of the Parseh and Pasargadae Foundation noted.

A five-meter high embankment spoiling the landscape of the Achaemenid site of Naqsh-e Rostam has been made for the railway track about 350 meters from the monument.





Detailed map of Railway in relation to Naqsh-e Rostam and Persepolis (Click to enlarge)
Experts have said that the rumbling of the trains will damage the monuments at Naqsh-e Rostam in the future and will cause Kaaba of Zoroaster to collapse in less than ten years if the railroad becomes operational.

Naqsh-e Rostam is important since the tombs of Achaemenian Emperors such as Darius the Great and Xerxes are carved into the living rock. The site also contains remnants of the Elamite, Parthian and Sassanid dynastic eras.

In recent years the Islamic republic has stepped up its' cultural-cleansing of the pre-Islamic Iranian heritage under the banner of development projects. The regime has undermined and destroyed a number of major cultural landmarks associated with the ancient Iranian regimes, particularly the Achaemenid and Sasanian dynasties, to deprive the Iranian nation of their rich ancient heritage.

The constructions of new of the railroad which would ensure the destruction of the Achaemenid Kaaba of Zoraster and other monuments in Naqsh-e Rostam is in accordance with the cultural cleansing orchestrated by the Taliban-like regime in Iran.

The hatred of the extremist mullahs for the pre-Islamic Iran and Iranian nation in general is such that they, like the Taliban of Afghanistan who destroyed the towering Buddhist sculptures at Bamiyan, intend not only to eradicate the ancient heritage, but even to erase all traces of its existence in that land. In their determination to rid Iran of the pre-Islamic past and obliterate its very memory, not only is a crime against Iranian peoples, but humankind in general.

"Rest assure, if we [Iranians] allow the [Islamic] regime complete the construction of this railway which guarantees the destruction of Iranian heritage at Naqsh-e Rostam, it is the beginning of the end for other pre-Islamic monuments in Iran, and they will finish the job that Khalkhali could not finish in 1981", said an Iranian archaeologist from Fars Province.

One of the most-notorious clerics in Iran, Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, who was renowned for his brutality and mass executions in post-revolutionary Iran, had hopelessly tried to bulldoze and level-down Persepolis, and after that, the mausoleum of Master Ferdowsi, the greatest Persian epic poet in Tus. However, the inhabitants of the close city Shiraz went on the barricade, and risked their lives by laying front of bulldozers, as well as assistance from governor of Fars, Nosratollah Amini, who had been a member of the National Front during the days of Dr Mossadegh (1950s) and his personal lawyer, called upon the security forces in Fars, and in a show of force, threw out the humiliated invaders headed by Khalkhali, which saved the ancient site from total destruction.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

After 650 years, the wisdom of the Alhambra is revealed

Granada's fortress-palace built by Spain's medieval Moorish rulers, has always fascinated visitors. But what messages do its intricately carved walls hold – poetry, philosophy or piety?
Elizabeth Nash reports

Tuesday, 31 March 2009



Visitors to the Alhambra fortress-palace in Granada have for centuries fallen into a reverie before its intricately carved medieval walls, wondering at the meaning of the Arabic inscriptions that adorn them from floor to ceiling. The script that winds round the filigree arches and pillared courtyards is so stylised that it's often difficult to disentangle words from images, and few can decipher the classical Arabic in which they are written.


Now, the carvings have been logged and translated, finally answering the question that has perplexed generations of visitors to Europe's jewel of Muslim architecture: "What are these walls telling me?"

Researchers have produced an interactive DVD that decodes, dates and identifies 3,116 of some 10,000 inscriptions carved on the building that symbolises centuries of Muslim rule in Spain and is today the country's top tourist landmark.

"There's perhaps nowhere else in the world where gazing upon walls, columns and fountains is an exercise so similar to turning the pages of a book of poems," says Juan Castilla, from the School of Arabic Studies at Spain's Higher Scientific Research Council, whose team produced this still-incomplete guide.

Arabic artisans, supervised by poets employed in the 14th-century court of King Yusuf I, drew up the decorative plans and planned the spaces where verses – original, or copied – were to be engraved.

So, what do these words say? "There aren't as many as we thought," Dr Castilla confessed. Inscriptions of poetry and verses from the Koran that have inspired generations represent only a minimum percentage of the texts that adorn the Alhambra's walls, despite the mistaken belief that they are smothered in writings of this kind, he said, presenting his study in Madrid.

Instead the motto of the Nazrid dynasty – "There is no victor but Allah" – is repeated hundreds of times on walls, arches and columns. Isolated words like "happiness" or "blessing" recur, seen as divine expressions protecting the monarch or governor honoured in each palace or courtyard. Aphorisms abound: "Rejoice in good fortune, because Allah helps you," and "Be sparse in words and you will go in peace."

Researchers built upon studies begun 500 years ago by the conquerors of the Nazrid dynasty, who ruled the kingdom of Al Andalus and created this fabulous pile. The Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella ruthlessly purged Muslims from Spain after 1492, but they were sufficiently curious about their vanquished enemy's heritage, or impressed by the Alhambra's unique beauty, to order specialist translators to study the inscriptions that cover every nook and cranny.

For centuries scholars spent half their life, and ruined their eyesight, scrutinising the messages embedded in the geometric tiles or finely carved in the stonework. Among them are verses by the acclaimed Islamic poets Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Zamrak, some of which describe the place where they appear, such as the Hall of the Two Sisters, which represents a garden: "Moreover we do not know of any other garden/more pleasant in its freshness, more fragrant in its surroundings,/or sweeter in the gathering of its fruits..." wrote Ibn Zamrak.

The ceiling represented heaven: "The hands of the Pleiades will spend the night invoking/God's protection in their favour and they will awaken to/the gentle blowing of the breeze./ In here is a cupola which by its height becomes lost from/sight..." the poet wrote.

Until now, however, efforts to transcribe such verses have revealed only a fraction of the material. With modern technology, including a 3D laser scanner, "we have achieved not so much a discovery as an exhaustive labour that seeks to register all the inscriptions," said Dr Castilla. At the touch of a mouse, everyone from the specialist to the idly curious can now learn the meaning of the ancient words, see exactly where they are located, and how often they are repeated on the walls.

The form of script is also described: angular kufic, whose uprights sprout into decorative foliage, or intertwine; curlicue cursive; or a mixture of forms. In a culture that banned human images, the form as well as the content of the calligraphy was designed to exalt temporal and heavenly rulers.

Kufic is used for quotations from the Koran, which tend to be high up on the walls, while the poetry is nearer the ground – further from heaven, scholars say – in elaborately cursive script.

The DVD takes you on a virtual tour of all the writings, with details (in Spanish only, so far) of when and how each was created. This first volume covers the citadel-palace of Comares. The Palace of Lions, with its renowned courtyard and fountain, follows later this year. The guide is due to be completed, and reissued in one compilation DVD by 2010.

Chanson




I much prefer the Chanson to the Bohemian Paris and the whole sad existential dejection and rejection of real love that it represents.