THIS BOOK WAS written with the help of my family and the scholars, writers, friends, and readers who looked at many drafts of the book over the years. I could never have moved to Spain without my wife Lucy Blake. With her derring-do, resourcefulness, and high spirits, Lucy made our residency possible and our life a delectation. She is a superb writer and an acute critic, and I hope this text holds some of her insight and intelligence. Our daughter, Gabriella, showed me the Albayzín with the fresh lights of her young mind. Her company was, and is, an unreserved joy, and my notebook of her ideas and declarations is one of my most treasured possessions.
Javier Martínez de Velasco, a gifted scholar and resident in the Albayzín, read the whole book with care and erudite attention and saved me from many errors and infelicities. My dear friend Elizabeth Dilly, lover of language and devotee of good books, read this whole text, as well, and I happily incorporated her corrections and suggestions. Bob Blake reviewed the whole manuscript and gave me his sage and worldly comments, which were invaluable to me.
As this manuscript took final form, Jack Shoemaker, my editor at Counterpoint Press, offered his wise counsel and helped me to make the book decisively more clear, open, and forthcoming. To have so learned and generous an editor is the good fortune every writer dreams of.
Any remaining difficulties or inaccuracies in the book are wholly my own responsibility, and a reader with comments of vitriol or animosity is hereby encouraged to vent his bile upon the author only.
All translations from the Spanish are my own, unless otherwise noted. The drawings in the chapter on Islamic tiles are my own, with the exception of the two drawings with seven circles, one with a square drawn around the center circle and the other with a hexagon drawn to connect the vertices of the six circles surrounding the center circle. These two drawings are by Keith Critchlow.
This book could not have been written without access to a great library, and my use of the libraries of Stanford University was possible because of the generosity and goodwill of Professor Gerald Crabtree. At the Green Library at Stanford, the staff at the reference desk was consistently helpful. Christopher Matson, in particular, helped me track down references to Saint John of God and the surgical tools of Abulcasis, among many other obscurities. When I needed to order obscure books not available in the library, Christine Kelly and her colleagues at the legendary Sundance Bookstore were of inestimable help to me.
I would like, as well, to name and thank some of the principal scholars who informed my thinking and illuminated my days: Maria Rosa Menocal, her colleagues Jerilynn Dodds and Abigale Bilbale, Thomas Glick, Salman Khadra Jayyusi, Idries Shah, L.P. Harvey, Keith Critchlow, Barbara and Stanley Stein, Luce López-Baralt, Willis Barnstone, Peggy Liss, David Lettering Lewis, Chris Lowney, Peter Cole, Paul Preston, and D.E. Pohren. There are many others; bless them all.
I am a mere layman and have had the good fortune to meet very few indeed of these scholars. Some of them are no longer with us. But their books live in my hands, and I will be in their debt always.