When crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, Tariq was unaware of the repercussions his journey would have on the West. The eight centuries of Islamic domination that followed made the Iberian Peninsula an anomaly within Europe, in which the Roman, Byzantine and Persian nuances ushered in by the conquerors combined with those of the rich local tradition in a very characteristic way. This gave birth to some of the most important works in the history of universal art, including the great Mosque of Cordoba, the glittering palatine city of the Alhambra in Granada and the imposing minaret built in Almohad Seville, all magnificent examples of the particular symbolic, formal and constructive universe found in Al-Andalus.

 The Al-Andalus Mathematics Tour is an attempt to provide a conceptual overview by touring the most important monuments of Al-Andalus: the Alhambra in Granada, the Mosque and the Synagogue in Cordoba, and the Giralda, Real Alcázar and Torre del Oro in Seville.

The conference will explain the purpose of the exhibition: to express the variety of mathematical concepts that come into play in Al-Andalus architecture, using brief texts and a few miniatures of orthos and photos with a mathematical layer, which allows for an almost visual reading of the exhibition. Visitors are intended to appreciate that there is a variety of cultural and social concepts which can be expressed and summarized through various mathematical objects and functions, thus helping to gain an understanding, recognition and interpretative assessment of them beyond the simple identification of purely geometric designs which appear on the walls of the Moorish palaces.

The meeting with Álvaro Martínez Sevilla will be introduced by Teresa Cruz Sánchez, the general director of Fundación Descubre, and Karim Hauser, coordinator of Casa Árabe’s Cultural Programs.

Álvaro Martínez Sevilla (Monachil, Granada, 1960). He studied Mathematics at the University of Granada, where he has worked as a professor since he completed his studies. He began his research activity in Semigroups, then Cryptography and currently in Mathematics, Art and Computation. He has developed different teaching innovation projects and intense activity to spread scientific information, leading the Mathematics Tours project, which combines mathematics, technology and art, the result of which is a book of the same name and many different publications and outreach products. He also runs initiatives and projects on Mathematical Tourism. He has received several national and international awards in recent years.