Maristan of Granada

The Maristan of Granada was a bimaristan in Granada, Spain. It was built in the 14th century and demolished in the 19th century.

Maristans or bimaristans were the historic equivalent of hospitals in the Islamic world, first originating further east and spreading to Morocco and Al-Andalus around the 12th to 14th centuries. The Maristan of Granada may have been inspired or influenced by similar institutions founded by the Marinids in Morocco . It was founded by the Nasrid sultan Muhammad V in 1365, with construction finishing in 1367. It was located in the lower Albaicin quarter, on the north bank of the Darro River near the 11th-century bathhouse known as the Hammam al-Yawza . Like other maristans in the region, it was especially notable for treating mental illness, though its original medical focus may have been more general and only slowly became specialized as an asylum for the mentally ill. It was one of the earliest hospitals in Europe that took care of the mentally ill, with comparable institutions in Christian Spain only appearing in the early 15th century with the foundation of the Hospital of Our Lady Mary of the Innocents in Valencia, the first purely psychiatric hospital in Europe.

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