ENTRYWAY

You might think I've edited this pic a little.  OK, so you'd be right.  Just a bit.  I've kept the colours, but I wanted to focus on the land behind, rather than on me.  Yes, that's me.  This is the doorway to the fortification protecting the harbour in Tangier.  But the point is that the land beyond is Spain.  Andalusia to be precise.  That's how close it is.  It wasn't the speed with which the Moors conquered Andalusia, nor the small number of men they employed to do it, that struck me, but just the surprise that they hadn't done it before.  They must have looked covetously out of this doorway for years at the land just across the straits before they invaded.

So - not just a gate into the fort, but an entryway into the new land of Andalusia.