Riad (architecture)  A riad (; also spelled "riyad") is a type of traditional Moroccan or Moorish interior garden or courtyard associated with house and palace architecture. The term is nowadays often used in Morocco to refer to a hotel or guest house-style accommodation with shared common areas and private rooms, often within a restored traditional mansion. The term "riad" originates from the Arabic term for garden, ("riyad"). Historically, the term referred to a common but specific type of interior garden: one that is symmetrically divided into four parts along its central axes and typically has a fountain at its middle. Riad architecture ultimately has ancient roots in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern domestic architecture. Houses centered around inner courtyards existed across the ancient Greco-Roman world and, before that, in the ancient Middle East. Interior gardens are also an ancient feature of domestic architecture in the Middle East, and the geometrically arranged gardens of Islamic architecture derive from Iranian civilization in particular. Archaeological remains of similar gardens have been found in and around ancient Mesopotamia, and the evolution of such gardens can be found in the grand geometrically-arranged gardens of later Iranian and Indian architecture, known as "chahar bagh". In addition to the existing influences of Greco-Roman culture in the Mediterranean, the formation of the Islamic world after the 7th century also spread and established these architectural models across the region and all the way to al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula. The ancient Roman city of Volubilis also provided reference for the beginnings of riad architecture during the Idrisid Dynasty in Morocco. Interior gardens were a popular feature of palace architecture in the Islamic world because water and greenery were associated with images of paradise in Islam. Prominent examples in al-Andalus (Spain under Muslim rule) were found at Madinat al-Zahra, the Aljaferia, and the Alhambra. When the Almoravids conquered al-Andalus in the 11th century they sent Muslim, Christian and Jewish artisans from al-Andalus to Morocco to work on monuments. The earliest known example of a true riad garden (with a symmetrical four-part division) in Morocco was found in the Almoravid palace built by Ali ibn Yusuf in Marrakesh in the early 12th century. The era of the Almoravids and their successor dynasties (such as the Almohads, the Marinids, and the Nasrids) was a formative period of Moroccan architecture and of wider Moorish architecture during which the model of the riad garden was perfected and established as a standard feature of interior secular or palace architecture in the region.