In recent years popular scholarship on the Alhambra has used the metaphor of the book to describe the experience of visiting this palace complex notable for its poetic epigraphs inscribed on its walls. At the same time, recent work by Art Historians has rethought the relationship between the epigraphs and the surrounding architecture and decor, moving away from traditional mimetic interpretations (that is, the epigraphs describe what is seen). In this paper, I will re-theorize what it means to "read" the Alhambra based on the epigraphic/architectural models of the pre-Islamic Ka'ba and the Dome of the Rock. This in turn relies on models of writing/reading/transmission based on the Qur'an and pre-Islamic poetry. With reference to epigraphs in the Hall of Ambassadors, the Mirador of Daraxa and the Tower of the Captive, I examine how the texts encourage the reader/reciter to place himself in an imagined unitary universe dependent on interrelationships among the architecture, decor and epigraphs, without reducing them to explanations of each other.