. >> when the nasri dynasty lived here, it was a harmonious space where light, shade, water, the transitied. >> i think the best assumption is nothing is random. they came here and laid out everything according to -- >> a plan. this was a place for reflection, each element of design presumably intended to have effects both psychological and religious. >> it's really a cinematographer's paradise. everything is about light and man. obviously they weren't cinematographers but everything is frames for them. >> how long did it take them to build this? >> hundreds of years. >> that's why it takes so long for you to get the shot? oh, snap. in the builders' time, astronomies, mathematicians were like priests, possessors of divine knowledge of how the universe worked. did they want to contemplate nature or did they want to conquer it, control it? >> they were certainly trying to emulate it. their mathematics were trying to figure out how nature worked, particularly the square roots and the repetition of pattern. >> they saw mathematical patterns in the sky and on earth, the way water moved and ri