Cordoba the magnificent

UNESCO Courier, Dec, 1991 by Pierre Guichard

BEFORE the foundation of the Umayyad caliphate by 'Abd al-Rahman III at Cordoba in 929, the cultural and scientific development of Muslim Spain had been that of a modest offshoot of a simple provincial Arab Muslim culture that was highly dependent on Oriental Islam.

Under the caliphate a cultural flowering came about, largely because Cordoba became increasingly important politically. The city was the centre of a strong and respected power which sought, consciously or unconsciously, to equal the prestige of the 'Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad at the height of its splendour and to create in al-Andalus the conditions for similar achievements. The Andalusians did not aspire to create a new civilization but to imitate or outstrip Baghdad in every field.

We must beware of the chronological errors that are often made by those who attribute en bloc to the Cordoban caliphate all the cultural achievements of the Andalusian civilization. To take one example, the oldest and not least original parts of the Great Mosque of Cordoba were completed under the emirate, not during the caliphate. It was only after the caliphate, at the time of the taifas (principalities governed by petty kings) that Andalusian poetry attained its greatest refinement. Some of the best-known monuments of Muslim Andalusian art, such as the Giralda (the minaret of the Almoravid mosque in Seville) and the Alhambra palace, built by the sultans of Granada from the late thirteenth century onwards, date from long after the time of the caliphs.

All the same, the most remarkable achievements of Arab Andalusian culture do bear the imprint of the relatively short-lived caliphate, which only lasted around a century.

An influential

capital

In the tenth century Cordoba became one of the leading political and cultural centres of the Muslim world, a city comparable in importance to Baghdad and Cairo. The geographer Ibn Hawqal, who visited Cordoba in the second half of the century, judged it to be equal to "half of Baghdad", and wrote that it "has no equivalent in the whole of the Maghrib, nor in Upper Mesopotamia, Syria or Egypt with regard to the size of its population, its extent, the spaciousness of its markets, its cleanliness, the architecture of its mosques and its large number of baths and caravanserais".

At a time when the greatest cities of Western Europe had no more than a few thousand inhabitants, Cordoba had a population of at least a hundred thousand and extended over several hundred hectares (tenth-century Barcelona occupied less than ten hectares!).

The first caliph, 'Abd al-Rahman III, who reigned until 961, built the vast palatine city of Madinat al-Zahra' on the lower slopes of the hills along the northern bank of the Guadalquivir, a few kilometres downstream from Cordoba. In contrast to the paucity of our information about Cordoba itself, we know the precise area of this Versailles of the Andalusian caliphs thanks to archaeological and written evidence. Madinat al-Zahra' was almost completely abandoned at the end of the caliphate, to whose wealth and power its ruins bear eloquent witness.

The walls enclosed about a hundred hectares, with room for several tens of thousands of inhabitants. The city was dominated by palaces and gardens on several levels, which have been excavated and partially restored. Spanish archaeologists and architects have done notable work in reconstituting the salon rico, a lavishly decorated building which gave onto a wide esplanade in the centre of which was an enormous pool. We know from written evidence that this edifice was used for official audiences.

The apotheosis

of the mosque

Equally sumptuous was the extension of the Cordoban mosque carried out by the son and successor of 'Abd al-Rahman III, al-Hakam II, who reigned from 961 to 976. The finest part of the building, around the mihrab, the niche in the wall which shows believers the direction of Mecca towards which they must turn to pray, was adorned with magnificent arches in a new style, a highly complex design of interwoven, multifoil horseshoe arches, decorated with interlaced marble and other sculpted stonework enriched with white or red polychrome patterns.

The polychrome decoration recalls the contrast between red and white in the alternating stone and brick archstones which were an original feature of the oldest parts of the mosque, built during the emirate. However, the similarity between the two phases of construction is limited to a few discreet echoes of this kind. The simple elegance of the eighth- and ninth-century arches contrasts strongly with the exuberant ornamentation of those built under al-Hakam II, which are a brilliant testimony to the wealth of the caliphate at the height of its power, and to the inventiveness and virtuosity of the artists who worked for it.

The most outstanding features of the part of the Great Mosque built during the caliphate are undoubtedly the magnificent domes in the antechamber to the mihrab and above the central nave leading to it. They were built using a technique of interlaced stone arches or ribbing which was quite new in Andalusian art, and had a strong influence on later "Hispano-Moorish" art from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Some art historians even believe that these original forms of Andalusian art may have influenced the development of ogival art in Christian Europe.